Will The Jewish Ban On Franklin Graham Backfire?
A Christian America! - Not A Jewish America!, Jewish Agenda Articles
WILL THE JEWISH BAN
ON FRANKLIN GRAHAM BACKFIRE?
By Brother Nathanael Kapner, Copyright 2010
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THE PENTAGON HAD INVITED BILLY GRAHAM’S SON, the Reverend Franklin Graham, to deliver the opening sermon for their National Day of Prayer service on May 6, 2010.
The worship service, held as part of the chaplain’s regular program of multi-denominational religious events, was a joint effort between the National Day of Prayer Task Force and the Pentagon chaplain’s office.
According to Army Colonel George Campbell, the Pentagon’s chaplain, the Reverend Franklin Graham had participated in Pentagon religious services at least twice in the past three years, attracting large crowds each time. “He’s a big draw,” Campbell said in an interview.
Although Graham’s engagement had been posted on the chaplain’s website for three months to which all Pentagon employees have access, it was only a week prior to the event that three members of the building’s Muslim community voiced their concerns about the speaker.
“The Muslims expressed their concern about Graham’s view of the Islamic faith,” Campbell stated. “They weren’t asking us to do anything about Graham’s engagement this year. They simply said, ‘We’re just trying to raise the level of sensitivity in the future.'”
Pointing to Graham’s latest book, The Name, where he had written that “Christianity and Islam are enemies locked in a classic struggle,” the Muslim employees did not make any demands on the chaplain, but only wished for an even-handed approach by his office.
Campbell responded by saying that the Muslims had made a “reasonable request,” yet at the same time, announced that the Pentagon would not withdraw Graham’s invitation.
The chaplain underlined his decision by stating: “As part of the freedom we have as Americans, I defend Graham’s right to voice his religious views. To cancel Graham would be contrary to the mission of my office to make sure everyone’s religious needs are met.” View Entire Story
Here.All was settled…all was fine…UNTIL the Jews stepped in and sunk their evil fangs into the scene.
ASKS COURT TO RULE “DAY OF PRAYER” UNCONSTITUTIONAL
“LADY LIBERTY IS SMILING TODAY,” arrogantly boasted Michael Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a Jewish organization whose aim is promoting multicultural diversity and the annihilation of a Christian presence in the US military.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation objected to Graham’s scheduled appearance at the prayer event ostensibly because of his past remarks about Islam as an “evil religion.”
“We are preparing to seek a restraining order against National Prayer Day if it is polluted by Franklin Graham,” said Weinstein, head of the group.
On April 19, 2010, with legal threats made by the organization’s Jewish lawyer, Victor Glasberg, Weinstein sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates DEMANDING (yes, Jews MAKE DEMANDS on the Goyim), that a man MUCH BETTER THAN THESE JEWS WILL EVER BE, be banned from speaking.
Robert Gates, who administers US wars across the globe, found himself to be no match against the vicious Jews and their formidable weapons of intimidation:
“We demand that the Pentagon immediately rescind its invitation to Mr Graham and choose a more appropriate speaker for this high profile event.
We also object to the illegal affiliation of the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer event with the National Day of Prayer Task Force since the NDPTF is a private Christian organization.” View Weinstein’s Demand Here.
First of all, why doesn’t Weinstein and his Jewish lawyer who are so concerned for “separation of Church and State,” litigate against the National Lighting of the Menorah held on the White House Lawn every year to the exclusion of all Christian symbols? I will tell you why. Because the Jews want to take over America by destroying Christianity, that’s why.
Second, because of pressure from these Jews, on April 26, Gates made sure Army officials, bypassing the Pentagon Chaplain’s office, disinvite Graham from speaking.
Third, due to Weinstein and Glasberg’s petition for a restraining order on the Pentagon event, a federal judge in Wisconsin, Barbara Crabb, ruled that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional.
“We congratulate the court for making the right decision,” said Weinstein in celebrating the removal of a Christian witness in our ONCE CHRISTIAN nation’s public affairs. We now live, to our nation’s great enfeeblement, in a Jewish America.
ON APRIL 21, 2010, the Jewish Forward published an article about accusations Jews are beginning to receive due to their “dual loyalty” status as American citizens.
Writing that the charge of “dual loyalty” has “dogged Jews for centuries” and that the allegation that “their allegiance is to their tribe first and not to their nation,” the Forward seems to be raising to consciousness a latent anxiety inherent in the phenomenon of Jewish separatism.
Citing a recent report by General David Petraeus who said that the “continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict undermines American national interests,” the Jewish newspaper is wondering if this “anti-Israel” view will spill over into an “anti-Jewish” attitude.
“A worried reaction can be seen among a wide swath of Jewish groups,” the Forward reported, “and now with the dual loyalty suspicion taken up by Harvard professor Stephen Walt, a mass visit to Washington by the Jewish community is paramount to convey concerns about US-Israel relations,” the paper added. (Jews are now smearing the highly respected Professor Walt as a “McCarthyite.”)
Along with this “expressed anxiety,” are the recent Senate interrogations of Goldman Sachs Jewish executives for defrauding the American people in taking short positions on mortgage securities and then failing to tell them that the securities they were selling were a very high risk.
MOST ALARMING TO THE JEWISH COMMUNITY with respect to the interrogations, is that demonstrators outside were displaying “bankster” photographs of Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, and demanding that he be jailed along with the other executives of the investment bank.
While the Jewish Forward concludes its piece by writing that the “feeling of anxiety” in the Jewish community “might be a result of a shift in orientation to left from right in the American government — at the same time — other Jewish agencies are pointing to right leaning tea partiers, observing that the tea partiers are “blaming the Jews for causing the nation’s current economic downturn.”
This author, a former Jew, takes a more factual view. If Jewish leaders persist in alienating Americans whether from the left or from the right, then the squeeze will be felt by those who identify with neither but remain a ‘people apart.’
Throwing firecrackers into a crowd of non-Jewish Americans can only continue for so long…
For More See: A Christian America! – Not A Jewish America! Click Here
And: Separation Of Church & State Is A Jewish Lie Click Here
And: How Jews Control America Click Here
And: Jewry’s Victory Over America Click Here
And: How The Jews Are Destroying America Click Here
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Brother Nathanael @ April 29, 2010
Hi Everybody –
When Franklin Graham’s invitation to speak at the Pentagon was withdrawn, everyone blamed the Muslims.
This was NOT the case as I reported above in the opening section of this piece.
It was WICKED JEWS who HATE CHRIST who did it!
AND, I am going to get them.
And I will tell you how ’cause I’m a Street Fighting Man!
Right now I am staying home in Summit County THOUGH I CONTINUE with my Street Evangelism here.
We get tourists and 2nd home owners in Summit County from all over the world as this is a Ski and Summer Resort community.
Vail Resorts is here, Copper Mountain, Keystone, Breckenridge, Aspen etc and I take FULL ADVANTAGE of Holding High The Holy Cross before thousands of people EVERY DAY.
But I am holding off on the travel for Street Evangelism for the time being DUE to the Police Harassment I had experienced in LA and in NYC. (The legal action in LA reached a dead end as I would have to go back and accept a “Citation” and then present my defense in an LA court. – I am not traveling for the time being, thus I am not pursuing legal action any longer. My last discussion with the law firm that was dealing with this situation confirmed this and I have paid them in full.)
I am now thinking about many things — and how my very public persona — can be used to fight Christ-Hating Jews like Weinstein, who looks like a criminal (BECAUSE HE IS!).
The time will come very soon that I will begin SPEAKING in person to audiences. I have the ability and the power (the Holy Spirit) to put forth a strong case against the Jew agenda to destroy Christianity here in America. AND I KNOW that Americans WILL listen.
A NEW BOOK is now in the works.
Mark Glenn, a world wide recognized author, radio host, and Internet publicist, is going to write it with me. It is going to be a bio on Brother Nathanael Kapner, entitled, “Exodus – My Flight From Judaism To Christ.”
It is going to be an ATOM BOMB!
In the meantime, I must try to maintain this site which is very expensive to run and my own living needs.
I saw recently on the Web Site, “Information Clearing House,” that the publisher was crying the blues saying that financial woes are “beyond critical” – bemoaning that he only got “180 donations” for the month of April.
Only “180 donations for April?” Is THAT ALL? !!!
If I could only get HALF THAT AMOUNT I would have it made!
Instead, donations dribble in. And this is very discouraging given thaat I am now pumping out 2 Major articles per week and putting Hours upon Hours of research and prep into these articles.
The past article on the Financial Reform Bill got 3 donations out of some 12,000 hits. Is that 1/10,000th of a percent? Pretty grim don’t you all think?
But I keep on slugging along AND I am deeply grateful to the FAITHFUL FEW who are willing to make some kind of financial sacrifice to keep OUR site, Real Zionist News, online and myself maintained.
So, again, will you please consider helping me out financially?
It takes money to run and maintain this site which is HUGELY popular with commensurate — HUGE — expenses.
There is A DONATION BUTTON at the Top & Bottom of This Article. Or Simply Click:
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Much Love To You All (Gotta go after 30 hours of work on this piece) –
Your +Brother in Christ Our Saviour, Nathanael
There is no depth that they will not sink to, I am afraid.
We are seeing the Jewification of the corrupt EU, with France and Belgium planning to ban the burka.
We see the rise and rise of Geert Wilders in Holland, a rabid anti-Muslim.
Italy is banning showing of the crucifix in schools. The banning of minarets in Switzerland.
In Australia we have our newspapers littered with detritus writings of Jewish citizens proclaiming Israel as an ideal nation, on a fortnightly basis.
In Afghanistan the US soldiers fighting there observed Remembrance Day for the Jews this week.
I don’t understand why you or Jeff Rense do not mention or do a piece on how how Jews support every other single Muslim terrorist/sepratist movement other than Palestinians even when they include groups like HAMAS and Hezbollah.
Why are you being a gatekeeper on this subject?
Is it because you don’t want to offend Muslims?
Dear jackfrost –
You have a LOT OF NERVE accusing me of being a “gate keeper” to protect Jews and Muslims.
How dare you.
If Muslims are in the right on any given issue, I say so. If they are wrong, I say so. My articles PROVE it. Period.
+Brother Nathanael Kapner
Goodbye, America! (Part 1)
Dr Lasha Darkmoon
April 22, 2010
Kevin MacDonald’s review of Wilhelm Marr’s pamphlet, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum, 1879, (“The Victory of Judaism over Germanism”), is a fascinating compendium of pessimistic quotations in which German political pundit Marr concludes gloomily that there was no hope left for Germany.
It was finished — yes, as early as the 1870s. The Jews, he lamented, were simply too formidable a foe. Marr’s pamphlet ends with these chilling words:
Let us accept the inescapable, since we cannot change it. Its name is: FINIS GERMANIAE — the end of Germany!
I confess I had no idea the outlook was so bleak in Germany as early as 1879. (Marr’s pamphlet has recently been translated into English and is now available in pdf format).
I had been under the false impression that the notion of Jewish domination came much later — after the publication of the Protocols (1903) and the Russian Revolution (1917).
We have seen it all happen though. Germany was brought to its knees, exactly as Marr predicted.
Its cadaver now lies rotting.
Exactly a year ago, the state of Israel demanded from Germany a further 1 billion Euros ($1.4 billion) in Holocaust reparations for its endlessly traumatized Jewish survivors. Sixty-five years after World War II, the grim extortion racket continues unabated.
The subject that interests me — and which should be of vital importance to Americans undergoing an almost identical trauma at the hands of organized Jewry today — is the question: to what extent was Germany in the days before Hitler’s rise to power a dress rehearsal for what we are witnessing in America right now?
What are the parallels? Is it time to write America’s obituary?
Is it time to say, FINIS AMERICAE — the end of America? @
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Darkmoon-GoodbyeI.html
Goodbye, America! (Part 2) @
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Darkmoon-GoodbyeII.html
@Brother Nathanael
I never accused you of being a gatekeeper towards Jews but you have barely mentioned the US backed Islamic genocide against the Orthodox Serbs in Kosovo while highlighting numerous issues regarding Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
And there is lots of material highlighting US and Jewish support for Islamic terrorism in the Balkans supporting the Bosnian’s and Kosovars and the lies told against the Serbs to justify that war.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6371060303901674397&hl=en&emb=1
Bosnian Official Links With Terrorism, Including 9/11, Become Increasingly Apparent as Clinton, Clark Attempt to Justify Support of Bosnian Militants
http://128.121.186.47/ISSA/reports/Balkan/Sep1703.htm
Dear jackfrost –
You DID INDEED accuse me. Read your accusation again.
I did at least 3 articles on KOSOVO and I INDEED DID report the Muslim desecration of Orthodox monasteries and Churches.
It is all there AS PROOF.
You are using a FAKE NAME.
And I DO NOT like being falsely accused by anonymous handlers.
END OF THREAD. Do NOT write back to me on this or I will DELETE your comments.
If you persist then I will ban you.
+Brother Nathanael
Brother Nathanael,
Is there any possibility that the Muslims & Christians can unite on a 1 point agenda, i.e. both understand that they are together on the receiving end of all the Zionist Jewish hostilities and hence figure out a way to eliminate their cunning & foul supremacy?
Franklin Graham is a Christian-Zionist reprobate.
He never complains about the Jews and how they slaughter, at Gaza and elsewhere, fellow Christians or even innocent Muslims.
We don’t need liars like Franklin Graham influencing our military or anyone else.
I’m really surprised that you would take this opportunity to sex-up Graham rather than to denounce him.
Fascinating article, Br. Nat.
I did not know this. Because Graham Sr. was all about the destruction of America via miscegenation (a sin forbidden to God’s Israel in both OT and NT), I didn’t care much for his son.
Also, no longer being ‘protestant’ I sort of left that wing of my ‘spiritual house,’ vowing never to study in it deeply again. But this was news, nevertheless.
How about addressing the current AZ anti-illegal immigration fracas?
If 70% of the AZ electorate passed the bill, and the Gov. signed it, why are we having Mexican fifth columnists, and Jews standing up for continuing illegal immigration? I think this would be a GREAT next column.
Many years.
Nathanael,
You speak as if Franklin Graham is a Christian which he most definetly is not.
The Graham family has been involved in destroying real Christianity all their lives.
“Whosoever wishes to be saved must hold to the Catholic faith whole and inviolate or they will without a doubt burn in the eternal flames. Pope Eugenio IV.
When will the Protestants get it? Their religion is of the devil as it is a new 16th century religion given to the world by King Henry VIII (a murderous adulterer) and by Martin Luther an advocate of sinning boldly.
Who cares what the world says? The world hates real Catholics who are the only Christians on the planet.
America is not and never was a Christian country.
Paul R
http://www.newworldorderreport.com/Default.aspx?tabid=266&ID=3313
The Radical “Muslim” Group That Threatened South Park Creators Was Founded and Run by Joseph Cohen, a Former Israeli Radical Who Used to Live in a Settlement in the West Bank. Fundamentalist Jews who pretend to be Radical Muslims, a growing problem…
American Everyman
Jon Stewart, shame on you. You’re a propaganda spewing puppet and you’re no better than Glenn Beck.
South Park ran an unedited image of Muhammad in 2001 in an episode called “Super Best Friends“… and nothing happened.
In fact, the episode had been on the South Park website for viewing at any time for the past few years (they just removed it)… and nothing happened.
For 4 seasons they had that image in their opening segment for every single show… and nothing happened.
So for years on end no Muslim group, “radical” or otherwise, has threatened Matt and Trey or Comedy Central about the image of Muhammad that has been available for all to see every single day.
All of a sudden last week a group called “Revolution Muslim” threatened violence against Comedy Central if they aired an image of Muhammad which forced Comedy Central to censor the show and now you have even liberals talking about those “radical Muslims” and their threats of violence. Karl Rove couldn’t have done it any better.
Problem is, Revolution Muslim was started and run by a “converted” Israeli settler who studied at an orthodox rabbinical school in Israel before becoming a settler in the occupied territories.
You don’t think an orthadox Israeli settler would have any desire to see progressive Americans start to hate “radical Muslims” do you? You think “Revolution Muslim” helps or hurts the Israeli PR campaign after Operation Cast Lead and the Goldstone Report?
Here’s the research your team should have done before you went out and spun-up the neoconish ”radicalized Muslim” hype for your progressive audience…
“Revolution Muslim” is always there to say just the wrong thing to make Americans hate “Radical Muslims.” They praised the killing of Daniel Pearl with a childish puppet show.
They sent “Get Well” wishes to the guy who shot those 13 people at Fort Hood.
Yousef al-Khattab, 41, a radical Muslim in the borough of Queens who runs RevolutionMuslim.com, claims on the site that the soldiers massacred at the Texas base deserved to be massacred, and he insists the victims are in “eternal hellfire.” As for the suspected gunman — Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — Al-Khattab hails him as a hero. Fox News
You can count on “Revolution Muslim” to say the wrong thing at the right moment to get Americans to hate all those “radical” Muslims.
Dear Paul R and Billy “Puff” Graham,
I did NOT report on this Graham-Pentagon speaking issue to put forth a polemic of how one denomination of Christendom might be better than the other…
This article was to show first of all that the DISINFO that the Jew-owned press put forth in making us all believe that the Muslims WERE BEHIND Graham’s disinvitation WAS A LIE — that it was the Christian-Hating Jews that did it.
Secondly, I wished to point out that Jews were able to intimidate the master of global wars, Robert Gates, who crumbled before the threats of Jews.
Third, I wished to show that Christian-hating Jews Cannot and WILL NOT pursue their Christ-Hating agenda with impunity.
I admire Graham for his Christian witness and his “nerve” for stating very clearly and boldly his Christian belief.
THIS IN CLOSING: Jews DO NOT distinguish between branches of Christendom but their aim is to destroy “Christianity” in whatever form it may appear.
So long as the Jews see the name of Jesus Christ and that Name attached to a NATION’S SALVATION (this point is very important) — then they will do all they can to DESTROY and ANNIHILATE that Holy Name with the peoples attached to it. (This is why they got an entire nation to say “Happy Holidays” INSTEAD of “Merry CHRISTmas.”
Graham does not represent himself BUT AN ENTIRE HUGE GROUP OF PEOPLE that the Jews want to weaken and prevent from being a Christian influence.
You TOTALLY MISUNDERSTOOD this article dear Paul R and Billy “Puff” Graham and I regret your nasty comment posted on this Holy site.
I know that people like you both with your nastiness NEVER help me financially BUT use this forum for their own ends.
And, sorry to say, people who are so narrow minded LIKE YOU BOTH so as not to see the forest for the trees, seem to come on to this forum at the outset of my articles to subvert what I am trying to put forth.
Already, in just a few hours, this article has gotten close to 3,000 hits and I have received emails APPLAUDING this article from well meaning people of all persuasions.
BUT Unfortunately, you dear Paul R and Billy “Puff” Graham, come on here — A FORUM THAT I HAVE MADE POSSIBLE — to attack my purposes so as to wield your ax in a destructive way against the true import of this article.
Now I REPEAT WHAT I WROTE at the top of this Comments Section.
I AM AT WAR. I am a Street Fighting Man. I am at war with the Christian-Hating Jews.
Who Is On The Lord’s Side? Let Him or Her JOIN ME in my battle.
I cannot do this alone. I do not need polemic wielding narrow minded people like Paul R and Billy “Puff” Graham to weaken my ‘call to arms’ against the Christ-Hating Jews. But I need financial help NOT criticisms.
There is a DONATION FEATURE BUTTON at the Top & Bottom of This Article. Or simply Click (hardly anyone does):
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+Brother Nathanael Kapner
Bro Nate,
It may be a case of the “chickens coming home to roost” Billy Graham, his father as the son, follows closely in his footsteps, told what he believed to be the future if Nixon didn’t reel in these Zionist especially in the media (no mention of Islam here) @ http://www.rense.com/general20/billy.htm
Later, when he was confronted Graham recanted, basically he said “the Devil got in me and made me do it”??
As I said, Bro Nate, once they see they can rattle you, make you eat words, they will own you!
Instead of going after the Koran which is full of positives about Jesus and Mary, why
not expose the Talmud???
Holy Torah the Old Testament and Jewish followers warned of Zionism @
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/antisemitism/holocaust/gedalyaLiebermann.cfm
Another note on South Africa’s Julius Malema @
http://thesaladmagblog.bloglines.co.za/2010/04/11/julius-malema-and-%E2%80%98%E2%80%99kill-the-boer%E2%80%99%E2%80%99-song-my-thoughts/
Dear Disgusted White Christian –
Jews will NEVER rattle me nor make me eat my words. I carefully choose my words and NEVER recant.
Also, I have done MANY Talmud articles. Go through the categories and you will see them.
People constantly ask me why I don’t do an article on this or that — when ALREADY I have done MANY articles on what they ask me. +BN
No Bro Nate,
I know, I am not talking about you.
I saw the article, the interview you had with the guy that EXPOSED the Talmud, as “oral tradition” not from God like the Torah, that Moses received from our God. God of all humanity, as Jesus says, “Our Father” not “Our Hebrew” or “Our Greek” or “Our Roman” it is inclusive of all humanity!
No, if anything you are one of the “True Prophets” Revelations talks about not a “fake” money grubbing tele-evangelist like Hagee or Osteen, or some of those others the Zionist big media own???
Like Ted Pike said, not one came out to condemn Israel over the Gaza bombing.
Bro Nate you are a TRUE CHRISTIAN! one of the few left on this earth!
Re: The wars in former Yugoslavia. What transpired there in regards to Serbia was the old maxim: “tyrannies do not improve, they perish.”
The Communist version of Yugoslavia was de facto a Greater Serbia, and for non-Serbs far more oppressive than the royalist version. The chief source of instability in southeastern Europe since 1912 had been Serb territorial expansion at the expense of their neigbours through colonization, conquest, massacre, economic exploitation, etc.
After WW I, Serb authorities, for example confiscated some 700 Macedonian churches and 645 schools and expelled the clergy and teachers into Serbia. Macedonia was proclaimed “Southern Serbia” and the Macedonian language was forbidden.
From 1912 to 1924, in peacetime, Serb forces in Kosovo and Albania murdered well over 100.000 Albanian civilians. In 1922 the most fertile valley in Albania, some 600 square km, was reduced to ashes by Serb troops and and 164 villages wiped off the map and its inhabitants in large part put to the sword.
In a letter to his govt the British ambassador wrote that he drove by car for six hours and didn’t come upon a single house that wasnt gutted. That’s just part of the mass crimes the Albanians have suffered as the hands of Serb regimes over the past 100 years.
To suggest that Serbs were the victims of genocide in the latest conflict is either the height of historical illiteracy or a deliberate propagation of malicious propaganda.
The reality is that the Serb people have become prisoners of their own myths for which in large part the Serb Orthodox church has been responsible. Anyone truly wishing them well should desist from perpetuating past and recent myths and half-truths.
Dear joeglass –
PROVE your biased Half Truth and Lying assertions. You offer NO PROOF whatsoever as I constantly do in my articles.
You will NOT come on here to attack my Holy Orthodox Church and get away with it.
I am asking KathJulliane, a Serbian Orthodox Christian, to REFUTE YOUR LIES.
+Brother Nathanael Kapner
Russian Orthodox Christian
Bro Nate you are helping fulfill prophecy right now.
As little as 10 years ago, if you put this stuff, you, Joe, Ted Pike’s stuff expose, you would NEVER last. The Internet, and true believers, like you three, that know “DARKNESS” will “ALWAYS” RECEDE when true light (the Word) is thrown at it, NEVER back down!
Unlike you, Ted, and Joe, Graham and his son waters down the “light” for political correctness.
He doesn’t want to risk the earthly status, the peanuts Zionist have thrown him. Thus the Darkness does not recede????
100% true faith in the true Master, darkness will always recede!
Luke 12
Jesus Gives Words of Warning and Hope
1 During that time a crowd of many thousands had gathered. There were so many people that they were stepping on one another.
Jesus spoke first to his disciples: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees,” he said. “They just pretend to be godly. 2 Everything that is secret will be brought out into the open. Everything that is hidden will be uncovered. 3 What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight. What you have whispered to someone behind closed doors will be shouted from the rooftops.
4 “My friends, listen to me. Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body but can’t do any more than that. 5 I will show you whom you should be afraid of. Be afraid of the One who can kill the body and also has the power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, be afraid of him.
Dear muslim:
I agree with you. Christians and muslims should unite against the deceitful Zionists, Jewish and Christian.
I live in Amsterdam, Holland and we have a huge Muslim population over here. I know some very nice, moderate Muslims, but the point is that we face big problems with a lot of young muslim men who seem to disrespect very much the native Dutchmen.
In all the big cities, with nowadays almost half of the population Muslim, there is a tensed atmosphere.
It is only shortly that I understand that these young men are being backed by Salafists and Wahabists, two fundamental branches of Islam from Saoudi Arabië.
According to ‘Islamic Intelligence’ the royal family of SA is not Muslim, but Jewish. Like Kadhaffi is Jewish. I suppose they are not only Jewish, but Zionists.
So, the Zionists who reign in Muslim countries are backing fundamentalists in Holland….
Should Muslims not start informing each other that they are being set up against the Christians by the Zionists? I am sure that it would help to isolate these people who are willingly organising a ‘Clash of Civilizations’.
I am sure that the Muslim-immigration on this large scale throughout all of Europe has been a Zionist idea. ‘Oil for Immigration’. Do they really hope that Muslims and Christians start killing each other?
Excuse me for my poor English, please.
Comments Section Guidelines:
Because this Comments Section is read by thousands every day I MUST lay down some rules:
1. Attacks on Brother Nathanael will NO LONGER Be Tolerated.
2. Check Grammar and Spelling before posting. I am SICK AND TIRED of correcting hundreds of Comments every day and throughout the week.
3. SEPARATE thick paragraphs into SMALLER Readable paragraphs.
4. No AD HOMINEMS on others will be allowed.
5. BACK UP assertions with evidence.
Those who are from non-English speaking nations or speak and write a different language than English are GRANTED special dispensation and May CONTINUE TO POST COMMENTS and are ENCOURAGED to do so and I will correct their posts.
BUT – those who are from English speaking nations LIKE AMERICA – I am INSISTING that you abide by these guidelines.
+Brother Nathanael
Since when are the Jews concerned about the Islamic faith being seen as evil?
This makes no sense. Their whole life (besides stealing from the gentiles) is about demonizing Islam/Muslims.
Note to the Jews: You should be worried. Everyone is waking up.
About six months ago any time my I would point out how the Jews are ruining everything, my family would try to SHUSH me.
After taking the time to educate them, they now see the truth. Basically we feel that if the Jews love Israel so much, they need to hop on a plane and go live there BECAUSE WE DON’T WANT THEM HERE.
They are behind the genocides of many nations yet we only get to hear about the Holocaust. How ridiculous.
If we’re not careful, they will be behind the genocide of many here in the US because that is where we are headed with these sociopaths.
True Bro Nate.
If you have a spell checker right on your site, all people have to do is “right click mouse” over the word that has squiggle red line under it, and click on the right spelling.
Paragraph separation is a must, for under-standing.
Theodora, those Muslims that are acting that way, they are being seduced by an evil Western Media, that Putin (God bless him) is starting to ban from Russia!!!
This is all part of the Zionist or should I be more correct: Satan’s plan to turn one against the other.
As soon as the Zionists woo Islam, (like the West) their rights will go also! Do their Muslim brothers have rights now in Palestine????
Although, I don’t think Islam will be an easy target like Europe, USA, Australia, Canada?
Bro Nate, just a suggestion, a post preview or ask that people type in Word first, look at what they have, before posting in a copy and paste. Maybe, run a quick grammar check, although I have not done this.
I just did Grammar check in Word, 4 fragments, but sometimes they are too precise?
Dear joeglas,
“1912 to 1924” was “peacetime?” In the complex history of the Balkans and the Great European Powers and their hands in things, 1912 to 1924 was anything but “peaceful.”
And how do you know that the wasted village in Albania wasn’t that of ethnic Serbian Orthodox living in Catholic lands? Albania declared independence during this mess.
Austria had an aggressive policy of forced conversions to Catholicism, although Hungary had historically been an enlightened and generally tolerant Catholic nation towards the Orthodox, granting them equal charter rights, etc.
This is one factor that eventually sparked WWI, was the forced conversions of Serbian Orthodox living in Bosnia under the Austrian Crown. The Serb who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand was a ‘Bosnian Serb’, a minority group under Austrian Crown authority who were struggling for their own ethnic autonomy.
In other words, an Austrian citizen at the time. Originally Austria was, according to the treaties among the Great Powers, to establish simply a protectorate over the area as the Turks were rolled back. Instead, the Austrian government began illegal and aggressive colonization and forced conversions to Catholicism of ethnic Serbs living in crown territories.
Rather shortsightedly, the Great Powers divided their pie up without taking into consideration division of territories along ethnic lines, rather than political lines. One of the remedies sought was pan-Slavism, national identity not on religion but ethnicity which would accomodate Catholics, Orthodox and even Muslim, in the entity that was Yugoslavia – literally “South Slavs.”
This certainly is one of the least understood and most Serbo-phobic propagandized chapters of the 19th and 20th century.
Peacetime? Don’t think so.
Even this slightly biased piece clearly shows that the period was anything but “peacetime.” Nor do your comments entirely reflect the truth that there were ethnic communities of Orthodox Serbs throughout the Balkans and Austria-Hungary, or the double-dealing among the Crowned Heads of Europe among themselves and “the little people.”
“Balkan Wars
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0805909.html
Balkan Wars, 1912–13, two short wars, fought for the possession of the European territories of the Ottoman Empire.
The outbreak of the Italo-Turkish War for the possession of Tripoli (1911) encouraged the Balkan states to increase their territory at Turkish expense.
Serbia and Bulgaria accordingly concluded (1912), with the aid of Russian secret diplomacy, a treaty of alliance. In a secret annex, the treaty provided for joint military action and the division of prospective conquests.
The outbreak of the war (Oct., 1912), in which Greece and Montenegro joined the original allies, was followed by the speedy expulsion of the Turks from all of European Turkey, except the Constantinople area.
After the conclusion of hostilities Serbia showed intentions of annexing a large part of Albania, in order to gain an outlet on the Adriatic, but this step toward a “Greater Serbia” was opposed by Austria-Hungary and Italy and by the Albanians, who had proclaimed their independence.
Conferences of the ambassadors of the Great Powers at London created (1913) an independent Albania of fair size, thus cutting Serbia off from the sea.
Dissatisfied with these terms, Serbia demanded of Bulgaria a greater share of Macedonia. Bulgaria thereupon attacked (June, 1913) Serbia, only to be attacked by Romania, Greece, and Turkey. As a result of this Second Balkan War, Bulgaria lost territory to all her enemies by the Treaty of Bucharest (Aug., 1913).
The Balkan Wars prepared the way for World War I by satisfying some of the aspirations of Serbia and thereby giving a great impetus to the Serbian desire to annex parts of Austria-Hungary; by alarming Austria and stiffening Austrian resolution to crush Serbia; and by giving causes of dissatisfaction to Bulgaria and Turkey.”
The sad truth is, in this last, is that Austria was the one building up and mobilizing for invasion of the Kingdom of Serbia along the frontiers. Austria had overstepped treaty bounds as a protectorate with aggressive expansion, annexing Bosnia and Albania.
And that is just the start of trying to understand this.
One last thing, on your post about Spelling and Grammar.
This is very important, when I first came to this site, the thing that impressed my so much was every person here seemed so LITERATE and EDUCATED!
Remember, Zionism biggest weapon is to make you believe that anyone who questions their absolute authority is either an uneducated imbecile, posting from West Virginia with 2 teeth left in their mouth: talk or post one syllable words, a Nazi/Skin head, or not a true American, an EXTREMIST!
Love ya’ Bro. Nathanael!
Keep up the good work…standing for Christ and exposing the dark side of those claiming to be Jews but are worshipping in the synagogue of Satan.
When will the Evangelicals in general, and John Hagee in particular, recall God cast the Pharisaic regime out of the land of Israel for unfaithfulness to their covenant with Him? They have never been repentant, as the Talmud and their actions document.
Why should anyone stand to restore the Jews when their arrogant rebellion has caused God to evict them? I do believe Jews can and will be redeemed. I believe God will honor His covenant with the Hebrews…but that covenant was conditional.
The “chosen people” have utterly failed to honor that covenant and blasphemously rejected their Messiah, our Christ Jesus who sacrificed His Holy life in atonement for all sins in the New Covenant. If Israel is truly God’s chosen, Israel does not need our support!
To all Christians:
If you agree that Brother Nathanael is telling the truth, then he needs your financial support.
Money given to him will become treasures stored in heaven. I have Brother Nathanael at the top of my list for charitable donations, because I know he is pure.
If you are afraid of the Jews, then arm yourself with prayers to Jesus.
The thousands of people that read this and agree with it should make donations. It is also a way to show that we are a strong group of people.
Brother Nathanael is at war and he needs a war chest.
(BN your comment page looks like it has been contaminated with a lady in high heels on the bottom corner. The page I am typing on now.)
David,
I wrote John Hagee pesonally, about 1 year ago, and mentioned to him how serious of a sin it is for him to support the evil of the Zionists who hate Jesus Christ and true Christian believers who live the faith.
I got an arrogant, politically directed response back in the email that I was the problem and I didn’t understand God’s covenant at all.
Within the last year then I smiled when John Hagee had a heart problem, as I was thinking maybe things happen to give these evil supporters of Zionists the scare to rethink what they have been preaching.
I can only pray that people like John Hagee come to repentance and understand that God has never rewarded those who rebel against His commandments and will for their lives.
If American’s just realized they were born slaves at birth into a usury based fiat money plantation ran by the elites and for the elites then MAYBE the political climate MIGHT change.
Professor Walt is telling the truth just like Joe McCarthy about the Communist-Zionist system, and if that makes him or anyone else who calls it like it is a “McCarthyie”- so what?
McCarthy was right.
Wev’e seen what good Ziobot puppet leaders on this Zionist bankster plantation called Amerika have done for the people’s interest – None.
If people could just simply realize they’re slaves that would help awaken more of them.
It is only shortly that I understand that these young men are being backed by Salafists and Wahabists, two fundamental branches of Islam from Saoudi Arabië.
Theodora
The House of Saud is Jewish
To KathJuliane:
The largest wave of massacres and expulsions by Serb forces in Kosovo and Albania took place after WW I and lasted into the 1920s.
Massacres of Albanians took place after the First Balkan War of 1912 and the Second after 1913. The Serb terrorist organization Black Hand sparked WW I with the killing of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo.
Court transcripts reveal that Princip and the other apprehended assassins were all Freemasons.
I can cite Serb crimes against others in both royalist and communist Yugoslavia at length. But for the sake of brevity I’ll just mention the massacre of some 40 thousand members of the Hungarian minority primarily in Vojvodina in roughly a month in the autumn of 1944; the murder of some 1500 Macedonians from 1920 to 1928; the killing of hundreds of Croat peasants during the period 1918-1941 (96 peasants and two Catholic priests in 1935 alone) and the murder of well over 3.000 Bosnian Muslims from the end of 1918 to 1924.
John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel stated:
“Fifty million evangelical Christians unite with five million American Jews, standing together on behalf of Israel….The man or nation that lifts a voice or hand against Israel invites the wrath of God.”
I think Hagee got it grossly WRONG. America is experiencing the wrath of God right now for joining itself at the hip with the murderous, bastard, illegitimate Zionist Antichrist state of Israel!!!
“COME OUT OF HER MY PEOPLE”.
There are lots of things that never go by rule, there are lots of folks who always play the fool, theres’ an awful lot of knowledge that you never get in college, there are lots of things you never learn in school.
In my Catholic school, run by the Loreto Nuns I never learned about the Bible, I never even heard of it!!!
Reading it now I realize why.
I went to Catholic schools, too, and we NEVER read the Bible either!
We were told the stories by the nuns and priests but we never had a Bible in our own hands to read.
It wasn’t until last year (I am now in my 40’s) that I finally read the Bible cover to cover.
I do not identify with any organized religion anymore but feel closer to God and heaven than ever.
Hagee is disgusting.
That fat 5th column liar is exactly what Jesus meant by those who are only Christian in name, a true false prophet, if there ever was one!
He isn’t going to change, he is a brain-washed pathetic imbecile!
By the way has anybody ever enlightened Hagee, that being a glutton, that he most certainly is, from his girth, makes him sinful too!
Osteen, Pat Roberts and Benny Hinn might take the cake??
I just couldn’t see Jesus taking off in one of their Learjets!
Dear joeglas,
I will say from experience that my personal and familial firsthand dealing with at least ONE Serb leads me to understand that the Serbian mindset is not all good.
Serbs apparently need the Serbian Orthodox Church to help them with their less-than-perfect nature. However, when a church becomes a place where people go to pay homage top their ethnicity, as it certainly does in some instances in the Greek Orthodox Church I attend, the Christian message gets sidelined by the innate tendency of the flesh to focus on the wrong thing.
So, I definitely sense that Serbs can be real nutjobs, but they are also created in God’s own image. Where to draw the line? This is the most difficult question to answer, this matter of discrimination without prejudice. If we were perfect we would do as the Father in Heaven, who sends sunshine and rain upon both the wicked and the righteous.
I definitely don’t find it hard to believe that acting according to some paranoid race-mind, Serbs committed various atrocities. But this condemnation falls upon all mankind, and no people are without blame for the murder of innocent members of antagonistic racial groups.
I have previously shared evidence of Serbian Orthodox clergy participating in Freemasonry, and surely this is the tip of the iceberg. In every church lies the potential for a self-interested network of kinfolk to guide the congregation into impure motives and acts.
Every church in the world seems to be contaminated with this flesh-based appetite for using the Lord’s house as a ‘social networking site’. Jews, of course, are the real best example of this; so much so that they can even be atheists as long as they participate in the Synagogue’s business life.
Let us not single out the Serbs for reproach, yet let us make a full accounting of their national sins as evidenced by the witness of facts and evidence. Then there can be humility and repentance, and perhaps even the miracle of healing will arise and make friends out of old enemies.
Peace in the Risen Christ.
Dear Michael K –
I have MANY Serbian friends and they are certainly NOT “nut jobs” at all. They happen to be very pious and sober-minded individuals.
I have been on retreat at a Serbian monastery recently and the people were VERY FINE and Christ-loving people.
Why would you make such a sweeping negative characterization of Serbs? Kind of “nutty” don’t you think?
+Brother Nathanael Kapner
Russian Orthodox Christian
IN COMMUNION With:
The Serbian Orthodox Church
I must admit, I have yet to meet a ‘nut job’ from either Central Europe or Russia.
And I have had occasion to meet quite a few people whose families come from that part of the world.
Without exception I have found all of them to be honest, deeply spiritual, some are religious with strong kinship ties – including to the old country. And immensely likeable.
The Russian ‘atheists’ – who still keep very strict Great Lent as a matter of loyalty to their families who perished under Stalin are a distinct group.
They have an English expression: ‘there are Russians and then, there are Russians’. It impressed me as being a lot like Paul’s expression: “not all are Israel who are Israel.” So once I asked them about this.
What is this expression: “there are Russians and then there are Russians”. What does that mean?
The answer was fascinating. There are Russians and then there are Russians who are born in Russia, their families have Russian names and have long been in Russia, “but they are not us and they will never be us”.
They do not have the Russian soul. And. Everything they do, they twist it against the Russians – who do have the Russian soul.
You mean like, I struggled with this idea “the scum also rises”. No. that is not it.
What he means is – these Russians are another race, but they “changed their appearance to look like us”, they “changed their names”, they became Russians in order to destroy the Russians.
No matter what religion they belong to they destroy it just by belonging to it. No matter what Russian institution they join, they get control and turn it against the Russian soul.
Are you talking about Jews? I wanted to know. No. that’s not it either. Everybody now knows that the Reds, the Communists all had Jewish names.
What my acquaintance is talking about are, of course, the Marranos.
Pat Robertson was NOT a Christian Zionist in his earlier years as he is today.
He published about two books that exposed the Zionists/satan’s children. They were very telling books. He was so against it back then, but something has surely changed his mind in the last few years.
I’m guessing it is the financial donations from satan’s number one child, Jorge Soros. This man wants to warp the morals of everyone in the world. He thinks he is some kind of god. He is the devil’s child. He wants globalism, that is why he pays our president to let illegal’s into our country.
Pat Robertson, and all those who sell their souls and their fellow man, for the all mighty Jewish/devil dollar, will see their day in hell.
The reality is that the Serbian people have become victims of their own propaganda where for one, the wildest fantasies are accepted as fact.
A “Vatican-American-German conspiracy” against Serbia is widely believed.Such an atmosphere gave rise to a communist demagogue like Milošević.
I harbour no hate for the Serbian people and only wish them well.
Indeed I feel sorry for them as they have been ill-served over the past hundred years by their leaders and church.
Another reality in former communist European countries is that communism has generally dehumanized people.
Thats why corruption, nepotisam, inefficiency,etc there are the rule and in the west the exception.
Someone once wrote that the worst revenge of a totalitarian system is what it leaves behind.
Dear Enya,
In all of your years ‘in Catholic school’, surely you attended Masses.
You HAD ‘The Bible’ read to you during those Masses – a reading from the Old Testament, a reading from the Psalms, a reading from the New Testament Epistles and then finally a reading from one of the four Gospels.
Don’t you remember?
– Fr. Joseph
Dear Brother Nathanael,
I was attempting to indicate that I have witnessed the negative end of the spectrum of Serbian character, and in one family. This is NOT to say that I am better than all Serbians!
All I mean is that, having experienced the Serbian mindset, I can say that Serbs seem to have a tendency to be very hard-headed. This can be a good thing, of course, if the Serb in question has sanctified themselves as have your friends. Then they may be unshakable pillars of both faith and reason.
However, I think it just as funny that you would generalize Serbian character from some monks, when men of God are usually so above average that they have transcended the narrow-mindedness of their mothers’ and fathers’ ethnicity.
What I’m saying is that in the general Serbian population are SINNERS, and they sin in a special way that is ‘Serbian’. Every ethnic group is like this, and everything that makes an ethnic group distinct has a good and a bad way of expressing itself.
I would reiterate that these national churches have got some ethnic self-worship going on, at least amongst the laity, and I see how this can be frustrating to the clergy who know that this is paganism in vestigial form. ‘Balkanization’ is not imaginary, although it may be difficult to understand.
I just want you to know that I love my nephew the Serb and I like the Serbians generally. But just as with my ethnic group the Scots-Irish, there are many inherent tendencies that we need Christ to help us overcome.
Peace and Blessings in the Risen Christ.
Dear Michael K –
The retreat I went to was AT a Serbian monastery here in the US – BUT – most of the people there were NOT monks, but lay people.
Fine people these Serbs were. I was with MANY OF THESE Fine Serbs who were NOT monks.
None of these Serbs were “hard headed.” Nor were they “nut jobs.” Just good, fine, sober-minded people.
+Brother Nathanael
Dear joeglas –
You TOO, make sweeping negative characterizations of the Serbian people with your biased slant against them.
Milošević got a RAW DEAL both at the Hague and from the JEW-OWNED Western press.
The BREAKUP and DISINTIGRATION of Orthodox Nationalism is at the heart of Balkanization of Central Europe BY THE JEWS and their puppets at the EU and NATO.
But Christ WILL BUILD HIS HOLY ORTHODOX CHURCH and the GATES OF HELL of JEW OPPOSITION and THEIR WITTING DEFENDERS (like you joeglas) WILL NOT PREVAIL.
Why don’t you use your real name when you make your biased and baseless attacks? What are you afraid of?
I KNOW who you are “joeglas.” You are a Jew. You have come here to trash this Comments Section with your JEW-INSPIRED destruction. It does NOT take me long to smell out a Jew.
You pass yourself off as an intellectual but you are a pseudo-intellectual all the way like most wannabe Jews.
You are a fraud AND a Christ-hating Jew. It is obvious to me, (a former Jew) what your agenda here is.
+Brother Nathanael Kapner
Former Jew
NOW: Russian Orthodox Christian
In COMMUNION WITH:
Serbian Orthodox Christians
Time to oust the Jews in America!
Bravo, Brother Nathanael.
Your self description as a former Jew is what Benjamin Freedmen also refered to himself, and I applaud you for that.
Unfortunately, I’m sad that Christiandom is a house divided. I believe that this division was first caused by the Jews when they chose to murder our Savior. And you show how this crime continues to this day.
Since a house divided cannot stand, and with the Jews pushing hard against it, it is imperitive that Christians unite around Jesus, the Prince of Peace, rather than divide themselves over differences in doctrine or creed, which the Jews can poke and prod at with there legal theatrics.
I ask, and pray for, unity, not uniformity, in the truth of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all man, where the kingdom of heaven is always at hand and the golden rule rules.
Aloha from Maui PK
The Whore rides The Beast.
The Beast destroys The Whore.
The Lord destroys The Beast.
The Redeemed sing, The Song of Moses.
“The Lord has triumphed gloriously,
The horse, and rider,
Thrown into the sea.”
Excerpts from ‘The Serbs: Guardians of the Gates, RCD Laffan
For a truly excellent overview of the political and cultural complexities of the Balkans and the relationship to the European Great Powers the century before and during WW1, this book is a must read.
Am including considerable excerpts to try to color an overall picture of the times, and making other comments of my own, but not cluttering with pages numbers and links, so please simply read the whole book.
http://www.archive.org/stream/guardiansofgateh00laffuoft/guardiansofgateh00laffuoft_djvu.txt
Here you will find documentation and first hand contemporary eye-witness testimony about lies and slanders, intrigues and manipulations, suppression, brutality and atrocities committed against the Serbs, mostly agitated by the Austria-Hungarian Empire, of whom many Serbs were once long loyal subjects outside of Turkish Europe.
Slandering Serbs is nothing new, especially if someone else commits the atrocities as well, and pins it on the Serbs. It has happened before, and is happening now in the Balkans. More and more the justifications and excuses for the NATO-bombing of Serbia by the Clinton administration are being exposed as mostly a tissue of lies, although it takes some research to find it all as the mainstream media sure isn’t carrying it.
Plans were made during the Clintonista era between Europe, Croatian lobbyists close to Biden, and the US to dismember former Yugoslavia and “balkanize” the Balkans.
And so we must go to the old books which were intellectually more honest, and give better insights into the times around WWI.
Too many of us only know the Serbs as “precipitators” of WWI, when it was a Bosnian Serbian nationalist, and at that time an Austrio-Hungarian citizen under a repressive regime, who assassinated Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914 causing Austria to declare war.
It was a war she had been making preparations for long before in order to take complete possession of the Balkans, waiting only for a pretext to invade and conquer Serbia proper, on her way to conquering Greece and Salonika.
This is why the Balkans were long called the “Powder Keg of Europe” among the Powers because of Austria-Hungary’s greedy aspirations to possess the peninsula at any cost.
Bulgaria had become a puppet-kingdom under the influence of Austria-Hungary, Albania was a newly formed puppet-client state of Austria-Hungary cobbled together in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars.
And Ferdinand himself was so despised by the rest of the Hapsburgs and most of Europe, that if the assassination by a Serb national had not done him in, the Hapsburgs themselves probably would have.
The pretext came when a Bosnian Serbian nationalist assassinated Ferdinand. It finally sparked WWI when Austria-Hungary could declare war on her hated enemy Serbia, for standing in the way of Vienna’s ambitious covetousness to acquire Saloniki, sewing up all trade routes between the Levant and Western and CentralEurope and the warm water accesses of Tzarist Russia.
The book ‘The Serbs: The Guardians of the Gates’ was originally a series of lectures delivered by the renown British historian RGD Laffan. Professor Laffan’s lectures in early 1917 were given to the companies of the ASC(MT) attached to the allied Serbian Army during WW1 on modern Serbian history.
His lectures became so famous they were collected and published in book form. As he wrote in his Preface:
“So I have written the following chapters from the lecture-notes, intending them primarily as a souvenir for those who are now with the Serbs, but also in the hope that they may serve to spread sympathy for our heroic, but little known allies.”
It is a classic book on an important and misunderstood people, and if RZN family doesn’t catch how things were a century and more ago, then you won’t catch the core of things as they are now in the Balkans, considering how Brzenski’s Grand Chessboard is simply upgraded policy of the old European Powers.
“As against their Moslem lords, who took possession of the land and for whom they labored, the Orthodox people had few rights and little chance of successful appeal to the distant government of the Sultan.”
In this long period of extinction two forces were mainly responsible for keeping alive the national spirit of the Serbs and Greek Romans and their longings for the ancient liberty they had lived. One was our Church, part of the Holy Orthodox Church of the East, and the other was our traditional, national local culture and folkways.
“True to the precepts of Mohammed, the Turks did not force their religion on the peoples they conquered. They offered the three-fold choice of Islam, the sword, or tribute.
“Should a subject-race reject the Mohammedan faith and also not wish to be exterminated, it was spared on condition of paying tribute. – Serbs: Guardians of the Gates
Standing defenseless for centuries (with little assistance from Western Europe, who had long since come to an economic meeting of minds with the Turks, until the empire began to be known as “the Sick Man of Europe), we who were under the Turk, to paraphrase RGD Laffen:
“Knew what it has meant to see our sons carried off to be educated as Moslems and to form the corps of Janissaries, to be unable to protect our daughters from entering the harems of the dominant race, or the fruits of our labour from the landlords.” – Serbs: Guardians of the Gates
The traffic in Slavs under the Turkish Yokes, as well as of the Mongols and Tartars was so lucrative into Western Europe as part of the Jewish Trade Monopolies, that since the 13th c. the very name for oppressive commercial human trafficking as chattel is called ‘Slav-ery”. The word “slave” is derived from the Latin Sclavus from the Greek word Sklabos, from Sklabenoi, akin to Old Russian Slovene.
“So, it came about in an odd period of history that, at a time when Western Europe thought it the first duty of a government to impose what it considered the true religion on its subjects, the Sultan of Turkey drew his revenues from subjects who were allowed to abhor the faith of their ruler. Separate nationalities had never been allowed in the Turkish empire.
“[Under the millet system,] religion was for the Turk the mark of distinction between men, and the people who would retain a united social life must find it in ecclesiastical organization and Orthodox patriarchs. This the Serbs possessed in their national Church with its patriarchate of Pech; and it is the Orthodox Church as the one institution left to the Balkan peoples, that embodied the traditions, hopes, and the unity of the peoples.” – “Serbs: Guardians of the Gates”
Instead of faith in Western political institutions and theories, deprived of such things of culture and civilization that the former Byzantine Commonwealth had once been used to, the preservation of the national spirit of the Balkan Orthodox peoples besides what religious literature could be preserved, was that of family, the folk-songs and ballads, and local and clan customs, especially true for the Serbs who developed their beautiful epic and poetic literature.
In these the lives of the saints and heroes of the glorious past were gathered, and they then formed the whole sum of learning and culture to the greater portion of the people.
The Greeks, forbidden the education they craved, formed the Moonlight Schools, and we studied by night in the monasteries often at great peril. The Greeks still sing a folk-song called the “Moonlight Schools.” Peasant children were sometimes taught letters using phyllo dough.
“Throughout time, there existed the uninterrupted existence of small groups of the Serbian race who never lost their liberty. Perched on the inhospitable crags of the mountains around Cetinje and ruled by their bishops of the house of Nyegus, a remnant of the people hurled defiance at the Turk, until fairly recent times they formed the principality of Montenegro.
“Meanwhile, in the north in the wooded hills of Shumadia, though lacking political organization, other mountaineers led the life of outlaws and maintained ceaseless guerrilla warfare against the invader. But it was on the Adriatic coast in the republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) the the tradition of Serbian culture was maintained.
“Dubrovnik, which succeeded in upholding her independence amid the rivalries of the Turks, the Venetians, and the house of Austria, was on of the principal trade-centers of the Levant. Her merchants had their factories along the trade-routes of the Balkans, at Sarajevo, Novi Pazar, Skoplye, Belgrade, Constantinople, and beyond. They brought with them amongst the conquered Serbs the atmosphere of the own free institutions and their wider outlook.
“But Dubrovnik was even more remarkable for her tradition of world-famous literary and scientific achievement until the city-state’s independence was only brought to an end by the far-reaching arm of Napoleon.
“There were also portions of the Serbian race who, though not independent, lived under a less barbarous regime than that of the Porte. The Serbs of the Dalmatian coast were brought into touch with the West through their Venetian masters; while from the time of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, the southern districts of that kingdom were widely colonized by Serbs who had fled the armies of the Sultan.
“Also in Croatia and Slavonia were the Croats, as Germanized and Roman Catholic in religion, but using the Serbian language, though written in Latin or western characters, not in the Cyrillic alphabet of Serbia. Montenegro differed on no test of race, language, or religion from Serbia, and its inhabitants were but an independent and allied portion of the Serbian nation.
“Consequently, when Serbia showed signs of growing strength and vitality, not unnaturally many of her friends expected her to play a great role in the future and to be the nucleus round which a state should grow up, embracing all the Slav peoples of southern Austria-Hungary, as well as the Serbian portions of the old Turkish Empire” which formed the idea of Yugoslavia and the heart of the Pan-Slavic national movement.
“The Turks were the masters of the whole Balkan peninsula, except the Dalmatian littoral and the remote mountain retreats of Serbian and Greek outlaws, and their reach beyond the Danube was conquests of the whole plain of Hungary and Romania. The Black Sea was a Turkish lake and the Moslem hordes again and again threatened Vienna and the centre of Europe. And then began the the long Turkish decline.
“The Turk has been in history a soldier and nothing else, living on the industry of the Slav or Greek peasant, commerce, the enterprise and the art were the monopoly of the Christian races. The Turk was the governor, the soldier, or the groom, and so when the Turks ceased to be a dominant military Power, threatening the most powerful states of Christendom, the decline steadily continued, [and the Ottoman Empire became “the Sick Man of Europe.”] – Serbs: Guardians of the Gates
“The trend of aggression ceased to be westward and turned to the East.
“On the heels of the retreating Turks the rising power of Austria pressed on towards the Middle East. The imperial rule was established in Hungary and Croatia, and finally, after 1815, in Dalmatia also. For a short period of about twenty-one years, northern Serbia also was Austrian. Thus a large portion of the Serb race came permanently under the government of the Hapsburg emperors.
“In 1690, after the failure of an Austrian invasion of the Balkans, the Serb patriarch, Arsen, greatly compromised in the eyes of the Porte by his support of the imperial cause, led an exodus of his people across the Danube into Syrmia, Batchka, and the Banat.
“The Emperor Leopold granted these immigrants considerable privileges in return for their invaluable services as guardians of the frontier.
“The patriarch was established at Karlovtizi with the same jurisdiction over his co-religionists that he had nominally enjoyed under the Turk, and although the full liberties promised were never put into force, the Serbs of southern Hungary enjoyed a measure of national life” and loyally served the Hapsburgs against the Turks.
“Thus it was in the 18th century the Serbs found themselves divided between the Austrian and the Turkish imperial systems. Under both governments they were suspect and their aspirations quenched.
“In 1766 the patriarchate of Pech was abolished by Turkey. In 1778 the Hofdeputation, a commission appointed for the defense of Serbian Orthodox ecclesiastical interests in Hungary, was likewise suppressed by Austria.
“The Serbs, however, continued to negotiate with Vienna, which was only propitious when there was any frontier fighting to be done or when it seemed necessary to control the Magyars by support of the Hapsburg’s neighbors.
“Some of the Serbs, despairing of liberty under the Hapsburgs, had begun a further exodus to Russia, to which an increasing number of young Serbs went for their education.
“Prince Metternich had long laid down before that Serbia must be either Turkish or Austrian. But Austria in those days was preeminently the European Power which stood for legitimism, that is, for the public recognition of rights conferred by treaties or hereditary descent.
“She could hardly, therefore, march into Serbia and annex it. So, her aim instead was rather to surround and penetrate the little principality until the day when Serbia should be unable to resist peaceful annexation.
“Such policy was cheaper and less provocative than more violent and dashing methods. In the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Austro-Hungarian government saw a grand opportunity to cut of Serbia from all hope of westward expansion through the Pan-South Slav movement and to carry its power far on the way to Salonika, already a constant object of Viennese covetousness and policy.
“But if the revolt was Austria-Hungary’s opportunity, much more so was it Serbia’s. “Bosnia-Hertzegovina”, says M. Tsvijitch, the celebrated Serbian geographer, “is not merely for us what the Trnetino and Triest are for Italy….They have for Serbia the same importance that the enrions of Kieve and Moscow have for Russia, or the most vital parts of Germany and France have for the Germans and the French.”
“The two provinces were the home of the purest Serb traditions, their dialect had been accepted as the literary expresion of the Southern Slavs. That was the sentimental and racial reason for their supreme importance to Serbia.
“There was also the economic and strategic danger threatened to Serbia, should Bosnia-Herzegovina not be recovered [from the Turks] but come under Hapsburg control. Serbia would then find the Austro-Hungarian army on her western as well as her northern frontier, and all hope of pentrating to the Adriatic Sea for an economic outlet would be indefinitely postponed, if not entirely quenched.
“Ristich, Milan’s minister, saw all the dangers that would have to be faced should Serbia embark on a policy of adventure. The Turkish army, always a formidable fighting force, would overwhelm the Serbs, if it could be wholly massed against them.
“A Serbian invasion of the rebellious provinces on the side of the Serbs and Slavs would also mean, if successful, a conflict with Austria-Hungary in which Russia would probably not interfere, enmeshed with revolutionary troubles of her own, while France was in no condition to support other nations’ crusades.
“On the other hand, Old Serbia too broke into rebellion, and this was followed by a similar movement in Bulgaria. If Serbia could only act quickly and establish herself in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Old Serbia, it would take time to dislodge her, and meanwhile the example of insurrection would probably spread far and wide over the whole of Turkey in Europe.
“Also Balkan statesmen had been taught by long experience that with the Great Powers nothing succeeded like self-help. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.
“If they could maintain a position, however precarious, in their own ‘unredeemed’ Serbian lands, the Serbs could look forward with confidence to being ultimately supported by Russia. Ristitch therefore decided to act, and all Serbia, and many Slavs, was behind him.” – “Serbs: Guardians of the Gates”
“Quite apart from the catastrophe of WWI that overtook Serbia, the religious difficulty existed, though similarity of race and speech drew Catholics and Orthodox into the common Pan-Slav movement.” – “Serbs: Guardians of the Gates”
The Slavs of the Dual Monarchy in Croatia (Croatians), lived in an imperial possession which was never under the Turkish Yoke. [The Slav-Croats assimilated into Catholic Austrian “Germanization”,] and so felt themselves to be the moral and cultural superiors of the Serbs in civilization. The Croats were unready to wholeheartedly seek Slavic national salvation at Belgrade.
“But the tyranny of the Hungarian Government and its excesses, [including “Magyarization,”] which had done so much to draw the South Slavs together, nearly succeeded in removing all the moral barriers [of religious particulars] to what was then called Yugoslav (South Slav) solidarity.
“The age of revolution was at hand. The nineteenth century opened amid the conflagration that had been lit in France.
Underlying the French revolution were the two great ideas, or systems of ideas, that we will call ‘The Rights of Man’ and ‘Nationality.’
These ideas were trumpet calls that sounded throughout Europe and even awoke an echo in the distant Balkans. But for such an appeal to meet with a response, some measure of previous education is necessary.
“Alone with Switzerland amongst European states, Serbia had no outlet to the sea, which was an overwhelming commercial disadvantage, and which terribly handicapped Serbia as compared with Romania or Bulgaria, not to mention Greece, a maritime state, with a population that was living on or around the Aegean.
“The full effect of this disadvantage in the Eastern Question was felt by Serbia when she began to develop her natural resources towards the close of the 19th century. Apart from Bulgaria and Turkey, neither of which were rich or civilized, she had no customer for her exports except Austria-Hungary.
“Surrounding Serbia from the Carpathians to the Sandjak of Novi Pazar, Austria-Hungary received almost the whole of Serbia’s trade under virtual monopoly.” – Serbs: Guardians of the Gates
After independence, most of Serbia’s debts in the interests of “European development” were held by Austria-Hungary and, of course, the Rothschild Bankers and Industrialists.
“Austria-Hungary consequently assumed the part of dictator to the little state, which she was quite able to threaten with commercial starvation should her wishes not be docilely obeyed.” – “Serbs: Guardians of the Gates”
Austria-Hungary effectively carried out what we now call “economic sanctions” if Serbia, provincial Serbs and other Slavs under A-H dictate, bucked against the traces of the Austrio-Hungarian grip, which included programs and pogroms in harmony with the Vatican’s aggressive Unia policies which dovetailed with the Pope’s quest for the “Intermarium.”
Literally “Between the Seas”, the Pope envisioned a pure Ultramontane Catholic Eastern Europe between the Baltic and the Adriatic-Aegean Seas.
And if that didn’t work, Austria-Hungary was perfectly willing to apply a little love-tap with her military prowess to recalcitrant Slavs in the provinces, whether Catholic or Orthodox, in general, and recalicitrant Sebian Orthodox in particular.
“At that time, only a part of the Serbian race lived in Serbia. Bosnia and Hertzegovina were Serbian lands prior to WWI. Out of less than 1,900,000 of inhabitants at that time, over 1,820,000 were Serbo-Croats, according to ‘The New Europe’, No. 21, p. 256, March 8, 1917.”– “Serbs: Guardians of the Gates” [ At the start of WW2, fully a third of the Croatian population were Serbian Orthodox.]
“Almost the whole nation of the Austrian province of Dalmatia was Serbo-Croat, while the Slovenes of the country around Lyublyana, though devotedly Roman Catholic, so divided from the Serbs on religious grounds, were Slavs and used a language akin to Serbian.” – “Serbs: Guardians of the Gates”
Hungary, too, had its large percentage of Serbs, and Hungarians have always been proud of Nikolai Tesla as a countryman, but in fact he was also Serbian Orthodox, coming from a family with a long history of Orthodox priests. In the Banat, Batchka, and Syrmia was a pure Serbian population, at one with the Serbs in language and religion and numbering over a million.
“These were the Serbs that were granted lands along the Austrio-Hungarian frontiers before and after the fall of Old Serbia, especially Smederevo in 1459 to the Turks which ended Serbian independence. The fortress of Belgrade, the last Christian stronghold in the Balkans, fell in 1521, and the task of defending “Christendom” against the Ottoman hordes fell to the races of Central Europe.” – “Serbs: Guardians of the Gates”
The free Frontier Serbs, with their reputation as unparalleled warriors, lived for over four centuries under more or less local rule, or signed joint charters of the Catholic cities, in exchange for their protection and defense as the buffer-shock troops for the Hapsburg empire.
The Hussar “Winged Knights” of Polish fame were originally the expat mercenary Serbs, Greeks and Bulgarians intent on fighting the Turks, who inherited and kept alive the military horse traditions of the Masters of the Horse of the Byzantine light cavalry, itself derived from cavalry traditions of the ancient Persian, Sarmatian and Asiatic Steppe horse warriors.
What is seldom mentioned now, thanks to the dumbing down of America, are the violations by Austria of the existing treaties among the Great Powers of Europe concerning the Ottoman question, especially the illegal and aggressive territorial annexations overstepping her mandate as a Protectorate for Christians under the Turks, to directly and aggressively rule these unstable Balkan areas coming out from under the Ottoman Yoke as a Protectorate.
On the other hand, as soon as treaties were made with Russia, Greece or Serbia, the Great Powers and their “Balance of Power” games and the Eastern Question, not fully intending to live up to their agreements to begin with, intrigued among themselves on how best to double-cross each other, and to the Bankers’ advantage.
The prize, however, in this Great Game, which has not ceased yet, was Serbia. Why is Serbia such a prize? It begins with geography and her vital place in geo-strategic terms then and now.. There are three distinguishable parts to Serbia –’ Serbia proper’, ‘Old Serbia’, and ‘Serbian Macedonia’.
“Serbia proper is the roughly triangular little State before 1912, bounded on the north by the Danube, on the east by the Timok and the Balkan Mountains, and on the west and south by the Drina and the old Turkish frontier running north of Mitrovitza and south of Vrana.” – “Serbs: Guardians of the Gates”
Old Serbia includes Kosovo, which was granted to the Serbs by the Byzantine Roman Emperor Manuel I Comnenos (1143-1180). Neither vassal nor client state, Old Serbia was one of the “brotherhood of kings,” of the Byzantine Commonwealth, which incidentally also included for a time East Saxon Germany and the Kingdom of Hungary.
“It is the central belt round Skoplye, Kumanovo, and the Kosovo plain, including the old Sandjak of Novi Pazar, which ran up to the Bosnian frontier. Here are the towns and sacred places of medieval Serbia:
“Skoplye, where Stephen Dushan was crowned emperor; Petch, the ancient see of the Serbian patriarchs; Dechani, the famous monastery and home of Serbian traditions; Kosovo, where the Serbian power when down before the Turks, and Serbia went under their yoke for over 400 years.” – “Serbs: Guardians of the Gates”
Emperor Manuel was so impressed with Stephen Menanja’s astute political leadership, that in a gesture of peace and fraternity with a brother Tsar, he gave the Byzantine possessions of Kosovo and Glubochica (Metohija) to the Serbs, saying, “This is for you and your descendents forever; this domain is to be shared neither with me, nor with my relatives.”
From that time forward the saying of all Serbs rang true, Kosovo je Srpsko (Kosovo is Serbian), especially since it is the cradle of Serbian Orthodox civilization.
It has been the traditional and official Serbian homeland since the 12th c, but their presence as a people goes much further back than this date.
“Serbian Macedonia” is the middle Vardar valley below Veles and the hilly country which lies between that and the lake of Ochrid. Their presence is recorded at least as early as the 6th centuries.
Byzantine Macedonia (a part of the province of Thrace) had long been an area where Greeks and Serbs, and Latin-speaking Romano-Thracians lived side by side.
It is the area from which Sts. Kyrill and Methodios hailed from. They were fluent in the local Macedonian Slavic dialect and which formed the basis of Church Slavonic in their great evangelical work among the Bulgars and Slavs.
Chapter – The Austrian War from ‘The Serbs: Guardians of the Gates’
[After the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by the alleged Serb nationalist of Bosnia, who was already in the custody of the Austrio-Hungarian authorities,]
Serbia had tried to avoid war by abasing herself before her enemy, for her government knew how unready the country was for another struggle after the losses of the previous two years [in the Balkan Wars].
They appreciated the dangers by which Serbia was surrounded:
Romania under a Hohenzollern king and largely pro-German;
Influenced Bulgaria [pro-German and pro-New Turk-Crypto Jew] waiting eagerly for the moment of revenge for the Treaty of Bucharest;
The Albanian tribes in the pay of Austria-Hungary and ready to raid the southern Serbian districts;
Greece the ally, with a government loyal to its agreements, but with a court-party tied to Germany and large sections of public opinion only anxious at any cost to avoid further war.
Still more immediately serious were the deficiencies in the army [after the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913]. The new divisions, which were being raised from Old Serbia and Macedonia, as yet existed only on paper, and could not take the places of the men who had fallen in the Balkan wars.
The stock of munitions was depleted, and it was impossible to get an adequate supply at such a moment, when other nations had none to spare. In the fighting that followed Serbian regiments frequently went into the firing-line with only one rifle for every two men.
It was a moral certainty that any resistance which Serbia might offer would be crushed by superior numbers. There could hardly be any doubt about this.
In the days just before the outbreak of war the diplomatists of the Entente tried to induce Austria-Hungary to place a territorial limit beyond which her ‘punitive expedition’ should not go.
Herr von Zimmermann, the German Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, said that had Russia not entered the war, Austria-Hungary could have contented herself with occupying Belgrade and would then have reopened negotiations.
As it was, Serbia did not have to face her enemy alone.
Still Austria-Hungary dispatched large forces against her, and the European nations, if they gave any thought to the Serbs in those first crowded days of the war, expected to see them slowly driven backwards through their own country and forced to retire to the south or to capitulate.
Instead of that Serbia offered a resistance that astonished the world. Three times the enemy’s armies crossed her frontier and penetrated into the interior.
Each effort ended in failure and retirement, Austria-Hungary had to wait four months for her occupation of Belgrade, and then she was driven from the town after holding it for only thirteen days.
By the close of the year there was not an Austrian soldier on Serbian soil — or, as Voivoda Putnik, who loved accuracy, more correctly said, there was not an Austrian soldier at liberty. There were in Serbia some 70,000 Austrian prisoners.
After the precipitate haste of the Austro-Hungarian government in declaring war the general staff appear to have followed their traditional dilatory methods. The bombardment of Belgrade, an open town [unarmed, and therefore off-limits by international agreements], began on July 30.
In the words of a poem in the Anthology of Humorous Verse:
‘ An Austrian army awfully arrayed
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade,’
and so opened the long series of violations of international law which we have witnessed in the past three years. But for some days no large military movement was made.
The Serbian ministry had left the capital on the night of July 25, accompanied by the diplomatic corps and a host of officials and others. Nish became the seat of government and centre of the nation’s life.
The army stood on the defensive, choosing its ground and prepared if necessary to allow the enemy to cross the frontier that he might be the more decisively beaten. Yet, despite the weak forces that defended Belgrade, the Austro-Hungarian attempts to cross the rivers in that region were repulsed with heavy losses.
The enemy then made their main advance against the Matchva, the district in the extreme north-west of Serbia, lying in the angle between the Save and the Drina. On August 12 they crossed the frontier from Hungary and Bosnia, and advanced on a sixty-kilometre front between Krupanj and Shabatz.
The Serbs, who were heavily outnumbered, fell back and abandoned most of the Matchva.
Already by August 14 the victories of the Austro-Hungarian army were being celebrated in Vienna. Their flanks protected by the two rivers, the enemy moved confidently forward, expecting to end the campaign in a few weeks. The campaign ended even sooner than they had anticipated.
The Serbs gave battle on August 17, hurled themselves with irresistible dash at the Austro-Hungarian centre, and occupied the ridge of the Tser mountains. A week of desperate fighting ensued, and then the Serbs drove the divided halves of the invading army westward down the Yadar river and northward to the Save. By August 24 the country had been cleared of the enemy.
Serbia, the despised little Balkan State, had registered the first successful blow at the Central Empires.
The fruits of victory were represented, according to the lowest estimate, by 50 guns, 4,000 prisoners, and a large supply of war material of all kinds abandoned by the enemy in his flight.
The Austro-Hungarian government was humorous enough to announce that the imperial and royal army, having made a successful incursion into Serbian territory, had achieved its object and had thereupon retired from the country.
But as the Serbian army re-entered the villages of the Matchva they were horrified to find that atrocities of the most savage and barbarous kind had been inflicted upon the unfortunate inhabitants.
The Serbs had recently fought Turks, Bulgars, and Albanians. They were accustomed to the horrors of war. But in the Matchva they found the evidence not merely of war but of systematic and organized crime. They had for years been denounced and despised as savages by the prophets of German-Magyar civilization.
They had expected a scrupulous consideration for harmless non-combatants from the soldiers of a State which assumed this tone of lofty superiority. Instead they found that Austria-Hungary had made war upon women and children and aged men, upon private property and upon whole villages, without distinction of innocent from guilty.
We, too, in England had not expected to hear of indiscriminate brutality committed by Austro-Hungarian troops.
A very real regard for those races of the Dual Monarchy known to us, and especially for the officers of the army, was widespread amongst us.
When the first horrible rumours of German doings in Belgium and France reached us we did not believe them. When they grew into certainties, as the official commissions gave their evidence, and we heard stories at first-hand from the men who were at Mons, we thought some madness must have overtaken the rulers of Germany. We were sure that they must be unique : that an Austro-Hungarian army would not behave with such barbarity.
But Dr. Reiss, of Lausanne, has published a book, now translated into English, containing the evidence which he collected on the spot after the retreat of the Austro- Hungarians. Though we may comfort ourselves with the reflection that many officers and men probably hated the tasks which they were called upon to perform, we cannot but profoundly regret that an army which we had always considered a school for gentlemen should have been thus disgraced in its corporate capacity.
The troops had for many years past been taught that the Serbs were a race of barbarous savages, animated by vindictive greed and unrestrained by any moral or humane considerations.
The name of the ‘Zimun tradition’ had been given to the consistent picture of Serbian arrogance and brutality disseminated by the Austro-Hungarian journalists, whose business it was to pick up or invent scandal in Belgrade and then to cross the river and dispatch their tit-bits from Zimun in Hungary.
In the army the officers had instructed their men on the same lines, and possibly the majority of all ranks entirely believed the legend so assiduously preached.
An Austrian lieutenant told Dr. Reiss that when he saw himself unable to escape capture he had determined to shoot himself. But the instinct of self-preservation had prevailed, and he had surrendered, fully expecting the most barbarous treatment.
“Today”, he said, “I am glad that I did not do it (i. e. commit suicide), because Col. Hitch is like a father to us.”
Other officers also declared that they were extremely well treated.
At Nish, which was a sort of prisoners’ general head-quarters, the officers inhabited a large barrack situated in a park, and were provided with books, pianos, a canteen, and a field for outdoor sports.
Those who were in Serbia in 1915 with the various British medical missions tell us the same story.
It was not always possible to treat captured Austro-Hungarian officers with the deference that some of them appear to have expected. A certain captain was highly indignant at not being at once conveyed to Serbian general head-quarters.
If the Serbs had the honour to capture an imperial and royal officer, the least they could do should be to send him at once by motor-car to their General Staff. It had to be gently explained to him that while motors were scarce among the Serbs, Austro-Hungarian officer prisoners were numerous.
This, however, did not reconcile the captain to such a humiliating mode of transport as the Serbian bullock-wagons.
Of course, Serbia was poor and her peasants are accustomed to rougher fare than satisfies the peoples of Austria-Hungary. Consequently, many of the men among the prisoners suffered considerable hardship.
But they were treated as well as circumstances would allow. They received, even in the early days of the great retreat, the same food as the Serbian soldiers themselves.
As far as possible they were given not uncongenial employment. Many served as orderlies in the various hospitals and realized how much better off they were than in the army of the Monarchy.
At Skoplye in the officers’ club there was an orchestra of prisoners who received higher pay than that of the Serbian army.
Yet all this was after those first terrible days of the war in which the Austro-Hungarian troops had loosed upon the Matchva the same terror that was then sweeping over Belgium. Into the details of what was done it is unnecessary to enter. They may be read in Dr. Reiss’s book. The important thing is to fix the blame, as far as we can.
Austria-Hungary’s first line of defence, after she admitted the general truth that great severity had been shown in the Matchva, was that such a course was rendered necessary by the active hostility of the civil population. But, granted the truth of this assertion, it would then follow that those guilty of hostile acts should alone be executed.
Yet Dr. Reiss was able to trace the evidence for the execution of 306 women. If it be replied that women are often as capable as men of becoming francs-tireurs and firing from houses and behind hedges, is the same claimed for old people over eighty years of age or for children of under five ?
The list of victims covers every age from one to ninety-five.
Again, should any civilians be proved guilty of hostile acts, their punishment is universally recognized by civilized nations. They should be shot.
What are we to make of a list of victims half of whom were clubbed to death, hanged, burned, or mutilated. Sixty-eight persons with eyes put out and thirty-four with noses cut off take some explanation.
The next Austro-Hungarian justification is that a few of the worst elements of the army got out of hand and gave free rein to their passions. This is what might happen in any army and probably occurred to some slight extent in this case.
But it is not, I think, difficult to show that the real responsibility lies elsewhere. The Austro-Hungarian soldiers were provided with tins of an inflammable liquid with which they sprinkled houses before setting fire to them.
That is not the act of a few unruly hooligans. With the invading army were brought a number of Mohammedan and Croatian civilians of the lowest class who set the example of indiscriminate pillage and whose lead could hardly fail to be followed by the troops.
The High Command ordered that hostages should be taken in the occupied districts and executed if a single shot were fired at the troops in that locality; also that any persons encountered on the country-side were to be considered suspect and shot at once if they showed any sign of hostility to the invaders.
The General Officer Commanding the Ninth Corps ordered that all non-uniformed but armed men should be shot at sight. This bore hardly on an army like the Serbian, in which the second and third lines had no uniforms at any time and in which the recruits raised for this war could only be supplied with cartridges and old battered rifles.
Then there is the evidence of Austro-Hungarian soldiers themselves. For instance, Dr. Reiss describes how a soldier of the Ninety-seventh Regiment of the line informed him that in the fiirst invasion of August 1914 their orders were to burn and kill in every direction and without distinction.
When they again entered Serbia, later on, they were only permitted to loot.
An Italian journalist, who was acting as war-correspondent with the Austro-Hungarian army on the Galician front in the first few weeks of the war, tells how an officer arrived there transferred from the army that had invaded Serbia. This officer was indignant at the manner in which the High Command had ordered the systematic wasting of Serbia.
He said, ‘ Our orders were to kill and destroy every one and everything. That is not humanity. They are brigands.’
The army could hardly fail in some measure to earn this denunciation considering the incitements to brutality issued by the High Command. The attitude and intentions of the Austro-Hungarian military chiefs may be summed up in the words of the order issued by the commander of the Ninth Corps:
“In dealing with a population of this kind (i. e. the Serbs) all humanity and kindness of heart are out of place, they are even harmful. … I therefore give orders that, during the entire course of the war, an attitude of extreme severity, extreme harshness, and extreme distrust is to be observed towards everybody.”
Imagine any such order being issued by one of our own [British] generals. The commanders of invading armies are called upon to show solicitude for the civil population concerned and to protect them against the rougher elements amongst their own troops. Here was a high command only anxious lest its army should prove civilized and humane, and urging the men to steel their hearts against the promptings of mercy.
It was not the wildness of a few baser natures, but deliberate policy of their chiefs that was responsible for the cruelties inflicted by the troops in the Matchva. The Austro-Hungarian army was dispatched for more than the vaunted ‘punitive expedition’.
During that short fortnight it was engaged in a veritable war of extermination. This art of war had been learned in Berlin.
Superb contempt of neighbouring peoples, war upon women and children, wholesale destruction of property, these are the precepts of that new school of warriors who have done their best to destroy the traditions of Christendom and to exclude all moral considerations from the conflicts of nations.”
[And then, sadly, the Americans and Brits fell, too, with Dresden, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima in their excesses as well during and after WW2.]
Someone enlighten me.
Is it not true, Revelations says, that two true prophets in the end days will be put to death in the streets or Rome and the whole world will (which with the Internet, now
is possible) watch?
Although ripped to shreds, God is supposed to raise them, like our Lord, in 3 days?
If it is true, and one of them is you or like you Bro Nate, I hope I am alive to see that GLORY!
As Jesus said, anyone can kill the body, but only God can throw them in hell or raise them, too, however He pleases.
Chapter – The Austrian War (con’t)
On the heels of the retreating Austro-Hungarians the Serbs crossed the rivers and entered Bosnia and southern Hungary, while the Montenegrins pressed northwards into Hertzegovina.
It was an intoxicating moment. Not only had the Serbs defended the soil of free Serbia, but now they had swept out into the empire of their powerful adversary and appeared as deliverers amongst their subject brethren of the ‘ Greater Serbia ‘ [Yugoslavia] that was to be.
In many districts they found themselves in the midst of a pure Serbian and Orthodox population, which received them with demonstrations of welcome.
Many were the sentences of death, imprisonment, or confiscation of property afterwards pronounced by various courts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy on its Serbian subjects for their reception of King Peter’s army. But at the moment fortune seemed to smile on the Allied cause in eastern Europe.
Though on the distant western front the German rush was not yet definitely repulsed from the heart of France, in the east the Russians were unexpectedly successful and the Austro-Hungarian offensive in Poland had become a struggle for the defence of Galicia. In Bosnia the Serbs pressed on till they were encamped on the hills round Sarajevo, and feasted their eyes on the beautiful city which they hoped soon to make their own.
But the Habsburg monarchy was too powerful an adversary to be lightly attacked. Despite the Russian offensive Austro-Hungarian military pride could not submit to defeat at the hands of the despised ‘ barbarians ‘ of the Balkans. A second advance on Serbia was undertaken in September, and the Serbian army had to fall back and offer battle on its own ground.
With them went a large number of Serbian families from Syrmia and Bosnia to avoid the natural penalties for having fraternized with their late invaders.
These refugees, whose destitution was relieved by public subscriptions through the newspapers, constituted a serious drain on the slender resources of the country.
Yet the Austro-Hungarians were at first held on the western frontier of Serbia and were unable to advance far from the river banks where they were covered by the guns of their own monitors. At one point only did the new offensive seem likely to achieve success. Round Loznitza the Serbs had but a small force.
Throwing their troops on this gap in the defence the Austro-Hungarians steadily advanced during the middle of September. Suffering terrible losses owing to their attacks in close formation, but constantly replenishing their ranks with fresh troops, they pushed on towards Valyevo, which their general had promised to enter on September 20.
A moment of suspense ensued while the fate of central Serbia, and therefore of Belgrade, still heroically defying all assaults, hung in the balance. Then a desperate fight at Rozhan turned the tide of invasion and the Austro- Hungarians were obliged to fall back on the Guchevo hills.
Protected there by big guns on the Bosnian side of the Drina, they were able to beat off the Serbian attacks, and prepare for yet another effort.
During October there was desultory fighting along the frontiers. The Serbs attempted an invasion of Bosnia in order to compel their enemy to retire from Serbian soil. But the difficulties of supply and transport in that wild country were too formidable and the Serbian army too small to run the risk of detaching forces adequate to the task.
Meanwhile the Serbian retirement from Syrmia enabled the Austro-Hungarians to continue their bombardment of Belgrade, which seemed likely to become completely wrecked.
In November the enemy launched their third and greatest invasion. General Potiorek, at the head of five army corps and two supplementary divisions, resumed the attack from the north-west. The situation was again critical.
The Serbian troops were in the marshy plains between the Drina and the Save. The roads on which they depended for supplies had been broken up and rendered almost impassable by three months of war. The supply of ammunition was steadily dwindling. A withdrawal of the whole line was clearly necessary, despite the depressing effect of such strategy upon the army and the civil population. It was necessary to give the Austro-Hungarians a taste of the difficulties of the country.
“All my strategy”, said Voivoda Putnik in reference to this campaign, ‘consisted in placing between the enemy’s fighting-line and their impedimenta the Serbian national mud.’
The decision was amply justified. Many of the Austro-Hungarian troops suffered terribly from hunger owing to the partial breakdown of their commissariat. Yet despite the geographical obstacles they continued to advance into Shumadia, supported by their numerous and powerful artillery. Driven from Rozhan, the Serbs abandoned Valyevo and retired to the hills that separate the valleys of the Kolubara and the Morava.
The news of the fall of Valyevo was greeted with enthusiasm in Vienna, where it was supposed to indicate the collapse of the Serbian resistance.
General Potiorek was decorated with a new order specially inaugurated in honour of his triumph.
But the Serbian army was still intact, though the dangers of the situation caused the General Staff to order the evacuation of Belgrade and a concentration to the south along the Rudnik range of mountains.
At the beginning of December Serbia seemed to be at her last gasp. The Austro-Hungarians made their long-expected triumphal entry into Belgrade. Kraguyevatz seemed certain to fall. The enemy moved large reinforcements into the lower Morava valley to make certain of Nish and so to cut off the Serbian retreat along the line of the railway.
Worse still, the munitions were known to be almost exhausted; whole batteries were reduced to six rounds per gun. Worst of all was the moral effect of continued retreat. The Serbian peasant-soldier, seeing his familiar country-side in the possession of the enemy, began in many cases to lose confidence in superiors who would not offer battle.
A little nation that had risen to renewed life after 400 years of death, and had struggled through endless difficulties towards liberty and unity, seemed on the brink of destruction. A more powerful and organized foe than any she had yet encountered had her by the throat.
The nations of the West, still unprepared for war on the necessary scale, were unable to send forces to her support, nor could they have arrived in time had they been available. Serbia’s doom was surely sealed. All her efforts were to end in submission to the empire which already misgoverned her co-nationals.
All that the friends of Serbia could do was to avert their eyes in sorrow of heart while the death-blow was administered.
Chapter – The Austrian War (con’t)
But at the moment when all seemed lost, relief came, and the Serbian army gathered itself together for a supreme effort. The news that supplies of ammunition were coming to the Serbs from her western allies must have leaked out.
For a Bulgarian band descended from Strumitza one night at the end of November and succeeded in blowing up the railway bridge at the point where the frontier ran dangerously near the line. Fortunately they were too late. The munitions had already passed on their way northwards, and the Serbian High Command were preparing for their great stroke.
The aged king now appeared among his soldiers on the heights of Rudnik. The fainthearted he invited to return to their homes. They should not be made to pay for their desertion should the coming fight be won. But the house of Karageorgevitch would conquer or die.
It was on December 3 that the Serbs suddenly turned upon their enemy. General Mishitch, who had taken command of the First Army, now reported that he was confident of being able to break the opposing line. Moving forward even before he had received permission from Head-quarters, he flung his force upon the astonished Austro-Hungarians.
The Serbian gunners, masters of their science, poured such a pitiless rain of shells upon them that they believed the Serbs to have been in some wonderful way vastly reinforced. From every direction the Serbian infantry closed in on them, creeping over the hills and appearing suddenly from unlikely quarters.
In the first three days of the fighting the Serbs took over 5,000 prisoners and the hill-sides were strewn with the dead and wounded. The Austro-Hungarians fell back, hoping to re-form their shattered units. But they were given no respite.
While they were continually attacked in front, a division under Colonel Angelkovitch moved rapidly through the mountains and planted itself between them and Valyevo. By this manoeuvre the Fifteenth Corps and part of the Sixteenth were cut off from their line of communication and had to make the best of their way by tracks and footpaths towards the Drina. Their retreat became a rout.
Then the Serbs moved forward all along the line. Valyevo was recaptured after two hours’ resistance, and the remaining Austro- Hungarian armies were driven northwards. As the disorder and confusion increased among the retreating enemy the fighting became a mere pursuit.
In their haste to overtake the flying Austro-Hungarians the Serbs could not deal with the numerous prisoners who had surrendered. Convoys of several hundred were sent off into the interior with single guides to lead them.
Finally no men could be spared, and the astonishing spectacle might be seen of long columns of prisoners marching across Serbia with no accompanying guard whatever.
“Follow the telegraph-wires and you’ll come to Lazarevatz,’ they were told.
To many towns of the interior the first news of victory was brought by these strange companies of unguarded prisoners.
On December 15, thirteen days after they had left it, the Serbs were back in Belgrade. The soil of the mother country was again free from the invader. Seldom, since the time when Sennacherib’s host melted away from the walls of Jerusalem, has there been so sudden and dramatic a change of fortune.
In a fortnight the Serbs had been roused from despair by the iron will and swift decision of their leaders, and had hurled their opponents in headlong flight across the frontiers. Bravely had Serbia done her share of the common task of the Allies.
Successive Austro-Hungarian armies had been shattered, and forces equal to the whole of Serbia’s strength had been put out of action. When the Serbs came to count their spoils they found that they had captured close on 70,000 prisoners, 192 guns, 90,000 rifles, 491 cartloads of ammunition and large supplies of other material of war.
Truly the modern Serbian heroes had surpassed all the deeds of their forefathers. No enemy would again lightly attack the peasant-army that had rolled the pride of the Habsburg empire in the dust.
Chapter – The Austrian War (con’t)
Great were the rejoicings in Nish and Belgrade that Christmastide — the last that many thousands of Serbs were to spend in their own country.
Well might they imagine that for the present their troubles were over and that their sorely tried nation was now to have a breathing-space of peace and quietness.
Permanent peace they would not buy at the cost of abandoning France, Britain, and Russia ; although Austria-Hungary now offered excellent terms, the Serbs felt themselves morally bound to the Allies, who had entered the war directly or indirectly on their account, despite the fact that the Powers of the Entente had not made (nor have yet made) any treaty with the Serbian government.
Peace did indeed reign in Serbia for many months; but peace took her toll of suffering and death no less than war.
By an irony of fate the very completeness of Serbia’s victory brought upon her new and terrible misfortunes.
Amongst the quantity of prisoners for whom at first adequate provision could not be made, were large numbers who had succumbed to disease amid the hardships of war. Scattered among the towns and villages of Serbia they soon began to spread the dreaded scourges of typhus and cholera.
The trouble began in the west, in the districts of Uzhitze and Valyevo, where the line of the enemy’s flight had remained littered with the dead bodies of men and animals. But the contagion spread rapidly across the country, and there were few means of arresting its progress.
Since the outbreak of war Serbia had suffered from a shortage of doctors. Her medical students were accustomed to study at Vienna and other foreign universities, and in the summer 120 doctors and medical students, though non-combatants and therefore protected by international law, had been interned in Austria-Hungary.
Besides, strictness over hygiene is the result of a very developed material civilization and the Serbian peasantry had no idea of the measures necessary to combat the danger in their midst.
In her agony Serbia sent an appeal to her allies, and soon medical units — British, French, Russian, American — were hurried out and set themselves with vigour to conquer the diseases. For four months they laboured, many of the doctors, nurses, and orderlies falling victims to their devotion, and then they triumphed.
By July 1915 the typhus and the cholera were overcome, and Serbia was herself again, but with the loss of thousands of lives which she could ill spare.
Many Serbs thought that now at last had come a time of rest and relaxation. They would not be attacked, and they would need time for much reorganization before they could think themselves of assuming the offensive.
Young Serbian officers married in that summer of 1915 in the firm conviction that a long period of peace lay before them. But there were others who more correctly appreciated the European situation. While Serbia was fighting her way back to physical health, the whole aspect of the eastern front had changed.
Instead of advancing to the siege of Cracow and the invasion of Silesia, the Russians were in full retreat, driven along by Mackensen’s overwhelming artillery.
Farther and farther the German armies advanced. When they had finally driven back the Russians into their own country, disheartened and disorganized, what would be the fate of Serbia, unsupported by her natural protector ?
Chapter – The Downfall – “The Serbs: Guardians of the Gates”
Towards the close of the summer, therefore, large forces were concentrated in southern Hungary, while Bulgaria continued to profess her intention of remaining strictly neutral.
The Serbs knew through the reports of their French aviators that an army was being collected for a fourth invasion of their country. They could not tell the numbers with which they would have to deal, but they were confident that after so many reverses the enemy would not advance except in overwhelming force.
Of another point also they were sure from the beginning, and that was that Bulgaria would strike as soon as a powerful offensive should divert Serbia’s attention to the northern frontier.
Seeing that they were faced with a more desperate situation even than in 1914, the Serbian government appealed to its allies for 250,000 troops. Serbia could still put into the field another 250,000 ; and with half a million men it would be possible to inflict on the German invasion the same fate as its predecessors had undergone.
To this appeal the Allies returned the remarkable reply that they would arrange with the Bulgars to supply the number of men required. So the Allies entered into negotiations with M. Radoslavoff’s ministry, no doubt to the latter’s vast amusement.
The Bulgars represented themselves as willing to join the Entente if their national aspirations were satisfied. The Allies, in fact, with open-handed generosity bartered away other people’s property. The effect was disastrous.
Greek opinion was infuriated at the calm manner in which the Allies proposed to hand over to Greece’s secular enemy territory which she had won upon the battle-field. Serbia and Roumania were no less astonished and outraged at the disregard of their interests. And all the while every one in the Balkans was certain that Bulgaria would never march with the Allies.
Despite his preparations for war, M. Radoslavoff continued to protest that his country would remain neutral. Even at the last moment before plunging into war he assured the British and Russian ministers that the Bulgarian mobilization was not directed against Serbia, but was a precautionary measure in case Germany should press on across Serbia and violate Bulgarian territory.
The Balkan statesmen knew better. As early as September 1 the Greek minister at Vienna warned his government that Bulgaria would attack Serbia on October 15.
It was on September 23 that the Bulgarian government ordered a general mobilization. The Serbs were under no illusions as to what that meant. The German-Austrian bombardment of the Serbian front along the Save and the Danube had begun four days earlier. Everything was ready for the Bulgars.
Serbia was now in a death-trap. On her northern frontier was a far more formidable army than any that had yet been sent against her. Germany was determined that there should be no mistake this time.
Against this display of force the Serbs were, of course, unable to oppose their whole army. Except along the common frontier with Greece, they had to guard against enemies from every side on a front of more than 1,000 kilometres.
Anyhow, with justification or without, the new Greek government had no intention of coming to the rescue.
Serbia had been betrayed, not by Greece, but by a Greek faction in control of the government. The only help to be expected was from the Anglo-French troops gathering at Salonika.
Unable to move their expeditionary force rapidly up from the coast, the Allies bade the Serbs retire slowly before the enemy, avoidinq any general engagement, until a junction should be effected with the Anglo-French contingent.
With the army went the ‘recruits’, young men who would soon have been old enough to be taken for military service.
For them there was no provision, no uniforms, no arms, no food, no transport. The sufferings of those unfortunate lads is one of the most heartrending features of the national martyrdom. Then in many places the food-supply began to give out. Rations could not be supplied to all the troops.
The soldiers presumed that the civilians [accompanying their retreat] would have brought supplies with them. The civilians hoped that at any rate they would be able to beg some food from the army. Both received the same answer, “Nema” (There is none). Very little could be procured in the villages.
Seeing their hated masters in distress, the Albanians of Kossovo and the Sandjak demanded exorbitant prices….The cold was becoming bitter. The continuous rain began to turn to snow. The troops suffered the misery of vermin.
Overhead were the enemy’s aeroplanes. Stragglers met with little mercy at the hands of Turks and Albanians. Yet in spite of everything the retirement to Kossovo was carried out swiftly and skilfully, and the enemy succeeded in making no captures either of artillery or supplies.
By November 15 the whole Serbian army was collected in and round the plain of Kossovo, the chief concentration being at Prishtina, while the First Army held off the Austro-Hungarians to the north of Mitrovitza.
The Serbs were now at their last gasp. Surrender they would not, though all that was left to them of their country was the barren little corner in which they were encamped. Beyond lay only the forbidding mountain walls of Albania and Montenegro. They gathered themselves for one supreme effort.
Between Prishtina and Skoplye lie the ranges of Shar Planina and Kara Dagh, separated by the pass of Katchanik. On November 17 five divisions of infantry and two mixed detachments advanced in the forlorn hope of piercing the Bulgarian line across the pass and opening a way of escape to the south.
On November 21, the troops received the order to fall back and rejoin the rest of the army, which was now withdrawn to the left flank of the Sitnitza.
It was the end. The Serbs could do no more. They had been attacked by three Powers, betrayed by the Germanophile Greek government, unsupported by their western allies. They had done all, and more than all, that could be required of any army.
They now stood on the farthest limit of their country, on that sacred plain of sorrowful memories, where Tsar Lazar and the Serbian empire had perished. Again, the Serbian nation, restored to life at the cost of so much blood and sacrifice, was dying.
Would it move us to surprise or criticism if Serbia had made her peace with the victors, if she had lost all faith in those friends who had been powerless to help her, and had submitted to the yoke in patient expectation of one day liberating herself again?
Remember that the soldiers had left wives and parents and children in the enemy’s power. Even the civil population that had fled was now ordered to return home and face slavery rather than the almost certain death that awaited them beyond the frontier.
Yet death was waiting for them also on their return across Old Serbia. The enemy had armed the Moslem Albanians and placed the policing of the countryside in their hands. The Arnauts did not need German encouragement in order to begin at once a pitiless hunt for Serbian victims.
Yet, if the resolution of individuals broke down, the steadfastness of the army as a whole was marvellous. The enemy never succeeded in taking prisoners a whole unit. And now the Serbian General Staff called on the army to leave the fatherland and face starvation and exile rather than make terms with the invaders.
The cup of bitterness must be drunk to the dregs. There were no illusions as to what a retreat through Albania would mean. It would be a disaster. The precious guns, the motor vehicles, the greater part of the wagons and even of the oxen and horses might be regarded as doomed to certain destruction.
Of the men themselves many would probably succumb to cold and starvation before they could win through to Scutari, where the Allies promised to await them with food and supplies.
With the army still went the ‘recruits’, and the prisoners. It was not the fault of the Serbs if these unfortunate Austro-Hungarians, Germans, and Bulgars had to undergo atrocious hardships and died by thousands on the road.
The Serbian government had offered to exchange them, but, receiving no answer, had no choice but to order the prisoners to share in the retreat. 22,000 of the prisoners eventually succeeded in reaching the Adriatic. [Still an astonishing number in the hands of the “barbarian Serbs.”]
Chapter – The Downfall (con’t)
The country over which the retreat had to be made consists of the Albanian Alps, the most savage and inhospitable region of Europe. One good road existed in Montenegro, but to reach it the Serbs had to cross mountains of over 5,000 ft in the intense cold of a Montenegrin December.
The scanty inhabitants of the valleys were either Roman Catholic Albanians, whose only profession for centuries has been pillage and war, or the more remote Montenegrins, who did not see why alliance with Serbia should prevent them from charging monstrous prices for the miserable fare which they had to offer.
The plan of the General Staff was to hurry the army across the mountains to Scutari as quickly as possible, and then, with an impassable country between them and the enemy, to reorganize the exhausted troops with the help of the British and French Adriatic Missions.
With them went the aged king, often on foot, despite his seventy-six years, sharing the misery and sufferings of his men. At the head of the column, too, was Voivoda Putnik.
The old chief of the army was a martyr to asthma, and for two years had hardly quitted his room, which had been kept at a temperature of 86 Fahr. But the Voivoda could not be left to fall into the hands of the enemy. So, carried in a sedan-chair by four soldiers, he led the way through the snows of Albania. But he had fought his last campaign.
The first fortnight cf December saw the First, Second, and Third Armies crossing south-eastern Montenegro, the First Army always covering the retreat and holding off the Albanian tribes.
As the men reached the limits of human endurance, all order (but not self-discipline) began to break down. The army became a confused herd of famished and despairing fugitives. Blindly they staggered on through mud and snow.
The path was littered with the bodies of the fallen and the carcasses of animals, on to which the soldiers flung themselves gnawing the raw flesh. The rags, which were all that was left of their uniforms, they bartered for bread and rakia in the miserable villages through which they passed
The men ate their boots and trudged on with naked and bleeding feet. Dysentery added its horrors to the march. Around could be heard the wolves waiting for those that fell by the wayside. Now and then a hostile aeroplane wheeled and circled overhead. But still they struggled on, for at Andreavitza there would be food and rest.
At last they reached the town of promise. There was nothing. The organization at Scutari and the coast had not been able to deal with the difficulties of thesituation, and there was no means of transport into the interior. On the troops had to go, on to Podgoritza and Scutari, a phantom army of dying men.
But neither at Scutari nor on the coast itself did the tale of misery end.
The Adriatic was infested with Austro-Hungarian submarines. The wretched little port of San Giovanni di Medua, through which supplies were to have come and from which the civilians who had accompanied the army hoped to sail to some friendly shore, was blocked with the wreckage of shipping and wholly unable to sustain the role designed for it.
Consequently the British Adriatic Mission, which met the Serbian army at Scutari, was unable properly to carry out the promises made to the General Staff. Whatever food came through was at once dealt out to the hungry multitudes, but there was never enough. The Serbs continued to die of starvation at Scutari and Liesh.
The plan of reconstituting the army at Scutari behind the barrier of the mountains had to be abandoned. That plan had rested on the assumption that Italy, the nearest ally, with British and French assistance, would keep open the communication by sea from Brindisi to the Albanian coast.
This Italy declared herself unable to do. Indeed, on December 9 an Austrian squadron sailed into Durazzo harbour and then into Medua and sank all the shipping in both ports, without being so much as challenged. And, apart from the dangers of the sea, a further stay in Scutari was made impossible by the advance of the enemy.
The civilians were shipped off for Corsica, and a first detachment of some 10,000 troops was dispatched to Bizerta. It was finally decided to transport the army from Valona to Corfu.
Corfu indeed was Greek territory. But the Powers, on whose guarantee rested the independence of Greece as a constitutional state, considered themselves justified in forcing that kingdom to extend some hospitality to the ally whom she had been obliged by a faithless autocrat to abandon.
The roads southward from Scutari lay through a country that was at any rate nominally friendly. Here the influence of Essad Pasha, the one central authority left in Albania whose name commanded any widespread respect, was exercised on behalf of the Allies. But this did not prevent the inhabitants of the plain from following the example of the Albanians of the mountains in regard to the extortion of money.
At the ferries they demanded gold, and those who could not pay might remain where they were and die. Those who went through the whole retreat say that the last stages through the marshes and mud of central Albania were the worst of all.
When at last Valona was reached thousands still died neglected before they could be taken off by the French and British ships. The Serbs were even required to march on to Santi Quaranta, but the General Staff refused to demand anything more of their men, who had patiently borne so many disappointments.
From Valona the army, 150,000 strong, finally left Albania and crossed over to Corfu. Only the astonishing endurance of the Serbs made possible the miraculous escape of so large a number.
Through the encircling lines of the enemy, through mud and snow, over mountains and marshes, despite famine and cold, these amazing patriots had forced their way out to the freedom that would enable them once more to return to the struggle.
For two months the darkness of Golgotha enshrouded the Balkan mountains. When at last the curtain was raised, the western peoples saw uplifted before them against the red glow of carnage and slaughter the spectre of a cross on which was crucified a living nation.
Serbia might have yielded to the powers of darkness. She might have sold her honour and sunk down among the subject races of ‘Mitteleuropa’. But she had preferred loyalty to life. She was dying. But her spirit was alive. In the army at Corfu that immortal spirit was even then passing over the dry bones, clothing them with sinew and muscle, and filling them with the breath of resurrection.
Although on their arrival at Corfu the Serbs were greeted with several weeks of continuous rain, the island presently lived up to its reputation as an earthly paradise. There the battered and broken remnants of the once invincible army nursed themselves back to life.
Christ is Risen to you all!
Off topic : Request
Bro. Nathanael & Kate Juliane I will love to have you comment on one of the recent article on Henry Makow’s site:
The False Teachings of Church Christianity
http://www.henrymakow.com/will_newman.html
Someone needs to bring some light in his site too, perhaps we should let people know that there is also a TRUE CHRISTIANITY FAITH too.
Thank you in advance for understanding and cooperation.
With love in the Resurrected Christ,
Nick
Dear Brother Nathaniel –
1. Can you PLEASE limit posts, KathJuliane basically hijacked this thread by posting BOOKS instead of a LINK if one is interested in reading that story? Eats up bandwidth too.
2. I am donating via PayPal as I appreciate your fearlessness!
3. My website extends free PDF’s on a variety of things ie Paul Bunyans complete works.
http://www.scribd.com/laws632
4. Don’t worry about asking for donations!
Dear Brother Lawrence –
1. I do not limit posts because this is an Open Forum.
KathJulliane is widely read and appreciated by thousands of readers who come to this Comments Section regularly. I appreciate her to.
2. Please do not donate via Pay Pal as the wicked Jews of the ADL got Pay Pal to ban me over a year ago.
If you really want to donate to me, then use CLICK & PLEDGE @
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=26246
3. Thanks for letting us all know about your web site and what is available on it.
4. I MUST “worry” about asking for donations for if I were to depend on my finances alone then NO ONE (including you) would ever be able to view “Real Zionist News.” It would be “off the air” in no time EXCEPT for donations.
And THANKS TO ONLY A FAITHFUL FEW, you dear Brother Lawrence and tens of thousands of others can READ THESE ARTICLES that I am so “fearless” (as you say) in writing them.
+Brother Nathanael Kapner
If you really want to donate to me, then use CLICK & PLEDGE @
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=26246
Dear Nick – Soldier in the Army of Christ –
Since you have read it and KathJulliane may be exhausted from her fine historical works posted here, can you please REFUTE the Makow article that you have problems with? +bn
Time to take the article out of the refrigerator.
“The False Teachings of Church Christianity”
http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=493#comment-72021
http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=493#comment-72245
http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=493#comment-72250
Dear jgalindes,
Thank you for the above links.
I look at Henry Makow’s website and I see that he really gets the MO of the Illuminati Agenda – what the Church calls JudeoMasonry.
In terms of Christianity there is much of Henry Makow’s writing that we can agree with. He defends Western Civilization of tradition; he defends the pillars of the human identity: religion, family, nation and gender. He defends Christianity as the religion of the Western Civilization.
But when we see an article like “The False Teachings of Church Christianity” posted then what is being presented is the idea of a Christianity without the Church.
What is being presented in that article by one of his correspondents is an idea of Christianity that is a religious belief, an idea of assent in belief to a specific set of teachings. Whether this idea involves a willing suspension of disbelief could be debated.
I think the Christian faith goes far beyond this idea. The Christian faith is a supernatural life within the soul: ” it is the evidence of what is not seen”.
I do not think it is possible for entire nations to receive, hold, live and mature in the faith without the Church. From that unique body the faith is transmitted by supernatural means of grace and the Holy Spirit works through the Church.
Well did our Lady say at Fatima that “if men do not stop offending God then he is going to punish the world by means of the persecution of the Church and the Holy Father.”
I suppose that the worldlings who read that would think. Oh well. If God exists and he is going to punish the world well that’s not to bad. All that is going to happen is the Church will be persecuted and the Holy Father will cop it.”
But what this means in truth is that all hell is going to break loose because the Church will be obstructed in offering the clean and pure oblation for the sins of the unregenerate and the fountains of grace needed for people to even live the natural good against the forces of hell are going to be sealed.
This truth is imaged in Scripture as the black sun. Pope Pius X clearly saw the black sun ascending in the spiritual heavens at the dawn of the twentieth century.
And the antipapacy has been very busy extinguishing the sacraments for at least half a century.
These are our times.
Dear Nick, jgalindis, Lynda, et all –
We MUST remember that Our Lord, God, and Saviour, said to the apostle Peter, (soon to be the First Bishop of Rome), “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church.”
Thus, there is NOTHING FALSE about the “Church” in Christian revelation.
Here is the BEST refutation of Dr Henry Makow’s Article “The False Teachings Of Chruch Christianity,” written by a Russian Orthodox Bishop who was soon to undergo martyrdom by the Church-Hating Jew Bolsheviks:
“Christianity or the Church?”
By Archbishop Ilarion (Troitsky) @
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/christianity_church_e.htm
+Brother Nathanael Kapner
Russian Orthodox Christian
A Member of Christ’s Holy Orthodox Church!
Yes, these are our times.
Thanks Lynda. And much gratitude goes to Brother Nathanael for this report about the machinations of the Jews, toward us.
Realizing the warnings Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and others of our forefathers gave us about these Jews, I would think that people would realize that they would fight back against our traditions, take revenge.
And they certainly are.
Dear Br Nathanael and readers of this excellent website.
Today I am very heavy hearted as I read that a film is to be made about President Kennedy.
Unfortunately this film will depict Kennedy in a very disparaging manner. The film is being made by a Jew, no guesses here.
President Kennedy spoke vehemently against the Federal Reserve Banksters, the Zionists, and he was absolutely against Israel having nuclear weapons.
The Jews killed him, they killed the best President in the history of the US.
Kennedy had Presidential Order 11110 signed and ready to deliver the US out of the grips of the jews, he had new money printed, to replace the Fed Reserve Notes.
Vice President Johnson rescinded Order 11110 in the plane back to Washington, just after the Jews’ plans came to fruition.
It is my hope that Christian, Muslim and Orthodox faiths can combine together and rid the world of the power that the Zionists have over every single one of us.
Regarding Mr. Makow’s most questionable article regarding the ‘false teachings of the Church’.
First off – what was the point of Mr. Makow even bothering with such non-sense? To keep up his Internet readership “hits” number to his website?
AS IF all of our contemporary World’s manifold, interwoven, complex PROBLEMS are on account of ALL THE WORLD LEADERS scrupulously IMPLEMENTING and ENFORCING the Teachings of Christ’s Church Militant here ON EARTH upon the entire population of our World.
WHAT A ROAR!
Dear Brother Nathanael,
The link you provided above is of unfathomable value as a tool to better understand the true meaning of the Church. Thank you so much. This alone is, ‘worth the price of admission’, to one seeking the unsullied truth of the meaning underlying the word “Church”.
Although it is over thirty pages long, I am reading the entire thing right now. But even page one is just a series of profound truths put in the simplest and most understandable form imaginable.
In my enthusiasm I would like to address the current topic with the words of the author. However, I must preface this with my joy over the fact that what the author, Archbishop Troitsky, says about Christ’s purpose here supports my original philosophical belief that led me to Christ’s Church:
Namely, that most of what Christ represented as true about love and life’s wisdom was known by wise people of all nations already, because in creating man in His image, God also wrote his law in mens’ hearts, there to be found by those who humbly sought to know the truth. It’s just that man is sinfully hard-hearted and turns away from knowledge of the ‘still small voice’.
“All the earthly works of Christ, therefore, must not be thought of as teaching alone. Christ did not come to earth to announce some novel theoretical propositions to mankind. No! He came in order to create a completely new life for mankind, that is, the Church. Christ Himself said that He would build the Church (cf. Matt. 16:18)”
This really completely refutes the notion that Christianity is some advanced noetic technology which can be mastered in the absence of any form of relationship to others, conferring to the user a perfected spiritual state in splendid isolation.
Significantly, Archbishop Troitsky immediately relates this back to the mechanistic attitude of legalism, which can not fail to lay the foundations of disunity and the erosion of the common good:
“The purpose of a state based on law consists of creating, as far as possible, such an order in which the egoism of each member can find satisfaction for itself without violating the interests of others. The only path to the creation of such an order can be to place a certain limitation on the egoism of individual members.
“In this we have the unsolvable contradiction of law: it affirms egoism, yet it imposes limitations upon it. Therefore, a society formed on a legal basis always carries within itself the seeds of its own decay, for it guards egoism which constantly corrodes all unity.
“The fate of the tower of Babylon is the fate of legal society. In such a society there must frequently occur a “confusion of tongues” when people stop understanding each other even though they speak the same language. Legal order often gives place to terrible disorder.”
The notion that Jesus Christ came to reveal some hitherto unknown spiritual laws for achieving a new state of individual consciousness is disproved and we see the real work of Christ was a call to salvation and repentance, a call to heed what has always been known to every soul that truly loves, and presently to join together as one people around Him in one love and one heart.
Blessings in the Risen Christ.
Brother Nathanael Kapner,
I am a member of the Lutheran Church. My church is traditional. I have a question for you? Do you consider me a false Christian and a heretic?
I have visited an Antiochian Orthodox Church on several occasions at the invitation of some friends. I have found the Orthodox church experience to be very beautiful and uplifting.
I participated in communion with the parishioners with the foreknowlegde of the Priest. He said it was ok for me to partake as he did not consider my Lutheranism to be an obstacle to fellowship in his church.
Do you have a similar view? If not could you care to explain?
Dear Br. Nathanael,
I don’t believe it is the case that St. Peter WAS the first ‘bishop’ of Rome… That’s a papal doctrine.
It is my understanding that none of the 12 apostles were ‘bishops’ per se, but that they appointed the first bishops…
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Loren,
You said, “It is my hope that Christian, Muslim and Orthodox faiths can combine together…”
You separate Christianity and the Orthodoxy? Today many times what is referred to as ‘Christianity’ is NOT Christianity at all!
Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses call themselves ‘Christians’… BUT THEY’RE *NOT* CHRISTIANS AT ALL!!
Just because someone calls themself a ‘Christian’ doesn’t make it so…
Orthodoxy IS true, *UN-altered* Christianity! It is that faith delivered unto the apostles ONCE and for ALL!
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Suzanne,
I know you didn’t address me – but I’m so curious!
You said, “I have found the Orthodox church experience to be very beautiful and uplifting.”
Then why not just BECOME Orthodox? Why hold on to Lutheranism?
Martin Luther, in his search for the true historic New Testament Church eventually came to the conclusion that the Greek Orthodox Church WAS that Church.
However, he thought (mistakenly) that it was defunct at the time… It wasn’t – and clearly Orthodoxy is still alive to this day.
You also said, “I participated in communion with the parishioners with the foreknowlegde of the Priest. He said it was ok for me to partake as he did not consider my Lutheranism to be an obstacle to fellowship in his church.”
I find this very hard to believe! This is not allowed!
You do know that Orthodox Churches have a separate, special bread that is offered to guests and enquirers – which is not the same as the consecrated body of the Eucharist?
This must be what you had… yes?
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
†IC XC†
†NI KA†
America’s Christian Cows have chosen to take the Jews as their Masters.
This is what they should expect, and what they will get. The time for the slaughter of the Cows has not yet begun and already they are complaining.
This is gonna be funny in a pitiful sorta way. Don’t you think so?
Brother Nathanael:
You say you “admire Graham for his Christian witness and his “nerve” for stating very clearly and boldly his Christian belief”. It is not nasty to say that Graham is not a Christian.
What leads to the loss of souls is false Christianity of which Protestanism is. You tell other responders to back their claims up with facts. The fact is that his father was spiritual guide to presidents as far back as the eye can see.
What has happened in that time. Not one president stood against abortion or against Israel. None of these presidents stepped down in protest to abortion.
You also say: THIS IN CLOSING: Jews DO NOT distinguish between branches of Christendom but their aim is to destroy “Christianity” in whatever form it may appear. Yes they do distinguish because the Jews legendary attack against the Catholic faith is evident throughout history. After all the Jews support antichristians like Hagee and his ilk.
Once again you miss the point. You spout off as a Christian. You can only expect that people will contest you on your orthodoxy. That is part and parcel of what you have chosen to do.
You call yourself Brother. You are intellectually disingenous or intellectually bankrupt if you really believe that your forum here isn’t a “spiritual” one. And since it is you need to be a man and defend your un-orthodox positions.
The point is that this isn’t a Christian country as you purport. That is relevant and you don’t “get it”. The world hates Jesus Christ. What do you expect from a nation that rejected the papacy and Christianity from the start. What do you expect period from any government.
They hate Christianity. You say:
“So long as the Jews see the name of Jesus Christ and that Name attached to a NATION’S SALVATION (this point is very important) — then they will do all they can to DESTROY and ANNIHILATE that Holy Name with the peoples attached to it. (This is why they got an entire nation to say “Happy Holidays” INSTEAD of “Merry CHRISTmas.”) They didn’t get anyone to say it.
Graham does not represent himself BUT AN ENTIRE HUGE GROUP OF PEOPLE that the Jews want to weaken and prevent from being a Christian influence. Graham doesn’t represent Christianity. He is one of them. He would have to be a Catholic to do that. Wake up.
How many Protestants for so long have disparaged Catholics. Now the shoe is on the other foot and you say it is nasty. And then call you site a Holy site. Wow. Can’t take the spiritual heat “Brother”.
Holding to Catholic doctrine and dogma is not narrow minded. It is what real Christians do.
You have aided and abetted a man “Graham” who doesn’t represent Christianity as their are supposedly 60 million Catholic in this country and he surely doesn’t represnt them no matter what you call him and Christian is not what he is. Paul
We do have hope before us. The World Wide Web is now the only source for Zionist/Jew information.
Thanks to Jeff Rense who has been the victim of relentless attacks by the jews and their puppets, yet he has the courage to remain and inform.
Thanks to Bro. Nathanael who also has the same courage to remain.
There is now a concerted effort by the Zionists to close down the internet just as they had taken control of the lamestream media and hollyweird. They now want to take control of the internet. We will never allow that to happen!
The Zionists are running scared because they know people are informing themselves and now realize what the score is. People now know the truth about the Zionist Jews. They know what their intentions are. They know their methods and the puppets who serve their beastly goals.
We need now more than ever to turn Americans and the rest of the world to the truth about Zionism and the dangers that await them if they ignore the warnings.
The New World Order is the ultimate Zionist state. We will all be its slaves.
The good news is that we will not go silently into the night.
Brother Nathanael:
I want you to know that I have read your blog for a long time and concur with much of what you expose.
I am grateful that you are very accurate in your assements and you usually back it up with pertinent and historical facts and I am grateful that you do this as I know the risks to your freedom is great.
It seems from reading some of your posts you may face prosecution if you were to enter certain states. Yours is a noble endeavor.
And no, I have never helped you financially because you reject the Papacy. That doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I just wish for you to be a Catholic. That would enable you to be of sounder mind.
I respond this way because you said “I know that people like you both with your nastiness NEVER help me financially BUT use this forum for their own ends”. This is the first time I have ever in all the years of reading your columns responded. I don’t use forums for my own end but you stepped out of your usual discourse to defend Graham whose father is surely a Freemason.
Additionally you said “And, sorry to say, people who are so narrow minded LIKE YOU BOTH so as not to see the forest for the trees, seem to come on to this forum at the outset of my articles to subvert what I am trying to put forth”.
You made the claim that Franklin Graham is a Christian and he is not. Yes, the Jews may be jumping up and down in protest to his leading a prayer service but they always use disinformation to get what they want.
Jews, who own the media, pick a topic, take two wrong sides of it and make one of the wrong sides to start their attack.
How easy is it for them to attack a person who won’t fight back and call them out as Graham won’t!!! This way they seem to be attacking “Christianity” but in reality are leading more souls to hell as they galvanize protestants to back up one of their heretical teachers: Graham. In this way they legitimize a false Christianity (Protestanism , a new 16th century religion) and lead more souls away from true Christianity = Catholocism.
Additionally you say that “BUT Unfortunately, you dear Paul R and Billy “Puff” Graham, come on here — A FORUM THAT I HAVE MADE POSSIBLE — to attack my purposes so as to wield your ax in a destructive way against the true import of this article”.
I am attacking the supposition that he is a Christian. You are the one who put him out as such. Obviously, your first supposition is wrong and hence your whole argument falls apart in reality. You can’t start with a wrong supposition and then defend it. If he isn’t a Christian than the Jews attacking him is just a false flag operation which is exactly what it is as I have explained above.
You also say: “I AM AT WAR. I am a Street Fighting Man. I am at war with the Christian-Hating Jews”. Jews are obviously against Jesus Christ. All Jews. You can’t say only Christian hating Jews are. If they are not for me, they are against me.
Some Jews may not be vociferous Christ haters but none the less they are not for Him. All must make a decision if they are for Him or against Him. If they are not for Him than they are a type of Antichrist period. Anything against Christ is anti christ.
Please, I am on Jesus Christ’s side and the particulars are important. Their is one Lord one faith, one baptism. To be unified means to also agree on doctrine, and all must agree on dogmas and doctrines that affect the faith and morals.
You do need people like me because iron sharpens iron. We must all contend for the faith. Just which faith, as their is only one, is my contention with you.
Paul R
Dear Prodigal Son,
As an ORTHODOX Christian, surely, you fully ACCEPT as “orthodox” God the Holy Spirit’s Divine INSPIRATION which brought about the Canon of the Church’s Own SACRED Christian Scripture.
Surely, you DO NOT denounce nor deny Christ Jesus’s OWN Church’s Canon of Sacred Scripture!
From that SAME Canon of Sacred Scripture:
“A second time He said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love Me?’ He replied, ‘Yes, Lord, you know I love You.’ Jesus said to him ‘LOOK AFTER MY SHEEP.’ – John 21:16
“Now I have something to tell your elders; I AM AN ELDER MYSELF, and a witness to the sufferings of Christ, and with you I have a share in the Glory that is to be revealed. BE THE SHEPHERDS OF THE FLOCK OF GOD THAT IS ENTRUSTED TO YOU; WATCH OVER IT, NOT SIMPLY AS A DUTY BUT GLADLY, BECAUSE GOD WANTS IT…et al” – 1 Peter 5:1-4
There you have it – straight from the Church’s Own Canon of Sacred Scripture.
Christ Jesus ENTRUSTS His Flock to His Own Personally Appointed SHEPHERDS – and the ‘Shepherd’ ST. PETER gives ‘PAPAL ORDERS’ to the rest of the Shepherds of Christ’s Flock.
Ya either ACCEPT what is clearly Inscribed in the Church’s Own Canon of Sacred Chrisitan Scripture – or not.
– Fr. Joseph
To be sure, there are millions upon millions of souls created in the Image and Likeness of God Himself in our contemopary World who are so thoroughly LOST, CONFUSED and in lack of a ‘sense of spiritual direction’ on account of virtually ‘Everyone And Their Brother’ conjuring up some sort of new religious cult or promoting some sort of new-fangled ‘spiritual’ exercises or experiences.
For those RZN readers who do truly find themselves a bit of unsettled and confused about all of this psuedo ‘religious-spiritual’ stuff going on all across this World of ours, please allow me the privilege of granting ALL OF YOU ‘The Big Divine Picture’ of what GOD HIMSELF really and truly DESIRES for the entire Human Race:
First off, a ‘Divine Foundation’ upon which to build:
“IN THE BEGINNING was the Word
the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through Him all things came to be,
not one thing had its being but through Him
All that came to be had life in Him
and that life was the Light of men
a Light that shines in the dark
a Light that darkness could not overpower”
– The Gospel according to St. John the Apostle – John 1:1-5
COMPARE what John 1:1-5 relays to what is declared in Proverbs 8:23-31 – as though BUILDING a religious-spiritual ‘FIRST FLOOR’ on the religious-spiritual FOUNDATION of John 1:1-5:
“From everlasting I was firmly set
from the beginning, before earth came
into being.
The deep was not, when I was born,
there were not springs to gush with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
before the hills, I came to birth;
before He made the earth, the countryside,
or the first grains of the world’s dust.
When He fixed the Heavens firm,
I WAS THERE,
when He drew a ring on the surface of
the deep,
when He thickened the clouds above,
when He assigned the sea its boundaries
– and the waters will not invade the shore
when He laid down the foundations
of the earth
I WAS BY HIS SIDE, A MASTER CRAFTSMAN,
DELIGHTING HIM DAY AFTER DAY,
EVER AT PLAY IN HIS (DIVINE) PRESENCE,
AT PLAY EVERYWHERE IN HIS WORLD,
DELIGHTING TO BE WITH THE SONS OF MEN.”
– Proverbs 8:23-31
‘The Logos’ of John 1:1-1 is refering to Himself as ‘The Wisdom’ in Proverbs 8:23-31
‘THE LOGOS’ Who took on our own HUMAN NATURE by being conceived in the womb of A WOMAN by the Divine Power of the same SPIRIT OF GOD Who created all that is seen and Unseen – ‘The Logos’ Who IS Jesus Christ, has the following to say regarding Himself, His Divine Father and THEIR Original Divine Intentions to/for US members of the Human Race:
“FATHER, may they be one is Us,
as You are in Me and I am in You,
so that the world may believe it was You
Who sent Me.
I have given them the Glory
You gave to Me,
that they may be one as We are One.
With Me in them and You in Me,
may they be so completely one
that the world will realise that it was
You Who sent Me
and that I have loved them as much as
You loved Me.
FATHER,
I want those You have given Me
TO BE WITH ME WHERE I AM,
so that they may always see the Glory
You have given Me
BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD.”
– The Gospel according to St.John 17:21-24
So it is St. Peter the Apostle who ‘INFALLIBLY TEACHES’ the following regarding God’s Own DIVINE NATURE…
“By His Divine Power, He has given us all the things that we need for Life and for True Devotion, bringing us to know God Himself, Who has called us by His Own Glory and Goodness. In making these Gifts, He has given us the guarantee of something very great and wonderful to come; through them…
…YOU WILL BE ABLE TO SHARE THE DIVINE NATUURE…
…and to escape corruption in a world that is sunk in vice.” – 2 Peter 1:3-4
In summary,
THE LOGOS, the WISDOM OF GOD, Who was with God prior to His Creating all that is seen and Unseen, THE LOGOS, the WISDOM OF GOD Who “played” in His Divine Father’s Presence WHILE He created all things, this same LOGOS ‘TOOK DELIGHT’ in the prospect of being with us ‘sons of men’ and continues to ‘TAKE DELIGHT’ in us members of the Human Race – so much so – that THE LOGOS, His Divine Father and Their Divine Holy Spirit has as Their Divine Intention to grant members of our Human Race…
….THEIR DIVINE NATURE!
And possessing THEIR DIVINE NATURE entails possessing ETERNAL LIFE with Them in Their Divine Paradise-Heaven!
That, my dear friends, is Infinitely SUPERIOR to anything the Private Owners of this World’s ‘Central Banks’ and ALL of their bought-off/paid for politicos, national and international corporations, their bought-and-paid-for Media outlets, and ALL of their bought-and-paid-for Governemnts of ALL the nations of our World and ALL of their bought-and-paid-for Social Movements and Revolutions and Wars and Trade Agreements, etc.
Now then, IF all those who have been ‘bought-and-paid-for’ by the Dynastic Bank Owning Families since the time of the Middle Ages PREFER to “sell the souls” for measely inert chemical elements such as GOLD or SILVER or for their Alchemist’s “Magick Money” of pen and ink FIAT CURRENCY, then I can begin to give my Priestly homily about Esau and Jacob and Esau’s ‘SELLING HIS (DIVINE) BIRTHRIGHT’ for but a measely bowl of soup WHILE Jacob receives his Father’s Blessings and Inheritance by placing upon himself the SKIN, the FLEECE, OF A SACRIFICIAL LAMB.
– Fr. Joseph
Dear Suzanne,
Those of us who are currently living these God-given lives of ours in this ‘world’ of ours, the year now being 2010 Anno Domini, we where ALL granted these lives and these human natures of ours by the SAME Divine and Eternal Father in Heaven.
And by His Divine Providence and His Divine Will ALL OF US where “deposited” somewheres here all across the current nations-state of this World of His Creating.
Some of us were born in or have our family heritage from AFRICA, some from the AMERICAS, some from ASIA, some from EURASIA, some from EUROPE, some from either the ARCTIC or ANTARCTIC.
And with the year currently being 2010 Anno Domini, that means that all of us are the “inheritors” of the Human Race’s past 2,000 years of Human History since the Birth, Life, Death, Resurrection and Ascencion of JESUS CHRIST, the Incarnate Son of God the Father.
Just like in that children’s game everyone knows as ‘Telephone’, the Original Message many of us have received on account of our birthplace, our nationality, our family’s heritage, etc HAS BEEN garbled, altered, changed or altogether forgotten.
Nevertheless, our Eternal Father in Heaven, His Divine Son and Their Holy Spirit is ETERNAL and UNCHANGING.
It is THEIR Divine Intention to grant us members of the Human Race Their Divine Forgiveness of OUR sins.
It is THEIR Divine Intention to grant us members of the Human Race Their Divine Spiritual Graces and Gifts SO THAT we can have the ability to become the actual ‘children of God’, the ‘sons and daughters of God the Father’.
Now only YOU at the very core of your own mind, heart, soul and spirit can RECOGNIZE the blessedness of receiving to your very self God’s Divine Unseen Gifts and Graces into and onto your own mind, heart, soul, spirit and body.
God’s Divine MERCY and His Divine and Holy Will FOR us members of the Human Race are His Divine Will FOR us all. Hence, God’s Divine MERCY supercedes all manner of mere human conventions and ‘legalisms’.
The Ultimate Aim, the Ultimate Spiritual GOAL that God Himself has for all of us is to come to know and love God as ‘OUR FATHER’ and to serve Him dutifully and obediently as His LOVING spiritual sons and daughters.
With that having been said – with regards to the ‘canonical legalisms’ of the Church – the Church HAS TO have it’s own ‘by-laws’ in order to provide for both FORM as well as ORDER to and for the entire community of people. Without these sorts of ‘canonical legalisms’, both form and order dissolve and the corporate life of the Church evaporates away to everyone’s own ‘individual judgement’ – a sure receipt for chaos and perpetual mutual antagonisms.
Hence, ‘canonical legalisms’ ARE necessary to bring about both structure and order to the corporate body of the Church but these ‘canonical legalisms’ are NOT MEANT TO impede, frustrate, dispense with or prohibit the DIVINE MERCY OF GOD HIMSELF from reaching any person or peoples within this ‘world’ of ours.
With respect to your own personal spiritual experiences within the Antiochian Orthodox Church, only YOU can validly judge as to whether the Graces you’ve received at their Divine Liturgy and the Sacrament of the Eucharist have caused your mind, heart, soul and spirit “to blossom” into a NEW life.
So as long as you DO receive the Spiritual Graces of your Heavenly Father in Heaven, then ‘BE AT PEACE’ within yourself and with your Heavenly Father in Heaven and DO NOT allow any other living human soul here on planet earth, but continue along the Merciful Path our Divine Father in Heaven is calling you to follow.
It is MORE IMPORTANT for you to obtain that inner spiritual State of Grace that causes you to turn your mind and heart to Almighty God and call out onto Him with the loving spiritual cry of ‘ABBA! FATHER!’ than to worry about any entire phalanx of canonical lawyers, church historians and ranks of theologians passing their judgements out onto you as to whether you are a ‘heretic’ or not.
With a sincere, honest-to-goodness inner Spiritual Movevemnt that causes YOU to cry out to God with the loving-longing words of ‘Abba! Father!’, then His Holy Spirit WILL grant you every form of Spiritual Instruction and Confirmation as to what constitutes the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith.
So allow me to share with you a ‘Spiritual War Story’ relayed to me by my own Bishop when he was attending Seminary in his preparation for the Roman Catholic Church’s Priesthood…
– Fr. Joseph
This is kind of off topic.
I saw in the web site http://www.ynetnews.com that the Jews are starting to name America’s streets after their people for no reason.
They just showed a picture of them in front of their new street sign “Herzl Way” in Beverly Hill California.
This isn’t right. We live in America, Not little Israel.
How would they like it if I went over there and had a street name after a Cajun, not they there is anything wrong with being Cajun [I am part Cajun], but it would look kind of weird.
Dear Suzanne,
Now about that ‘Spiritual War Story’ relayed to me by my Bishop when he was perparing for the Roman Catholic Church’s Priesthood…
He was attending a small seminary in the relatively run-down downtown section of a mid-sized US city. It was the practice of the Priests of that seminary to have a ‘open air Mass’ on the public street right in front of the seminary at noon-time so that people walking on the streets during lunch-time could participate in the Mass.
Across the street was a small ‘store front’ congregation/church and the members of this small store-front church would often help the Priests in their distribution of both food and clothing to that urban city’s poor.
During one of these open-air sidewalk street Masses, the presiding Priest (my current Bishop’s seminary instructors) noted that a member of this store-front church congregation from across the street was in the relatively large crowd of people attending this open-air noon-time Mass.
When it came to Holy Communion time, the people lined up to receive the Eucharistic Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior JESUS, the Christ.
When this particular individual from this small store-front ‘church’ came up to the Priest in order to receive the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord in the Eucharist, the Priest quietly informed this individual that he could NOT GIVE her the Sacramental Body and Blood of Jesus ON ACCOUNT OF her not ‘belonging to’ and not ‘in full communion’ with the Roman Catholic Chruch.
This woman, with tears welling up in her eyes, simply turned around and in front of ALL THE OTHERS who had received the Body and Blood of Christ in His Church’s Sacrament of the Eucharist walked back to her spot in her rejected state as the Priest turned his back to return to his place at the Altar table.
This Priest, this seminary instructor, then relayed that as he was returning to the Altar, he himself HEARD THE VOICE OF JESUS – and it was JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF Who distinctly told this Priest that He DESIRED for that woman to receive His Body and Blood!
The Priest immediately turned around with the Eucharistic Lord in hand, proceeded towards the tearful, rejected woman and in front of EVERYONE there, loudly pronounced to this woman that it was THE LORD HIMSELF Who told him to come to her and GIVE HER His Body and Blood in the Church’s Sacrament of the Eucharist.
And that Priest then gave HOLY COMMUNION, the Lord’s Own Body and Blood, to that woman who belonged to that small store-front church/congregation.
The SACRAMENTS of the Lord’s Church here on earth are the DIVINE PROPERTY of God Himself – and He has every Divine Right TO DO whatever it is that He wants with what is His Own.
In that particular case, we can see, that God’s Divine Mercy SUPERCEDES all of these human ‘legalisms’ of ours.
I asked my Bishop as to what I should do if EVER I was confronted with a case of someone coming up to me in order to receive His Divine Sacrament who I knew to be NOT ‘in full communion’ with the Church, yet truly desired to receive the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion.
My Bishop’s advise to me was that I should be mindful of the Canons of the Church, respecting them YET being mindful of the DIVINE MERCY that our Lord wishes to make available to His people here on earth.
My Bishop counseled me that it is much better TO ERR in favor of seeing to it that God’s Divine Mercy REACHES people than to being an obstacle to that Divine Mercy reaching people He Himself wants to Touch and Minister to via His Own Holy Spirit.
Would God PUNISH US in our attempts to extend MERCY out to others?
And finally, the most recent thought-insight just granted to me in coming to this PC in order to relay all of this to you, my dear Suzanne..
..the word ‘liturgy’ literally means ‘common WORK’.
Those who fully and mindfully PARTICIPATE IN the ‘Divine Liturgies’ of the Church here on earth are doing a ‘COMMON WORK’ that Christ Jesus Himself WANTS DONE.
And as St. Paul the Apostle instructs:
“…those who DO NOT ‘WORK’ ought not EAT!”
That Antiochian Orthodox Priest must have been thinking along those lines – YOU ‘WORKED’ at THEIR ‘Common Work’ of THEIR Divine Liturgy…hence, you were ‘allowed TO EAT’.
To be sure, all of this I’ve just posted to you and for you is surely going to cause some “fireworks” to go off amidst the RZN readers and contributors.
Don your helmet…put on your flak-jacket…’INCOMING’!
– Fr. Joseph
Greetings in our Lord Jesus, Suzanne,
You’ve presented an interesting situation which is very, very unusual in the Orthodox Church, and outside the strict canonical norms governing Church order and discipline. Was it the Holy Eucharist or the Fellowship bread after liturgy?
What I would strongly suggest is that you get in contact with that priest’s particular bishop to know where you stand on this, as ultimately the priest would have to receive his permission to be able to give a heterodox Christian the Holy Eucharist.
As the bishop (overseer of the diocese) is the center of the local Church community, and the priest (presbyter) is his “hand” for the Holy Eucharist, then the priest must follow in obedience to his bishop’s decisions and interpretations of the canons.
So, start with the local Bishop for your final answer.
Unlike the Roman Catholic Church which has the Pope as the central figure, in Orthodoxy, the local bishop is the autonomous authority within the college of bishops. Also, each Local Church (Greek, Russian, Serbian, etc) may vary in this regard.
Each Orthodox bishop has the grace of what is called “economia”, which is a certain discretionary latitude about relaxing strict canonical norms for some specific purpose for the sake of mercy, usually because of urgency or in extremis situation.
Heterodox means “different worshipper”, but someone who still professes our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, while “heretic” means “mixed teaching” or “picking and choosing teachings” deviating from that of the Orthodox Church and Holy Apostolic Tradition.
Martin Luther struggled to reform the Western church from its excesses and to bring it back to its Roman Orthodoxy, and has my respect very much.
God bless, and I hope this helps, but please do check with the bishop directly.
IC XC
NI KA
Dear Suzanne –
I am a member of the Holy Orthodox Christian Church, specifically with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Our Holy Fathers affirm that the Orthodox Church is the TRUE CHURCH that the Lord Jesus Christ established and built upon the Apostles and Prophets.
But due to historical accidents and the migration of peoples from their original lands and the lack of Orthodox missionary work, I acknowledge those from different streams of “Christendom” to be my brothers and sisters in Christ, “Christians.”
As I am not a clergyman with the Russian Orthodox Church but a simple monk, I am not in a position to make statements for my Church and thus my opinion is a personal one.
+Brother Nathanael
Dear Paul R,
I did NOT report on this Graham-Pentagon speaking issue to put forth a polemic of how one denomination of Christendom might be better than the other…
This article was to show first of all that the DISINFO that the Jew-owned press put forth in making us all believe that the Muslims WERE BEHIND Graham’s disinvitation WAS A LIE — that it was the Christian-Hating Jews that did it.
Secondly, I wished to point out that Jews were able to intimidate the master of global wars, Robert Gates, who crumbled before the threats of Jews.
Third, I wished to show that Christian-hating Jews Cannot and WILL NOT pursue their Christ-Hating agenda with impunity.
I admire Graham for his Christian witness and his “nerve” for stating very clearly and boldly his Christian belief.
THIS IN CLOSING: Jews DO NOT distinguish between branches of Christendom but their aim is to destroy “Christianity” in whatever form it may appear.
So long as the Jews see the name of Jesus Christ and that Name attached to a NATION’S SALVATION (this point is very important) — then they will do all they can to DESTROY and ANNIHILATE that Holy Name with the peoples attached to it. (This is why they got an entire nation to say “Happy Holidays” INSTEAD of “Merry CHRISTmas.”
Graham does not represent himself BUT AN ENTIRE HUGE GROUP OF PEOPLE that the Jews want to weaken and prevent from being a Christian influence.
You TOTALLY MISUNDERSTOOD this article dear Paul R and Billy “Puff” Graham and I regret your nasty comment posted on this Holy site.
I know that people like you both with your nastiness NEVER help me financially BUT use this forum for their own ends.
And, sorry to say, people who are so narrow minded LIKE YOU BOTH so as not to see the forest for the trees, seem to come on to this forum at the outset of my articles to subvert what I am trying to put forth.
Already, in just a few hours, this article has gotten close to 3,000 hits and I have received emails APPLAUDING this article from well meaning people of all persuasions.
BUT Unfortunately, you dear Paul R and Billy “Puff” Graham, come on here — A FORUM THAT I HAVE MADE POSSIBLE — to attack my purposes so as to wield your ax in a destructive way against the true import of this article.
Now I REPEAT WHAT I WROTE at the top of this Comments Section.
I AM AT WAR. I am a Street Fighting Man. I am at war with the Christian-Hating Jews.
Who Is On The Lord’s Side? Let Him or Her JOIN ME in my battle.
I cannot do this alone. I do not need polemic wielding narrow minded people like Paul R and Billy “Puff” Graham to weaken my ‘call to arms’ against the Christ-Hating Jews. But I need financial help NOT criticisms.
There is a DONATION FEATURE BUTTON at the Top & Bottom of This Article. Or simply Click (hardly anyone does):
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=26246
Or Donations May Be Safely Sent To:
Brother Nathanael Kapner; PO Box 547; Priest River ID; 83856.
+Brother Nathanael Kapner
Dear Father Joseph,
As you are a Western Catholic, please make sure that you are speaking from the Roman Catholic and Papal canon point of view, and that you are not speaking for the Orthodox Church or her bishops or Sacred Apostolic Tradition or the Patristic Witness of the Holy Orthodox Church.
Our ecclesiologies are quite different between Orthodox and Catholic, and when you are not clear about this, it is very confusing.
Please do not presume to speak for an Orthodox priest or bishop, simply because you are not completely aware of what constitutes good Church order and discipline in Orthodoxy.
If Susanne received the Holy Eucharist, as said in the post to her, then she needs to clarify with the particular bishop as well as the particular priest, as this is something that rests within a bishop’s discretion depending on his own local circumstances and the Orthodox Church of Antioch.
God bless you.
Fr. Joseph and KathJuliane: Stop and think.
Father. You make a great case for all things Catholic and then you fall out of the boat upon hearing the first “mercy” story from some heretic bishop. A person who isn’t Catholic is not suppose to receive communion. No exceptions.
1st Corinthians 11:27-30: “Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of our Lord unworthily, he shall be guilty of the body and blood of our Lord. But let a man prove himself: and so, let him eat of that bread and drink of the chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily: eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of our Lord. Therefore are there among you many weak and feeble, and many sleep.”
That bishop may have caused this person’s death if you understand what St. Paul is saying in the above.
Why is there a church which needs be joined. Why are there seven sacraments. Why is it important to believe all of the Catholic churches teachings. Did this person go to confession, do they accept all the Catholic teachings?
A bishop isn’t allowed to do what he wants if it is against teaching or because he heard a voice (that voice was surely the voice of Satan as what he did is completely against traditional Catholic teaching).
Based on what you are saying, someone reading this blog may think they don’t need to be a Catholic, so what is the use of the religion, if anyone can take communion without adhering to the teaching of the church. What you get is a free for all. Read the Nicene Creed.
Please do not e-mail me with some stupid obfuscation. Just admit he was wrong because I am not going to discuss with a priest the most elementary teachings of the Church. He can’t give communion to anyone but a Catholic. And please don’t bring in that heretical cathecism of the late JPII.
KathJuliane: “If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.
“For he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. . . . Pray boldly-you too are a mighty sinner.” (Weimar ed. vol. 2, p. 371; Letters I, “Luther’s Works,” American Ed., Vol 48. p. 281- 282)
When you cheer the likes of such a scum as Martin Luther, who you respect very much, you align yourself with a man who said the above but doesn’t believe in confession to a priest. If you sin boldy aren’t you denying what you told the priest in confession that you will do penance, sin no more and avoid even the occasions of sin.
You like Martin Luther because you say he “struggled” to reform the church and bring it back to its’ orthodoxy. You’re really blowing smoke now.
Nothing he did was to bring it back to its orthodoxy. He had contentions with so many of the teachings, wanted to throw the epistle of James out, taught that works do not matter, hated our Lady, and was completely wrong about the Jews as later in life he reversed all his positions etc. etc. etc. He was ex-communicated shortly thereafter.
Are you telling me the Orthodox wouldn’t have ex-communicated him if he was an othodox priest in the 16th Century? They certainly would have. It seems you like to say he tried to bring it back to orthodoxy only because your Orthodox and that little lying tidbit of yours fits your position. Unfortunately, you are being extremely dishonest to make your position seem tenable.
Sophism: a plausible but false argument, intended to deceive, and to show the intellectual prowess of the speaker.
It seems as if everyone is willing to forget that God is also a just God and “though his mercy is new every morning” Jesus also said to the Scribes and Pharisees: you serpents, vipers broods, how will you flee from the judgment of hell?
Let us not be Scribes and Pharisees on one extreme and let us not be smooth talkers, vain deceivers on the other. Let us not use heretical teachings to back up our positions. Paul
You are right, KathJuliane, the ecclesiologies between Roman Catholic and Orthodox are very different. That is why we have the Great Schism.
Only the Church, as an order, has any power over the body of antiChrist. That is why ecclesiology is all at issue on this messageboard. Individuals and groups are making worthy and important stands. But only the Church will claim victory.
For the Roman Catholic, that victory will come through the Immaculate Heart of Mary to the glory of Christ the King.
And this matter of the Great Schism should never be ambiguous. I do not think Fr Joseph has made it so. But too fine a point can not be placed upon the reality of the Schism and the fact that only one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church can succeed against the body of antiChrist.
People must discern not on the basis of appearances, or who would seem to be ‘winning’ or what they want in ‘a church’. They must search out the truth with prayer, fasting and diligence. That is one of the requirements for the faith in our time.
The Roman Catholic Church holds that there is no salvation outside the Church. As do the Orthodox. We disagree upon who is the Church. I would hope none of us would presume upon our Lord’s mercy to state how this truth will be applied in his Judgements. We are to pray for those whom we perceive to be without the Church and not gathered to the one flock and one Shepherd.
Roman Catholics look back to our foundation upon the person of Our Lord, the Chief Cornerstone and the Rock of St Peter and his Successors which our Lord has set upon Himself.
The Rock is not only a confession of faith as the Orthodox hold; the Rock is a person, an office and a succession. The apostles and their successors are aligned with the Chief Cornerstone (our Lord) and the Rock set upon our Lord.
For the Roman Catholic, the Sacred Apostolic Tradition aligned with this foundation can not be any other. The Patristric Witness of the Fathers and Doctors is built up on this and no other.
Roman Catholic fidelity to this foundation in terms of the living growth and development of the Sacred Deposit of faith is frequently at issue here.
We accept the growth and development of the living faith that came through the Seven Ecumenical Councils and through the supreme jurisdiction of St Peter “in his rule over the brethern with which our Lord entrusted him” – as is clearly explained in that great Doctor of the Church St John Chrysostom in more than 90 passages which refer either to the Petrine primacy or to his relations with his fellow apostles. Ref. Hom 88 [87] in Joann 1, vol VIII, 477-9 [525-6]. Dom John Chapman. “Studies on the Early Papacy”. Dublin Review. Jan. 1903.
This is very confusing to those who have an attraction to Christ and desire to live the Gospel. They are under the impression that Christianity is not a living supernatural organism like the Vine; they think it is more like an individual option or a cafeteria or a moverment.
When, in fact it is an order. And that order is a priesthood after the order the Melchisedek. Therefore, it is both monarchical and priestly.
This unity is in the foundation, the Chief Cornerstone of the Church, our Lord and it is communicated to the Rock that our Lord has set upon Himself – St Peter and his Successors. The hierarchy of order flows from this in its conciliar, synodical and pastoral forms. And it governs the faithful through all of these modes under monarchy.
The Orthodox disagree with all of the above, as we know. Therefore, the reality of the Great Schism is the greatest hindrance for victory of the Immaculate Heart. And I am sure the Marranos labored for centuries so that in precisely these times it would yield all its advantages for the Judaic Imperium.
So critical is this issue, as the Catholics now see, that our Lady requested the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart and our Lord ratified this testament with a solar prodigy that was reported in the world press. It was even reported in the Jew York Times – on the last page after the baseball scores. (Of course).
The Roman Catholics who understand these matters are never going to apostasize (our Lord’s grace helping us), all sacraments might be extinguished in the every single Catholic diocese in the entire world by the antipapacy, but that does not mean that the Roman Catholics who adhere to the Church would ever seek sacraments from another body that denies Catholic truth.
Rather the Roman Catholics will follow the instruction of Fr Demaris of the Missionaries of St Joseph who advised the Catholic faithful at the time of the French Revolution.
At that time, the Roman Catholic clergy who were faithful to the Church were either martyred or underground. The Catholics were at war in the North with the Masonic partisans of the Revolution, the Roman Catholic aristocracy had already gone to the guillotine (without the last rites).
What Catholic practice was permitted by the French Revolutionary government was through an apostate body that was a creature of the state. The Roman Catholics would have none of this ‘church governed by the temporal power’ then. We will have none of it now.
Fr Demaris instructions to the Roman Catholic Faithful of France at the time of the Revolution has been posted by the independent traditional chapel Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity. See Catholic Survival plan
http://www.olmhtchurch.org/CatholicSurvivalPlan.html
To Paul R:
Luther loved Christ and His Church, and desired more than anything to clean up the spiritual, material and moral corruption, simony and ignorance that was festering in the Western church, especially under the unscrupulous Medici Popes, particularly Pope Leo X who was the last non-priest to be elected Pope. (I really don’t understand what the Catholic carping is about Patriarch Photius in this regard.)
Pope Leo X, of course, is known primarily for the massive sale of indulgences to reconstruct St. Peter’s Basilica on a hugely grander scale than it was previously, and his challenging of Martin Luther’s 95 theses which he proposed as the necessary reforms before he and the German Church finally schismed from Rome.
Pope Leo X was the second son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the most famous ruler of the Florentine Republic, and Clarice Orsini. His cousin, Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici, would later succeed him as Pope Clement VII (1523–34).
Martin Luther’s mature Christocentric theology and piety never excluded the Virgin Mary and her place in soteriology or ecclesiology. He adored her, as a matter of fact.
He studied in depth the Greek Orthodox Church which he thought went extinct after the Ottoman conquests of Constantinople and the Balkans, and the Greek Fathers, as well as the Byzantine Texts of Sacred Scripture.
Certainly, there were theological problems that he inherited from Scholasticism, which attempted to merge Aristotlean philosophy with dogmatic theology, and the faulty Western doctrine of Original Sin derived from Blessed Augustine’s thought commencing about the 11th century in the West, as well as predestination and some other errors, but nothing that was insolvable.
I do tend to agree that he, or later theologians may have gone too far concerning some of the Sacraments, having “thrown the baby out with the bathwater” so to speak going from one extreme to another. However, Paul you may despise the Luther, but it was not Constantinople that he broke from, but Rome.
After realizing that the Eastern “Greeks” weren’t the despised “heretics” touted by the Papacy and Western church for several centuries, but was, in fact after much patristic study the “ancient, historical Church of the Apostles”, if Luther had known that the Greek Orthodox Church was still functioning under the millet system of the Ottoman Turks, he would most assuredly have brought the German Church back into full communion with the Eastern Church.
A little known aspect of the Reformation during the 16th c. is that there was very nearly a reunification of the German Church with Constantinople through the labors of Patriarch Jeremiah II and the Tubingen theologians for over ten years. Sadly, it didn’t quite work out.
(The German Church and Emperor have a rich medieval Byzantine heritage, by the way, from the 9th and 10th c, but that is a different subject altogether. The German legacy included a great love of scholarship and learning they received from Constantinople under the influences of Empress Theophanu.)
Lutherans hold Mary in high esteem. Don’t mix up other later Protestant/ evangelical thought with Luther’s. He loved the Most Holy Theotokos, and defended the true patristic doctrines concerning her and her Perpetual Virginity, correctly in relation to the Incarnation of the Word. Other Protestant Reformers did as well.
Luther dogmatically asserted what he considered firmly established biblical, dogmatic, and patristic doctrines in conformance with Scripture and as decreed by the Seven Ecumenical Synods, especially the divine motherhood of Mary and her perpetual virginity, and the pious opinion of the immaculate conception.
He strongly stressed the caveat that all doctrine and piety should exalt and not diminish the Person and work of Jesus Christ, nor the Holy Trinity. He, like the Orthodox, did not believe in the “two-kingdom” Catholic theory, that Jesus Christ holds the throne of the Kingdom of Judgment, while the Virgin Mary holds the throne of the Kingdom of Mercy, and “only She holds back the arm of her Son.”
The emphasis was always placed on Mary as merely, if extraordinarily, an active and willing receiver of God’s love and favor participating in “synergy” with the God of Israel that she loved, answering the call of her destiny at the Annunciation.
His opposition regarding Mary as a mediatrix of intercession or redemption was part of his greater and more extensive opposition to the belief that the “merits” of the saints could be added to those of Jesus Christ to save humanity, purgatory, limbo and dispensed as indulgences (quite often for money, simony or other material acquisitions) from a heavenly storehouse.
This actually has a striking parallel in Talmudic thinking. Jews believe that it is the suberabundant merits of Righteous Abraham, and his flesh circumcision, along with the merits of the Righteous Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the OT that saves them.
Luther some three-hundred years before the dogmatization of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854, was once a firm adherent of that view. However, in later years changed his position on the Immaculate Conception, which at that time was undefined in the Church; however, he maintained belief in Mary’s lifelong sinlessness.
http://www.davidmacd.com/catholic/martin_luther_on_mary.htm
In his sermon of August 15, 1522, the last time Martin Luther preached on the Feast of the Assumption, he stated:
There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know. And since the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it, we can make of it no article of faith . . . It is enough to know that she lives in Christ.
The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart. (Sermon, September 1, 1522).
[She is the] highest woman and the noblest gem in Christianity after Christ . . . She is nobility, wisdom, and holiness personified. We can never honor her enough. Still honor and praise must be given to her in such a way as to injure neither Christ nor the Scriptures. (Sermon, Christmas, 1531).
No woman is like you. You are more than Eve or Sarah, blessed above all nobility, wisdom, and sanctity. (Sermon, Feast of the Visitation, 1537).
One should honor Mary as she herself wished and as she expressed it in the Magnificat. She praised God for his deeds. How then can we praise her? The true honor of Mary is the honor of God, the praise of God’s grace . . . Mary is nothing for the sake of herself, but for the sake of Christ . . . Mary does not wish that we come to her, but through her to God. (Explanation of the Magnificat, 1521).
Luther gives the Blessed Virgin the exalted position of “Spiritual Mother” for Christians:
It is the consolation and the superabundant goodness of God, that man is able to exult in such a treasure. Mary is his true Mother .. (Sermon, Christmas, 1522)
Mary is the Mother of Jesus and the Mother of all of us even though it was Christ alone who reposed on her knees . . . If he is ours, we ought to be in his situation; there where he is, we ought also to be and all that he has ought to be ours, and his mother is also our mother. (Sermon, Christmas, 1529).
A little change of subject:
This evening on the news as disseminated by PBS, the subject of which was the nuclear non proliferation talks at the U.N.
Once again the subject of Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons research was broached. Now after all the inspections by the IAEA as well as others have found NO EVIDENCE Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
Do you think that would be the end of the story? Oh No, The Zionist Jew owned media continues to beat this subject to death even though their claims are proven lies.
What the Jew-owned lamestream media does not dare talk about is the hundreds of nuclear tipped missiles in Israhell’s possession many of which are aimed directly at cities and capitols throughout Europe and the U.S. This is how Zionists blackmail Germany, France, England and America into subservience to Zionism.
Frankly, I was so disgusted with the way this story was presented especially since there were so many people in the streets demanding an end to nuclear weapons and yet the talking heads would only attempt to propagandize Americans into invading Iran.
Is it any wonder the lamestream media is losing viewers.
This is all I could stand. I walked away from the TV and never again will I watch this travesty of journalism.
“Now while He was with them at table, He took the bread and said the Blessing; then He broke it and handed it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, but He vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts BURN within us as He talked to us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?” – The Gospel according to St. Luke – Luke 24:30-32
Well now, with all this talk about the validity of the ORTHODOX Church vs. the CATHOLIC Church here, would BOTH SIDES of the Orthodox v. Catholic Coin here PLEASE INSTRUCT ME, Fr. Joseph, as to WHICH of the two vying-competing Churches did the these TWO MEN on their way to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem belong to and to WHICH of the vying Popes and Patriarchs did these TWO MEN own their allegience – these TWO MEN who weren’t even yet BAPTIZED via a VALID, CANONICALLY CORRECT CHRISIAN WATER BAPTISM BY ‘IMMERSION’ OR ‘ASPIRATION’ OR ‘INFUSION’ but yet are given ‘The Lord’s Supper’ by THE RISEN LORD Himself!
Imagine THAT – receiving ‘The Eucharist’ from the Hand of the Lord Himself WITHOUT even having been properly BAPTIZED by His Own Apostles!
How in blue blazes do unrepentent SINNERS in our World get the Actual Graces of God Himself in order TO REPENT?
Do they have to become ORTHODOX Christians BEFORE they receive that Actual Grace?
Do they have to become CATHOLIC Christians BEFORE they receive that Actual Grace?
Yet, the Sacraments of the Lord’s Own Church DOES confer His Divine Graces.
Those Sacraments are Baptism, Confession, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Holy Orders, Matrimony, and the Anointing of the Sick.
How can the ORTHODOX Church claim to be the ‘True Church’ without declaring the Catholic Church’s Sacraments NULL and VOID and INCAPABLE OF IMPARTING Divine Grace.
And can the Catholic Church claim that the Sacraments of the Orthodox Church DO NOT impart God’s Divine Graces?
This SCHISM between the Catholic and Orthodox Church is MAN-MADE! Period. And it belongs to the MEN who are the successors to THOSE MEN who initiated this Schism TO REPAIR the damage – not me! I am NOT the Pope. I am NOT a Patriarch. I am NOT a Bishop.
Yet, there are millions of millions of PEOPLE in this World who ‘haven’t the foggiest CLUE’ as to what constitues the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic FAITH because of these SCHISMS caused by PRIDEFUL MEN who want to always ‘SUCK UP TO’ the Emporer, the King, the Grand-Pooh-Bah who currently weilds the power of their particular STATE.
HOW QUICK are we to come down HARD on people because of some canonical law…BUT…HOW QUICK are we to DRAW AWAY FROM and GO HIDE when it comes to the actions and behaviors of ‘The Great And Powerful Men and Women’ of THE STATES in this World when it comes to VIOLATING God’s Fifth Commandment with piles and piles of ABORTED BABIES crying out for VENGEANCE before the Throne of God.
And when ‘The Great and Powerful Men and Women’ of THE STATE decree that there is to be NO MENTION or NO INSTRUCTION of the Apostolic Faith to the peoples of ‘their’ nation-state…again…NOT A PEEP comes from the ‘Canonically Correct’ from EITHER the Eastern Orthodox Church or the Catholic Church!
Yet…”RIP TO SHREDS” a poor woman who desires to receive the Body and Blood of the LORD…THAT we are SO QUICK to do.
– Fr. Joseph
Keep on exposing their crimes Bro Nate.
Here is a list of monsters from Russia, Oligarchs. You always hear from TV and other media about the so called “Russian Mafia” which is really the Zionist Mafia, although NO ONE SEEMS TO KNOW THIS?
Also look at the other 2 links this Russian Jewish Prince, raping orphans as young as 12 or 13 in Ukraine and Russia. They are not human to him, Bro Nate.
How can that man live with himself?
What a piece a filth!
http://www.freedomliberationmovement.com/html/Jewish_Oligarchs.htm
http://current.com/news-and-politics/89591444_millionaire-arrested-for-orphanage-sex-trade.htm
http://www.jrtelegraph.com/2008/12/andrew-mogilyansky-arrested-on-prostitution-charges.html
Great piece. I love this place. Glory be to GOD.
Any place that exposes the Christ hating Jews is good.
I donated last month, and I’ll donate in 2 weeks. Everyone should kick in something.
Yes, times are hard, but not near as hard as they will get if we don’t support people who expose these criminals. 20 bucks every now and then to this cause is the least anyone should do.
BTW, anytime “paypal” revokes the right of a site that exposes the Christ hating Jews, you know it’s a good site and is having an impact.
Keep up the great work.
Good video:
It exposes our media. Only problem is loud music, so lower the volume, or mute and watch.
Really hits the point. It is humorous like your stuff on the site, yet thought provoking and horrifying, you know it is REAL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQo0290syEE&feature=player_embedded
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) –
In what is looming as another public relations predicament for Goldman Sachs, the banking giant admitted today that it made “a substantial financial bet against the Gulf of Mexico” one day before the sinking of an oil rig in that body of water.
The new revelations came to light after government investigators turned up new emails from Goldman employee Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre in which he bragged to a girlfriend that the firm was taking a “big short” position on the Gulf.
“One oil rig goes down and we’re going to be rolling in dough,” Mr. Tourre wrote in one email. “Suck it, fishies and birdies!”
The news about Goldman’s bet against the Gulf comes on the heels of embarrassing revelations that the firm had taken a short position on Lindsay Lohan’s acting career.
The Oil Mess – The Takedown Of World Economy?
By George Ure
Peoplenomics.com
5-3-10
12 days into the oil rig ‘accident’ events continue to evolve and weather is slowing down efforts to contain things, we have two interesting items to report that are not in the MSM yet…OK, three then.
1. We have heard that a supply ship arrived just before the explosions and it was reported to be ‘manned by all new people, nobody aboard was from the ‘usual supply crew’.
This purported industry source continues: there were a total of 14 explosions and these could have been cutting charges. Moreover, the shut off valve below the surface (5000 feet down) on the seabed is not longer controllable. Still, lots of disinfo and speculation scampering around the netosphere. While this is bad, it gets worse.
2. A reader who is an engineer of considerable experience says watch this one evolve carefully because it is destined to continue to grow and he shares this long (but worthy explanation why:
“Heard your mention of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this morning, and you (and most everyone else except maybe George Noory) are totally missing the boat on how big and bad of a disaster this is.
First fact, the original estimate was about 5,000 gallons of oil a day spilling into the ocean. Now they’re saying 200,000 gallons a day. That’s over a million gallons of crude oil a week!
I’m an engineer with 25 years of experience. I’ve worked on some big projects with big machines. Maybe that’s why this mess is so clear to me. [and is so unclear to the millions without such knowledge.]
First, the BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. This it right on the edge of what human technology can do.
Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it.
When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean.
Now they’ve got a hole in the ocean floor, 5,000 feet down with a wrecked oil drilling rig sitting on top of is spewing 200,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Take a moment and consider that, will you!
First they have to get the oil rig off the hole to get at it in order to try to cap it. Do you know the level of effort it will take to move that wrecked oil rig, sitting under 5,000 feet of water?
That operation alone would take years and hundreds of millions to accomplish. Then, how do you cap that hole in the muddy ocean floor? There just is no way. No way.
The only piece of human technology that might address this is a nuclear bomb. I’m not kidding. If they put a nuke down there in the right spot it might seal up the hole. Nothing short of that will work.
If we can’t cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?
We’re so used to our politicians creating false crises to forward their criminal agendas that we aren’t recognizing that we’re staring straight into possibly the greatest disaster mankind will ever see. Imagine what happens if that oil keeps flowing until it destroys all life in the oceans of this planet. Who knows how big of a reservoir of oil is down there.
Not to mention that the oceans are critical to maintaining the proper oxygen level in the atmosphere for human life.
We’re humped. Unless God steps in and fixes this. No human can. You can be sure of that.
3. The third thing to bring attention to is the predictive linguistics discussion of the ‘blue flue” in the latest Shape of Things to Come report of what’s ahead for the world’s oceans.
In particular, what strikes me is that while some of the focus is on the possibility of methane hydrate releases later in the year, the spelling in the report is ‘flue’ (and in upward conveyance, not ‘flu’ and is sickness per se).
“This [big clue methane related] incident then goes onto cause a [big stink] within TPTB [minion class] {ed note: most notably the CFR – Council on Foreign Relations}.
Not only are humans and other life directly impacted by the large [clouds of drifting complex methane housing gas] but the mere [release] of the quantity to be seen causes the TPTB and their [minion class] to go [apeshit] trying to [locate (a believable) scenario] to explain the [blue flue events(s)].
I’ll grant you that the methane and oil gurgling out of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) right now is not methane hydrate but rather compressed methane, but around here, that’s close enough especially when the ‘blue flue’ to the surface has been destroyed.
Curious how just a little spelling like this can tip us off that we’ve got something of a serious hit developing.
The latest trajectory map out of NOAA which should be updated over the weekend looks like this….in a word: Grim…
We hear – again from people who are reliable sources, but who we won’t name in order to keep them from getting fired, is that there are a couple of parishes (county equivalents) in Louisiana which are preparing evacuation plans because people are being made sick by the smell of the oil and gas being blown onshore.
Looking ahead to Sunday through Tuesday, we’d expect as this grows that there will be emergency operation centers set up and some moving of people to begin, which would then feed in to the Diaspora meta data layer of Cliff’s work.
Not to be glum, but you can see most likely how this all starts to tie together?
We will be topping off our ‘investment grade diesel reserves and getting our additional solar panels ordered this week, so as to hit the next level of energy independence before the global impacts come into focus over the next month or two.
You may wish to do so, as well…
Terrible way to score a bot hit, but that’s how this stuff works, so now we need to deal with it.
Impacts at the Pump
If you look at a chart of oil prices, you’ll see that although oil was down around $81.30 on Wednesday early in the session, it was up to $86 and change on Friday. This is a pretty heft move: On the order of 5.7% and if it continues, you can bet there will be follow-up at the gas pump.
If you click over to the Triple A fuel gauge report (a site you may wish to bookmark for future reference) you’ll see that the price of fuel at the wholesale and crude levels have increased faster than retail so it may not be unreasonable to crank an addition several percent into the family budget for auto expenses over summer.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. There is no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article and is not endorsed or sponsored by the originator.
JohnZ – I couldn’t agree more.
The lamestream liar media is of less value than an imploded septic tank.
Everyone who opposes the Communist-Zionist-Illuminati-Globalist-Bankster NWO should boycott the lamestream media and encourage others to do the same.
If all the lamestream media does is lie to us-why watch it?
We’ll never know the truth from their paradigm of lies, propaganda, and NWO elite cronyism anyway.
Every Freedom lover who KNOWS the BILL OF RIGHTS MEAN what it SAYS SHOULD BOYCOTT that psy op NWO mental slime the Mega Commie Corps call “News”.
Regarding this Gulf of Mexico OIL catastrophe…
With all of the death and destruction pulled off in Iraq and Afghanistan by the Zionist of the USA/UK/Israel following THEIR bogus, fake and staged 9-11-2001 “Arab Terrorist” attacks in order TO SECURE all of that ‘What’s OUR Oil doing under YOUR country?’ – this Gulf of Mexico OIL catastrophe now hitting the United States of America might very well be GOD’S OWN WAY of saying to these ZIONIST United States of Amerika…
‘Sooo..you all want OIL? Lots and lots of OIL? Gobs and gobs of OIL? You want ALL OF THE OIL under your Zionist ‘command and control’? Well then – SO BE IT! But IS IT really under your Zionist ‘command’? IS IT REALLY under your Zionist ‘control’?’
The economic justice teachings of the Catholic Church with respect to the NATURAL RESOURCES of this World created by an Almighty God and Creator clearly states that GOD placed the numerous and various NATURAL RESOURCES of this World in all sorts of different place BECAUSE He wants for the nations of people of this World of HIS Creating to have ‘reason for human cultural intercourse’ with each other.
In other words, God placed all of the natural resources of this World SO THAT we might HELP each other out with the NATURAL WEALTH He placed at our disposal – that we might have something TO EXCHANGE with each other out of CONCERN FOR and the BETTERMENT of each other.
In short, God placed these natural resources of His Creating “all over the planet earth” in different places, hidden at times much like children’s EASTER EGGS so that we might FIND THEM, show them TO EACH OTHER and TRADE WITH THEM amongst ourselves in CHARITY and JUSTICE.
So much for our Zionist ‘World’ listening to the PRINCIPLES OF POLITICS and SOCIAL ECONOMIC JUSTICE TEACHINGS of the Lord’s Own Church Militant here on earth.
– Fr. Joseph
“Don’t be afraid of opposition; remember, a kite rises AGAINST the wind.” – Chinese fortune cookie proverb
“It’s better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.” – another Chinese fortune cookie proverb
“GRATITUDE is not only the GREATEST of Virtues, but the parent of ALL others.” – Chinese fortune cookie SUMMATION regarding Catholic Christian Moral Theology
I only shared that story of mine of what my Bishop relayed to me regarding THE EUCHARIST on account thinking just how “touching” I personally found it to be. To learn just HOW MUCH our Lord, Savior and God Incarnate Himself CARES FOR and has COMPASSION FOR individual souls such as that lone woman who wanted to receive Him in His Church’s Sacrament of the Eucharist.
I thought sharing such as personal story here with all of you RZN readers would bring about a certain degree of GRATITUDE in your hearts and minds. To think, IF the Lord Himself would have such a Personal Concern for a ‘lone woman’ that all of us might here on RZN – Christian or not – Believer in an All-good God or not – that SAME LORD, that SAME GOD could, would and might very well exhibit that SAME SORT OF Divine Compassion, Care and Concern with ‘me’, with ‘us’, with ‘them’, with EVERYONE on our planet earth.
I was ‘grateful’ to hear Suzanne being BLESSED BY her visitation to an Antiochian Orthodox Church.
My gosh – what makes people here think that I’d “foam at the mouth in a rage” to hear a soul being BLESSED by the Lord and His Sacraments?
IF the Mother of God herself, the Most Holy Theotokos “blesses with her spiritual presence” an Orthodox parish in Egypt, then ought not ALL OF US ‘rejoice’? Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant or Whatever?
If I could get the 880,000+ monthly readers of Br. Nathanael’s RZN website to GO VISIT the Lord in His Blessed Sacrament at ANY Catholic or Orthodox Church and spend an ENTIRE HOUR ALONE with Him there in one-on-One prayer we might….JUST MIGHT…get this World turned around.
But alas, I’m afraid that those responsible for and who MAINTAIN this 956 year SCHISM between the Catholic and Orthodox Church would FROWN ON THAT as well – citing all sorts of ‘canonical PROHIBITIONS’ from the peoples of this World from every GETTING CLOSE to our Eucharistic Lord and Savior, JESUS CHRIST.
– Fr. Joseph
Father Joseph and KathJuliane,
I love you both so dearly.
I read and re-read your posts over and over again that you addressed to me. I was very moved to tears by your love, non-judgemental and instructive wisdom. I will meditate on your words and wisdom. I have much to learn from you both.
BTW. I was raised in a Muslim home. I thought I should let you fine people know that. I am still “on the way” and learning about Christian theology and dogma.
I am currently spending time in a Lutheran church and learning much from them. I haven’t made a full commitment anywhere yet. I will trust Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit for guidance. I am tossing between Lutheran and Orthodoxy.
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Dear Fr Joseph,
As a Roman Catholic who does not frequent the sacraments, I am very sympathetic to the woman about whom you describe.
One of the tragedies of our time is that there are millions of people who desire to commune with our Lord in His sacraments and who hunger for the faith. They desire bread and all that can be given them is stone.
In closing Paul R,
A great Lutheran convert to Orthodoxy was Princess Alix of Hesse (Germany), more commonly known as Tzaritsa Alexandra, Royal Consort of Tzar Nicholas II. During their engagement here were many obstacles to their marriage, chief of which the Princess’ faith.
The Princess had been born and raised as a Lutheran and was very devoted to her faith, but she needed to convert to Orthodoxy in order to become Empress of the Russian nation. Although German, her education, intellectual formation, and her morals were English.
Like her mother, she was a very fervent Christian. Being a highly principled woman, she did not take this as a light matter and at first resisted, abandoning Protestantism after great struggle.
But God in His loving-kindness did not abandon her; and soon, after a number of meetings with an Orthodox archpriest who expounded to her the Faith, she gladly accepted baptism before the royal marriage to Nicholas II.
Her conversion was anything but nominal. The depth of her embrace of Orthodoxy and the strength which it gave to her family was to be a spiritual reproach to the modern Russian nobility and to the “intelligentsia” who, listening to the spirit of antichrist, had gradually become ashamed of their faith, considering it something “outdated”.
Here’s another little item, Paul, about this great “ex-Lutheran”. As soon as the war broke out, the Empress and the four Grand Duchesses (Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia) became nurses; and hospitals were opened at Tsarskoye Selo, near the family’s residence, where wounded soldiers were brought.
They worked long hours, diligently and tirelessly following the commandment of Christ to visit the sick, since “inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me” (Matthew 25.30).
Anna Vyrubova, the Empress’ closest friend, wrote: “I have personally seen the Empress of Russia in the operating room, assisting in the most difficult operations, taking from the hands of the busy surgeon amputated legs and arms, removing bloody and even vermin-ridden field dressings.”
Vyrubova says that she was a “born nurse”, who “from her earliest accession took an interest in hospitals, in nursing, quite foreign to native Russian ideas.
She not only visited the sick herself, in hospitals, in homes, but she enormously increased the efficiency of the hospital system in Russia, [which also at that time meant the entire empire, including Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine, etc.]
Out of her own private funds the Empress founded and supported two excellent schools for training nurses, especially in the care of children.”
It might surprise you to know that in that terrible Great War, she devoted much time to extending hospitals and medical care for all wounded soldiers as much as possible, whether they were prisoners of war or Russia’s own.
As Christians, if we are anywhere close to being true to Jesus Christ, we follow His commandments of Scripture, and with a spirit of unmercenariness. And Paul, let me tell you that I’ve known certainly better Christians than myself who are Protestants and Catholics as well as Orthodox, if you judge by the fruits of their faith and unselfish labor, but the one thing they have in common is a great love for Christ above everything else.
Brother Nathanael writes: “But due to historical accidents and the migration of peoples from their original lands and the lack of Orthodox missionary work, I acknowledge those from different streams of “Christendom” to be my brothers and sisters in Christ, “Christians.”
I couldn’t say it any better. Our beloved Martyr Patriarch Tikhon was archbishop here in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and despite the many problems and fractures of “Christendom” here in America, the one thing that struck him the most was the profound heartfelt piety of Edwardian era “Christian America”.
Despite our brokenness and different denominations, and various spiritual amputations acquired over time that wound up in this country, Patriarch Tikhon was quite moved by the deep thirst and honest zeal for Jesus Christ that he found in this American land.
He called many heterodox traditionalist Christians his friends, whether Anglican, Old Catholic, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, or Fundamentalist Christians, while at the same time remained very conservative about matters of the Faith.
I once heard it said that maybe Americans would never be great saints, but they are the kind of Christians in sturdy walking shoes that go out and dig wells, bring plows and build houses in poor countries, and make sure people get books and Bibles, (although the land is being crowned with the glorious Saints of America after all).
Of course, this was all prior to Scofield Judeo-Christian Zionism settling in like concrete around our necks, and some of the apostate Christian televangelicals became part of the US-AID and CIA-Open Society “development packages.”
I must say that I am struck with your most ‘unmercenary’ attitude expressed so eloquently as: “And no, I have never helped you financially because you reject the Papacy.”
Talk about religious extortion and blackmail, but then this is nothing new in the experiences of the Eastern Churches and Papism, but the West has had more than its tragic share of experiences as well.
Either you do it for the love of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, or you don’t. To paraphrase St. Peter said, “There must be times we obey God rather than man” so let your conscience be your guide.
All of the problems in the Western church throughout the past 1,000 years did not come from the Eastern Church.
This mentality goes all the way back to 1054, the scandalous Sack of Constantinople (the capital of the Roman Empire) in 1204 which prostrated Constantinople before the enemies coming at her from the south and east, which finally resulted in the failed Synods of 1274 and again 1439.
Pope says to Constantinople before 1453 as the Turkish Yoke was closing all around, “We will send you help if you submit to the Pope and all of the doctrines formulated at Rome, including the Filioque,” despite the fact that Roman Orthodox Popes including Pope Leo III vigorously opposed it, to the point of having the Nicene Creed without the filioque engraved in Greek and Latin and forbidding any additions just as the Ecumenical Synods always decreed.
The Filioque was formally added to the Creed in the West in the 11th c. even though the Nicea-Constantinoplean forbade any additions, and the Eighth Ecumenical Synod of 879-880 reconfirmed as well, at which Rome was fully represented, confirmed what had been confirmed at every Synod until then, that no additions be made to the Symbol of Faith.
Negotiation after negotiation was made by Constantinople which had stood in the gap for over 1,000 years as the Arch-Defender of “Christendom”, gradually ceding territories and concessions to various Western parties with their hands out ever-ready to either lift the sword to get what they want, or resort to blackmail and extortion.
The list is endless throughout history, and extends even the major issue of Uniatism, which was usually accomplished at the point of a sword – accept the Pope and you can keep your churches and sacred sites. How many crusades were launched towards the East?
Some of the bishops then adopted national Catholicism and nominal subjection to the Pope, and counter-churches were set up in the Eastern Orthodox lands, which only created more schisms.
Accept the Pope and the West will then help you, Constantinople and other Churches heard. Perhaps nothing was more amazing throughout Western history is how well the threat of ex-communication worked for so long to throw kings into low-level terror.
Excommunicate the king, and then incite the nobles to rebel against him, or threaten to do so.
I won’t go into the very painful subject of Jasenovic and the extermination of the Croatian Serbs. Another most recent example of this was during the Viet Nam War – in order to receive Catholic charity, the Buddhists had to convert in order to get food. And I know this because soldiers and vets and secular humanitarian aid workers who were there told me this was going on.
Our Christology is so different from that of the West in that, for the most part, we see the Church’s role in the world as largely therapeutic and the Law becomes the means of being tutor and guide to a disciplined spiritual life, not of juridical and forensic legalism.
The stance of the Orthodox Church in her collegial and concillar ecclesiology expressed through the Patristic “mind” of the Church has always been that the Bishop of Rome is the first among equals, nothing more, and nothing less, based on Scripture, very solid Patristic witness and the decrees of the Holy Ecumenical Synods.
Accuse us all you want of the now hackneyed “Ortho-warp”, however the logic defeats itself in that how can the Orthodox “warp” Holy Apostolic Tradition that has not been changed for over 2,000 years?
It was the Bishop of Rome that finally exalted himself as a royal monarch by his own fiat in the 12th century or so when he assumed the triple tiara.
It’s relatively easy to track the changes in the West. If it was from before approximately 1054 and the Ecumenical Synods, then it is certainly the older tradition than something enacted in the 15th or 16th centuries under the “development of dogma” doctrine.
All of the major changes unilaterally came from Rome, and for that matter we consider the Catholic and Protestant struggle two sides of the same coin.
It wasn’t until about the 8th century that the Bishop of Rome began claiming that only the Pope, as the self-proclaimed “Vicar of Peter” held the exclusive “keys of Peter” when patristically the “keys of Peter” belonged to the episcopate on behalf of the whole Church.
The “Keys of Peter” have always had to do with Preaching and Teaching in the Holy Spirit the Truth about Christ, in the same manner as Apostle Simon bar Jonah Petros did on the Day of Pentecost to open the Kingdom of Heaven to all the world.
He received the appelation “Petros” for his confession of faith in Christ the Son of the living God.
Apostle Simon Peter preached at Jerusalem; then preached again at the Samaritan Pentecost, and then preached again to the Gentiles, symbolized by the Centurion of Caesaria Maritima, opening the gates to all who would finally receive the Word Incarnate, our Lord and Master of All, our Savior Jesus Christ and our God.
Each Bishop is symbolically a “Peter”, and carries the shepherd’s staff, just as collectively the Bishops are “Peter” for the rest of the Church. Blessed Peter was commissioned to be the first head shepherd in Jerusalem by Jesus Christ, it is true, but He drew from the things of everyday life to model Christian life from and for how all of the Apostles were to be.
Do you even know what being a head shepherd meant then and what intensive labor that all involved?
In the suffering and crucified lands of the Balkans and the Middle East and elsewhere, the Orthodox churches struggle with extending charitable work to anyone, with limited means, whether Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim, even atheist without asking that they be converts first.
Yet, in Poland, the minority Polish Orthodox to this day struggle for equal rights, the restoral of their own church properties, and protections under Polish law. Did you know that we also lost a Polish Orthodox Bishop and Army Chaplain in the Smolensk Disaster, or does this even mean anything to a Catholic because he was not a papist?
In any case, may Christ reward you, Paul, in the way He deems fit.
As the Serbs say, “Give up everything for Christ, but give up Christ for nothing.”
Sve za Hrista — Hrista ni za sta.
IC XC
NI KA
I have no idea why donations to you are so low, Brother Nathanael, but I will double mine.
People are so selfish.
Dear Father Joseph,
I agree with you on the eucharist. Rules matter, but so does the ministry of Grace. It is not an attempt to change the rules if one breaks them for a good reason (like God speaking to them).
Excessive reliance on legal justification for proper practice ends up re-creating the mindset of Talmudism. We were told to worship “in spirit and in truth”. But that is really more than the mind accustomed to materialism can grasp.
The traditional forms of worship are venerable guides to practice, but not its goal. We are not assembled together for canonical ordinances, nor are we called for the preservation of tradition. These are the things of the flesh. Not that we are called to oppose tradition or break canonical ordinances as acts of willfulness, either.
it just seems to me that the horse goes before the cart. And the horse is the living, invisible, incomparable triune God. Being pulled by that is the Church, and behind that all of the Canonical laws and ecclesiastic traditions. The load doesn’t push the horse unless everything is going downhill.
Peace and Blessings in the Risen Christ.
Dear Brother Nathanael,
I think it would be fair to assess my blog presence as both opinionated and verbose.
I apologize for not being truly wise, but trying to sound like it. On the other hand, there are things that I truly relish the chance to communicate to others, and particularly Christians, about. So, begging your attention for just one more thing,…
The Oil Spill.
I need to share with you an insight I just had over the deeper meanings of this oil spill. First of all, many people are probably missing the forest for the trees here, because what is really being made apparent is that oil is not a “fossil fuel”, as we have been taught.
There are no ancient fossilized swamps sitting six miles below the ocean floor. This is at least self-evident to me, and it would take a truly Talmudic ingenuity to argue against what I say.
Scientifically, we know that the geology of the ocean floor past where the the continental shelf drops into the abyss has never really been land. And furthermore, if it had been land one still has to explain how six miles of basalt formed over it in the relatively short period, geologically speaking, between now and then.
Presume for a minute that this is true, and there are some corollaries:
1.) Oil is wicked abundant, and the price per barrel after a discovery of this magnitude ought to be nearly free.
2.) The Great Powers, having succeeded in tapping into this limitless oil generator (and now knowing it’s there for them later when they need it) realized their own peril in having succeeded. They might have resorted to sabotage to keep this energy source from ever being exploited, by creating a ‘worst case’ disaster scenario to explain why this type of drilling has to be stopped completely.
3.) The oil services industry is going to profit off of this. It’s now commonly called ‘disaster capitalism’. Who else but them will be hired at exorbitant prices, all at the taxpayers expense, because of ‘declared emergency’?
This just reinforces the anti-life activity of the dysfunctional debt casino of global finance. More economic activity generating GDP on paper, while life itself suffers hugely.
Dear Suzanne,
As I had hoped to relay it DEEPLY into your mind, heart, soul and spirit, it was an All-good Almighty GOD Who used the same Divine Power with which He created all that is seen and Unseen IN ORDER TO bring you – the actual PERSON of you yourself – into existance and grant YOU life within this All of His Creating.
And you so happened to be “deposited” here in this World along with the REST OF US six billion human souls into a Muslim family.
Your “Muslim-ness” (if I might be able to coin such a word) does NOT define the truth, reality and Divine SIGNIFICANCE of who you are as a PERSON in the Sight of God.
It is your HUMANITY as a WOMAN who is endowed with a spirit which is destined by God Himself to live FOREVER created by GOD that constitutes both your identity and which gives eternal dignity and unestimable VALUE to you and your lifetime lived amongst ‘the rest of our Human Race’.
Now may the following “bit of information” be of a religious-spiritual help and assistance to you, my dear Suzanne, in releasing you from a whole series of shackles most likely causing you all sorts of internal strife within your mind, heart, soul and spirit.
I do not have my copy of the Qu’ran handy, but in many of the Surahs, Mohammend and his scribes repeat over in many places that ‘we Christians’ FALSELY assert that the Son of Mary IS the Son of God Himself.
Mohammed and his scribes vehemently deny that God 1) would have a Son and 2) would assume our human nature.
Prior to his religious-geopolitical movement of Islam, Mohammed sought out his personal understanding about the Christian Faith from a HERETICAL JUDIAZING SECT known as ‘The Ebionites’.
Imagine that – all of the Arabian and Persian MOSLEMS throughout our contemporary World, be they Sunni or Shi’ite get THEIR understanding about Christ Jesus from a heretical JEWISH SECT!
Crazy, isn’t it?
Had Mohammed simply gone to the Christian Church’s PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM of his time INSTEAD OF to a heretical JEWISH SECT for information on and instruction about the Divine Person of JESUS CHRIST, Son of Mary as well as the Eternal Son of God our Father in Heaven – millions upon millions upon millions MORE of our World’s contemporary “Moslem” population throughout our World would have ALL BEEN CHRISTIAN!
Now then, it is hard – VERY HARD – for a person and probably much harder for a WOMAN to ‘surrender allegiance’ to one’s own family members, their heritage, customs, etc.
To be sure, the lingering memories of your own family members, your Muslim mother and family – that very real and very HUMAN ‘bonding’ with them – will seem to be a very deep and personal OBSTACLE to you in your religious-spiritual conversion.
Yet THE LOVE that you will obtain, receive and experience from the Divine Source of Love, THAT Divine Love you will be able to effortless shower upon ALL of your Muslim family members.
And the Holy Spirit will grant you the Graces, Gifts and Spiritual Charisms to make that ‘unseen spiritual life’ within you and the joyful love in your heart very, VERY ATTRACTIVE to your extended family.
And even IF that love is NOT RETURNED to you by any or all of your Muslim family members, the Abiding Love of Christ Jesus Himself will remain for you His Personal Divine Comfort and Consolation to and for you.
Christ Jesus and His Divine Spirit are very, VERY GENTLE – so do take the time to be mindful of His GENTLE Divine Spirit guiding you and ‘nudging’ you along the Path He desires you to follow.
As long as you wind up RETURNED to God our Father’s House and Household, in the end and in the final religious-spiritual analysis, that is ALL that really and truly matters. And such religious-spiritual “journeys” DO TAKE SOME TIME – so be patient with yourself, be patient with the Lord – and please, really and truly DO try to BE PATIENT with the rest of us Christians you’re going to run into and encounter on that journey of yours.
We ‘Christians’ are currently emeshed in this huge, global, world-wide psycho-spiritual WAR vs. Satan, his elemental malicious ‘jinn’ legions and his allied human stooges dupe and allies.
You’re going to find that many, if not MOST, of us Christians are NOT ‘in the best of moods’ and NOT as pleasant, joyful, helpful and loving as we are CALLED TO BE to others in this contemporary World of ours.
– Fr. Joseph
Dear Michael K.
Again, I affirm that there MUST BE ‘canonical laws’ for without them there would be NO cohesion within or throughout the Mystical Body of the Church Militant here on earth.
And those of us touched by God’s Grace, in recognizing the Spiritual Goodness He mercifully bestows on us, we show our GRATITUDE to the Lord by RESPECTING and ADHERING TO the canonical norms of His Church.
But when MERCY and COMPASSION are the only possible remedies/solutions to a fellow human being’s PLIGHT, then we simply MUST act with immediate and spontaneous MERCY.
The average non-Chrisitan, non-religious person with any degree of ‘good will’ residing in his/her mind, heart, soul and spirit would be REPELLED BY HORROR in hearing of a story of a critically ill or dying person lying on the floor and with his/her last dying gasping breathes reaching out and PLEADING with a nurse or doctor for some sort of MEDICAL HELP only to be REFUSED by that nurse or doctor because he/she had NOT YET PROPERLY FILLED OUT the ‘canonically mandatory’ “Request For Medical Assistance Forms” available ONLY BY MAIL from their own personal ‘Insurance Company’!
And person alive with some sense of human compassion still residing in their soul would SCREAM out to that nurse or doctor –
“For crying out loud MAN/WOMAN! Just don’t stand there – DO SOMETHING!”
Canonically minded people with their legalisms, their spiritual frigidity, their spiritual rigorism PREFER TO FORGET that Christ Jesus is ‘The Divine Physician’ and that is it His Divine Hands which Heal, His Divine Hands with extend and made manifest His Divine MERCY to our Human Race.
And the ‘Healing’ that might have taken place between the Orthodox and Catholic Church on account of the Schism of 1054 never has and apparently never will take place on account of this FOSSILIZED canonically FRIGIDITY of spirit and RIGORISM of human will.
And our Human Race thus continues on its current course “To Hell In A Hand Basket” on account of the REJECTION of the Immaculately Loving WOMAN as Our Lady of Fatima, Portugal who conceived by the Holy Spirit and GAVE BIRTH to God’s Only Eternally Begotton Son, JESUS by BOTH the Orthodox Church’s ecclesiastical hierarchy as well as the Catholic Church’s ecclesiastical hierarchy.
ALL OF US could have had a ‘Divine V-8’ as we smack ourselves on our foreheads with the palms of our hands as depicted in that V-8 vegetable juice cocktail t.v. commericial!
– Fr. Joseph
Col.1:15 “Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:
16 For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him:
17 And He is before all things, and by him all things consist.”
We can observe in His creation a balance and a harmony. We know that trees take in carbon dioxide, and from it produce oxygen.
Conversely, we and others take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide.
Sunlight energizes photosynthesis that plants may grow. Bees pollinate crops. The moon controls tides. We can observe that everything was created to a purpose, “according to His good pleasure.”
Many of His good purposes in creation, have yet to be discovered. We might well ask now, what could have been His good purpose in the creation of underground oil?
When we think of the primary use to which humankind has put oil, we need only consider the poisonous byproduct created by it’s burning, carbon dioxide, that is deadly to plants, and humans, and animals; to conclude that it’s burning may not have been His good purpose in creating it.
We might then ask, what other properties are displayed in underground oil, which could possibly answer to His good purpose in creating it?
We know that the earth is a molten mass at it’s core. Oil is a coolant. We know that there are massive strata of rock beneath the earth; and that these shift. Oil is a hydrological and a lubricant.
If these purposes were the intention of His creating underground oil, we could easily understand them as necessarily good. As underground oil is removed from it’s intended location to be used mispurposely, we might conjecture on the result of it’s absence from it’s intended location.
Without it’s cooling, and lubricating, and hydrological effects, how might inner earth respond?
Dear Fr Joseph,
The canonical laws only serve the supreme law of the Church which is the salvation of souls. And ordinarly, repect for the laws of the Church does serve this supreme law.
But Our King is not bound by the Church’s canons as in some legalism. It is often seen that people who are most respectful of the laws of the Church in the service of the supreme law know when they must act outside those laws in service of the supreme law.
And now in the time of the Church in Eclipse it is often seen that people who are most respectful of the Church’s ordinary, constant magisterium are to the fore in denouncing, turning away from and breaking the false teachings of the robber Vatican Council II.
Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ, Susanne,
What a fine spiritual journey towards Christ you are making, and a courageous one. Bless you for your kind comments towards me, but if any good comes to you from this sinner, it is not I, but comes from Christ. You are much loved, too.
You are well armed with “faith as a mustard seed,” Matthew 17:20. Faith is a gift from God, either 1) an assent to the truth, which profits the soul (John 3:18; 5:24) or (2) a special gift bestowed by Christ which effect things beyond man’s power (Mark 11:23; 1 Cor 12:8,9). But it is always both a belief and a trust at the same time.
Coming from a Muslim background has its particular strengths and weaknesses. So perhaps it will be of some spiritual profit to see the glorious footsteps and martyrdom of some of your predecessors through the ages who turned from Islam to faith in Christ.
A History of Orthodox Missions Among the Muslims
http://orthodoxwiki.org/A_History_of_Orthodox_Missions_Among_the_Muslims
A suggestion for your studies for a fascinating place to start, given your unique background from the “Arab Desert” would simply be to read Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by St. John of Damascus (+749), a Christian philosopher, theologian and hymnographer.
The Exposition is the third part of his larger work of teachings and dogmatics, ‘The Fountain of Knowledge (Wisdom)’ which is the first ‘Summa’ of the dogmatic writings of the Early Church Fathers.
Nearly all fruitful and instructive theological questions were treated by him, and his treatment is definitive for the East. In the West, too, his influence has been considerable.
The “Fount of Wisdom” was brought to the West in the twelfth century and was translated into Latin by Burgundio of Pisa in the time of Pope Eugenius III. (1144-53) and went on to influence Peter Lombard, and Thomas Aquinas’ Scholasticism.
St. John Damascene is a great Greek Father of the Church and a legacy for all Christians in terms of Church patristics, and is particularly dear to the Churches of Antioch and Syria.
The life and times of St. John as a Syrian Christian in the ‘Arab-Byzantine’ era is also very interesting. He lived at a time when the Church and the Desert Arabs crossed religious and cultural paths during the formative first century of Islam.
The Arabians too, owe not a little of the fame of their philosophy to his inspiration.
St. John also lived during a critical time in the Church called the Iconoclastic Controversy. His father held a high hereditary public office with the caliphate, which St. John later assumed, before the intrigues of the iconclastic Byzantine Emperor Leo the Isaurian forced St. John to retire to the monastic life.
He is a great champion of Christianity, and was well thought of by the Muslims of his day. http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/general/stjohn_exp1.aspx
Also recommended is reading about Archimandrite Daniel (Bambang Dwi) Byantoro (Chinese name “Chao Heung Jin) who is an Indonesian Muslim convert to Orthodoxy to whom is widely attributed the rebirth of Orthodoxy in Indonesia. http://orthodoxwiki.org/Daniel_%28Bambang_Dwi%29_Byantoro
And, here is the recent testimony of a British Muslim convert to Christianity:
http://www.oodegr.com/english/empeiries/muslim_preacher_convert.htm
God bless you, dear Suzanne, as you keep making your journey towards our heavenly homeland.
Love in Christ,
IC XC
NI KA
Dear Fr Joseph, Lynda, KathJuliane,
I would like to pass on some thoughts to you in regards to the “ecclesiological” differences between East and West – albeit a little late in thread.
Today’s apostolic passage (Acts: 13:13-24) quotes Apostle Paul saying “He [God] gave them judges for about four hundred and fifty years until Samuel the Prophet”.
The period of kings followed, despite not being the choice of God, rather this was against the will of God, but God consented for the sake of the people. The consequences of the period of the kings are well known. It divided Israel up, and the majority of Israel was scattered and lost.
In any case the Old Israel had two systems of governance, both blessed and granted by God.
One can easily discern the system of the kings, yet what is the governmental system of judges? Rather the judges where still hierarchical, but the attitudinal aspects were different.
For in the system of the kings, the king himself, according to the Old Testament stood between God and the people. (Notice the similarity to papal claims of being the Vicar of Christ.) Whereas during the judges, God states that He Himself directly governed His people.
That “450 years” is a little peculiar. Quite precisely it was in 451AD, that the matter of papal primacy comes to the surface in the 4th Ecumenical Synod.
It was St Leo the Great, Pope of Rome, who was furthering claims of primacy, and is considered the pope who founded the basis of the primatial claims, whilst the 4th Ecumenical Synod rejected them and instead recognised the equality of honour between Constantinople and Rome. It is at this point where the tensions leading up to the Great Schism become apparent.
It is also at this time that the Church in general appears to be coming to a turning point, and the concepts of church governance are changing.
The apostolic structure of church governance consisted of bishops who were empowered to take matters in their own hands. When problems arose, which the local bishop could not resolve, the archbishop/metropolitan of the closest civil centre was involved.
If the matter could still not be resolved it was referred to the bishops of Rome, Alexandria or Antioch, whichever was the relevant centre. Rome was ultimately the final point of appeal. The election of a new bishop was a very local matter and did not involve the consent of a patriarch.
However, in 450AD Constantinople existed. It was no longer the little town of Byzantium. There was no longer persecution by idolatrous emperors. Rome was isolated by all the political instability in the Western Empire. The bishops of the capitals were called popes or patriarchs, not simply bishops.
Disputes over territories of influence between the patriarchs erupted. The role of the bishop was less of an individual effort. Instead the Patriarch or Pope was the coordinator of the local church’s unity, and the “regional universal bishop” to some degree or another.
He kept an eye on what his fellow bishops did, much like Apostle Paul asked Timothy to do in the early apostolic times. It is also the period where Church unity faces its first permanent disastrous blow – the Alexandrian schism, and the Monophysite crisis.
I find it quite unusual to claim that the East was conciliarist vs the monarchist West. Rather both East and West were moving away from behaving like the Old Israel judges, to a regal model where the patriarch/pope was a dominant and rather proactive force.
The “conciliarist” tendencies of the East have nothing to do with the conciliarist mentality of the Protestants, and of Vatican II. I still have to see any evidence of an inverted system of church governance in the history of the East, i.e. power going from bottom to top rather than top to bottom.
It is only in modern Greece and other modern Orthodox Church creations that you have a synod, which relies on majority vote, and the president is regarded as nothing special but another voting member.
The only difference I can perceive between East and West is the degree to which authority is imposed. In the West it is absolute.
In the East it isn’t, because the emperor of Constantinople played the role of the absolute. It is thus the reason why during church councils the signature of the patriarchs added a lot of weight, but at the end of the day it was the emperor who enacted the councils’ decisions into state law.
It appears that the Great Schism was simply a product of a conflict between the Emperor of Constantinople and the Pope of Rome. For example, it was a question of who has the ultimate authority to sign off on a council’s proceedings: a temporal regal head, or the Bishop who was recognised since apostolic times as the ultimate office of appeal on ecclesiastic disputes.
I can also conclude that perhaps the nature of the matter is not so simple. We cannot legitimise the modern concept of conciliarity in comparison with the ancient practise of the Church to function under a synodal system with a primate at its head.
There the bishops recognised the seniority of the primate and submitted and confided to his direction. Each bishop was “married” to his diocese and could not be “divorced” from it by the will of others. Nowadays, the primate is simple a hostage of a mob of voting bishops. The primate and any bishop can be removed, or shifted around by the “democratic” popular vote of the synod.
It is no longer the word and law of God that matters, but the majority vote of the synod. The primate is no longer so much a spiritual father, but another boring office bearer. Consider the called for Benedict XVI to resign. Likewise consider the Irenaeos saga of the Jeruselam patriarchate.
It is thus befitting for us to discuss this matter on RZN. We must realise that any arguments between East and West must not be mistakenly conceived and the definitions of terms confused. Otherwise it sounds more like an argument between Zionists and Christians – the religion of Man vs the religion of Christ.
And just one last point, it was at the Council of Ferrara-Florence that the Orthodox were drawn into the web of the conciliarists’ battle against Pope Eugene. It is thus no new concept to confuse the ancient Eastern system of church governance, with the erroneous modern concept of conciliarity.
The Eastern system is synodal, yet monarchical in the sense that power extends from top to bottom, and this can only be understood through its tradition and the Canons of the Church.
Dear George,
Just to “cut to the bone” with regards to these historical ecclesiogical matters between the Catholic and Orthodox Church.
While the lingering historical effects of the Schism of 1054 are STILL with us – time does ‘march on’ and time is not a ‘respecter of man’ – the good Bishops and the good Emporers and the good People way back in 1054 A.D. were NOT FACING the real, honest-to-goodness prospect of being ALL EMBROILED in a catastrophic global world-wide THERMONUCLEAR THIRD WORLD WAR.
Shoot, the good Bishops, the good Emperors, the good People of 1054 A.D. didn’t even have to contend with, nor suffer, endure and remember the FIRST World War and the SECOND World War.
Let’s face facts here – the good Bishops, the good Emperors, the good People way back in 1054 A.D. “DIDN’T GIVE A FLYIN’ FLIP” about any of us now currently living this this World of ours, the year now being 2010 A.D.
So while you have lots and lots of people here on RZN go into FITS and SPASMS and HYSTERICS over ‘Who was right?’ and ‘Who was wrong?’ back in 1054 A.D., these SAME people with their ‘Black Hole’ arguments and historical point-by-point, day-by-day DEVELOPMENTS prior to, during and after the Schism of 1054 A.D. FAIL to consider what is going on in/with our World of 2010 Anno Domini and the MOST RECENT historical events that has gotten us all to this point.
To summarize the MOST RECENT historical events that have gotten us to this ‘Brink of the Abyss’…
1884 A.D. THE LORD grants Pope Leo XIII – BISHOP OF ROME – His Divine ‘Heads Up!’ – that GOD has granted His Divine Permission TO SATAN to have a century’s worth of time and more spiritual power over a good number of people in HOW they would use their God-given Free Wills.
1913 A.D. – here in the USA, passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 which gives the CHRIST-HATING Jews, Masons, Luciferians, Occultists DIRECT POWER over the economic output of the USA as well as direct ‘command control’ of millions of US citizens, their families and their children’s children.
We thus have WORLD WAR I, WORLD WAR II, and all of these other regional wars involving the political state of the USA in order TO EXTEND the influence/use of these Federal Reserve Notes of the PRIVATE OWNERS of the Federal Reserve Bank OVER entire nations and states and the peoples the World over.
1917 A.D. THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, the Mother of God, the Mother of the Church, the New Eve to and for ALL OF MANKIND appears at Fatima, Portugal – shares her and her Divine Spouse’s Messages/Instructions (now mind you, the Divine Spouse of the Most Holy Theotokos IS God the Holy Spirit – that Same Spirit of God Who hovered over the ‘primordial chaos of no-thing-ness’) that HEAVEN WANTS the Bishops of the Church to perform a public and solemn Collegial Consecration of RUSSIA to her very own Immaculately Loving Heart.
The Mother of God, Spouse of God the Holy Spirit – gives THREE SECRETS to the Fatima visionaries – the THIRD SECRET was to be released IN FULL to the ENTIRE WORLD back in 1960 – that Third Secret has been BURIED by the Vatican Prelates.
The public and solemn Collegial Consecration of the political nation-state of RUSSIA has never, never, NEVER BEEN DONE per Heaven’s Specific Instructions.
Meanwhile, “Back At The Ranch” here on earth – the Orthodox Church’s Hierarchy DENOUNCES the Mother of God’s Fatima Instructions – calling her Fatima Apparitions and Instructions “demonic” or “satanic” in nature.
The Catholic Church’s Hierarchy goes on and on saying 1) the Collegial Consecration of RUSSIA has already been done – OR – 2) there is NO NEED for such a Collegial Consecration as the Fatima Apparitions are a matter for ‘private acceptance’ at people’s OPTION.
So IT MATTERS NOT ONE IOTA about the historical ‘Ecclesiological’ ruling, reigning, episcopal SUPERVISION/OVERSIGHT of either the Eastern or Western Church, be that Church ‘Orthodox’ or ‘Catholic’…
…for BOTH the “properly appointed” and “duly ordained” BISHOPS of BOTH the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church are PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR SEEING TO IT THAT THE MOTHER OF GOD’S DESIRES/INSTRUCTIONS AREN’T CARRIED OUT AND CANNOT BE CARRIED OUT!
“Who Gives A Flip?” in this year 2010 Anno Domini as to whether the ‘Patriarch of This’ or the ‘Bishop of That’ or the ‘Pope over Here’ or the ‘Pope over There’ says this, that or the other thing.
WORDS ARE CHEAP AS DIRT!
If CHRIST JESUS’ OWN MOTHER – THE LOGOS – wants for HIS CHURCH’S BISHOPS to perform a public and solemn Collegial Consecration of RUSSIA to His Own Mother’s Immaculately Loving Heart – then WHO CARES with KathJuliane or Fr. John or The Man on the Moon wants to post/assert here with regards to the Schism of 1054 A.D.???
Either the CATHOLIC CHURCH and the ORTHODOX CHURCH obey their Sovereign Lord, Savior and King – or it’s ‘DIVINE CURTAINS’ for BOTH the Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church and ALL OF MANKIND as well!
As if the Byzantine Emporers of ages past GIVE A FLIP about any and all of us now living in 2010 Anno Domini!
As if all of the Popes and Patriarchs of either the Orthodox or Catholic Church GIVE A FLIP about any and all of us now living in 2010 Anno Domini!
Satan, his malicous legions of elemental demonic and his entire world-wide power structure of allied human stooges and dupes FULLY INTEND on getting the Human Race embroiled in a Third World War.
AS IF some Byzantine Emperors, AS IF the dead and now long gone Orthodox Patriarchs are now currently “here on earth” and AS IF they are in any position TO HELP US members of the Church Militant here on earth NOW and we members of the Human Race here on earth NOW!
– Fr. Joseph
Being of POLISH descent and heritage, let me pour all of you RZN a “shot of Polish Spirius”. It’s 190 proof, making it 95 PURE grain alcohol. Let’s see if you can ‘down it’ without it ‘taking your breathe away’.
Now HERE are the F.B.I.’s Field Offices, each manned with a ‘Special Agent for Domestic Terrorism’:
http://www.fbi.org/contact/fo/state.htm
In addition to mailing out the Boeing SATCOM systems schematics to ALL SORTS OF U.S. Federal and State Government officials in their respective Executive, Judicial and Legislative bodies, I made DARN SURE that each and every last F.B.I. Field Office’s ‘Special Agent on Domestic Terrorism’ received the “hard DVD” version of Dylan Avery’s “Loose Change”.
You ALL can watch this 9-11-2001 expose entitled “Loose Change” for yourselves here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E3oIbO0AWE
The Catholic Church has DIOCESES all throughout these United States of America.
I mailed EACH and EVERY LAST one of the Catholic Cardinal Arcbhishop, Archbishop and Bishops who have proper “Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction” over their Archdioceses and Dioceses a “hard DVD” version of ‘Heaven’s Key To Peace’.
ALL OF YOU RZN readers can watch ‘Heaven’s Key To Peace’ for yourselves from here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awznwJidvPc
Now if BOTH ‘The State’ as well as ‘The Church’ ABDICATE their respective responsibilities to their own State, their own Church and to their own Fellow Man by IGNORING/PRETENDING ‘TO-NOT-KNOW’ what on earth is going on here in this contemporary World, then can I ask ALL OF YOU a very personal question…
‘WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU ‘DUMPING ON ME’ HERE ON RZN WITH ALL OF THIS 1054 A.D. SCHISM HISTORICAL GARBAGE AND CHARGES AND IMPLIED INSULTS TO ME AND MY PRIESTHOOD?’
Summon up some personal SPIRITUAL COURAGE in order TO ADMIT TO YOURSELVES that you neither have a VIABLE/FUNCTIONING Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, Protestant church here in these United States of America – and for that matter – throughout the rest of this World.
And please, DO ATTEMPT to summon up some personal SPIRITUAL COURAGE to admit to yourselves that YOU NO LONGER HAVE viable and functioning STATES and NATIONS and GOVERMENTS for those States and Nations throughout our contemporary World.
And it was AT FATIMA, that the Most Holy Mother of God herself, the Most Holy Theotokos AS Our Lady of Fatima, Portugal clearly and publicly declared:
‘ONLY I CAN HELP YOU!’
– Fr. Joseph
Some ‘heretical’ and ‘apostate’ CATHOLIC CHURCH teaching regarding ‘THE DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN’…
“The obligation of the citizen to obey civil laws does not exhaust his duties to the State. So important is the State and its functions that it gives rise to a special kind of justice.
“That is called by the moral theologians LEGAL JUSTICE, and it is commonly defined at that virtue which inclines the citizen TO RENDER TO THE COMMUNITY what is due for the common good.
“This means not only obedience to the laws, but ALL THOSE ACTIONS, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL, which are necessary for the common welfare. Legal justice BINDS both the ruler and the citizen.
“It OBLIGES the former to make the common welfare the object of all his official acts. It OBLIGES the citizen AND the public official ALIKE to comply with the laws, and to give due consideration to the needs of the State in ALL THEIR ACTIONS and RELATIONSHIPS.”
– Quoting from ‘Catholic Principles of Politics’ by BISHOPS John A Ryan and Francis J. Boland
When you have THE STATE as well as THE CHURCH both working hand-in-hand TO HIDE, TO COVER, TO CONCEAL the CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY both instigated by and from WITHIN the State AS WELL AS the Church – then all of you might begin to understand why the Most Holy Theotokos, the Mother of God, NOT as Our Lady of Fatima, Portugal this time, but rather as Our Lady of Akita, Japan WARNED both the Nation/States of our World AS WELL AS her Son’s Church Militant here on earth…
…that God the Father is SOOOO ANGRY, that He is actually considering BURNING UP this planet earth of ours – sparing NEITHER the Priests nor the Faithful.
Did or did NOT God Incarnate Himself say:
“If your brother does something WRONG, go and have it out with him alone, between your two selves. If he listens to you, you have won back your brother.
“If he does NOT listen, take one or two others along with you; the evidence of two or three witnesses is required to sustain any charge. But if he refuses to listen to these, report it to the (State/Church) community; and if refuses to listen to the community, TREAT HIM LIKE A PAGAN OR TAX COLLECTOR.” – The Gospel according to St. Matthew – Matthew 18:15-17
Let’s NOT ‘beat around the Bush’ – let’s ADMIT we have our nations just CHOCKFUL of PAGANS.
And we need to go one step further – we have PAGANS in and throughout the Church Militant holed up in their respective ‘Ecclesiastical Jurisdications’ who are PAGANS as well – working ‘hand in hand’ with the PAGANS of our Nations/States in order to bring about their PAGAN One World Order.
Now whether these PAGANS in our world’s nations and states get their PAGAN One World Order up and running BEFORE Almighty God Himself BURNS UP our entire planet earth, that is something the ‘Odds Makers’ down there in LAS VEGAS, NEVADA can start calculating and TAKING BETS and ‘MAKING BOOK’!
– Fr. Joseph
Graham’s negative comments on Islam won him this status.
I think he SHOULD be banned after making racist/derogatory comments like he did against Islam.
As a Muslim myself, i am most offended by his statements – whether the JEWS support his banishment at the day of prayer or not.
They MAY be setting him up to take the hit on the Muslim question overall, since there is a sizable number of conservative Christians out there who will NEVER compromise on bringing Islam into the fold of Abrahamic faiths.
I don’t know, this is a tricky one.
I DO smell a rat here though – typical of Jewish propaganda and religious treachery- always twisting and perverting the truth to fit their fascist agenda….
Regards,
Jonas the Prophet
Colorado USA
http://jonah.20m.com
————————–
Hi All, and sorry for my absence.
Dear Paul R.
Sorry for my attitude below, but I find your posts severely tasteless.
You say: “And no, I have never helped you financially because you reject the Papacy.”
What an excellent way to express all these hundreds of years worth of Roman “Catholicism”. How perfectly specific and well appropriate of the group you belong to.
We Orthodox have been given this same “talk” so many times that I cannot even remember anymore how many times it was. Of course this is exactly what a Good Christian does, and with that attitude too, right?
That is exactly the way one should treat a fellow Christian, right? I have to say that I find you offensive to Br. Nathanael and very arrogant. It’s not nice to read your posts, if only for your tone, never mind your content.
If you don’t like Orthodoxy, then why oppose my Christian Brother, Br. Nathanael? Find another site to propagandize, you are not helping here.
You have mistaken your Pope obsessed “cult of personality” as a Church. But you forget that the head of the Church is Jesus Christ, not the Pope. And your community has put the Pope above Christ. Do you realize that this is blasphemy?
The Roman Papist community you belong to, has so many severe doctrinal issues that there is no point in telling about them. Your Pope’s worldly “Presidential” or “Kingly” status is NO substitute for the Holy Spirit, nor for the Holy Tradition you now despise. And therefore, Grace has abandoned the Papist community.
Dear Fr. Joseph,
You say: “The canonical laws only serve the supreme law of the Church which is the salvation of souls. And ordinarly, repect for the laws of the Church does serve this supreme law.”
As usual, your Papist outlook, is saturated with an obsession about worldly “supremacy” “law” etc. etc.
In our Orthodox Church, Canons are collected in a book called the Pydalion.
And here is the insight, that you Papists have forgotten a long time ago (as with many other things):
The common Greek translation of the word “Canon’ is “Rule” as in a ruler that is used for drawing by designers of all sorts. So, in Greek, “canon” is better directly translated correctly as a “guide” or “guideline”.
Thus, there is no notion of an absolute, rigid, “supreme”, fixed set of laws, as this is viewed by authority obsessed Papists.
Furthermore, to make this point even stronger, lets look at the word Pydalion. Pydalion in Greek translates to English as the “steering wheel”. Again, a steering wheel is used to “change course” or “correct a course” and thus by definition is HAS to be “flexible” to a point.
Thus the same Papist notion of Absolute power in canon law (as if we were talking about some kind of mere worldly state law) DOEs NOT exist.
What does this all mean? The underlying things that Papists completely ignore, is that the flexibility allowed by the definition of the canons as flexible “course correctors” MUST be augmented with the Holy Spirit, in order to be made perfect.
That is the Orthodox view, we do NOT do things alone, we cannot setup a Church as mere humans and try to control everything. Our Tradition dictates that the experiences of our Holy Saints (which is Tradition) MUST saturate our every act.
And just a quick one, we have NO monarch on earth, our King and Grand First Priest is Jesus Christ. (Just go to any Orthodox Church and look for Whom the throne is preserved and Who’s icon it has on it)
Dear Susanne,
I am pretty sure, that what you received must have been antidoron, which is not the Holy Communion, but rather a blessed bread. If you did receive communion, from the Chalice, then my personal humble opinion according to my knowledge is that that was a serious mistake on the Priests part.
But, it’s definitely not my place to offer that opinion for more than what it is. (i.e. just my humble opinion).
Dear George,
You say: “The only difference I can perceive between East and West is the degree to which authority is imposed. In the West it is absolute.
In the East it isn’t, because the emperor of Constantinople played the role of the absolute.
It is thus the reason why during church councils the signature of the patriarchs added a lot of weight, but at the end of the day it was the emperor who enacted the councils’ decisions into state law.
It appears that the Great Schism was simply a product of a conflict between the Emperor of Constantinople and the Pope of Rome. For example, it was a question of who has the ultimate authority to sign off on a council’s proceedings: a temporal regal head, or the Bishop who was recognised since apostolic times as the ultimate office of appeal on ecclesiastic disputes.”
I would disagree on this with you, in that these were most definitely not the only differences. Your focus seems to be mostly historical.
I would say that there was (and is) a huge difference, between the East and the West, as initially displayed very strongly by the Stochastic and general Renaissance “spirits” in the west which took over the west in all areas of life. And this was visible much earlier than the time these movements “peaked”.
The west, nearly completely, disposed of empirical knowledge of God, spiritual depth and especially anything of such origin that was part of the east tradition/world. In addition to this, or perhaps as a consequence, the west also put all hope and reliance on the human mind, as displayed by just about any of the West’s endeavor to support the faith in Christ.
While such a “spirit” may produce great worldly art and promote and evolve science(eventually), it is a pale substitute for allowing God’s Holy Grace to work through His Church.
Dear KathJuliane,
The word heretic, derives from the Greek verb “Αίρω”, which mean to “lift” or to “unset” or to “remove an established object”.
Thus, in Greek, heretic means, one who has “lifted” or attempted to “unset” or refute a previously established idea or doctrine. As far as I know, it is not a mere “mixup” of ideas. That is not to say of course that today’s heretic are indeed very mixed up.
As an example, the Pope who “lifted” the previously established commandment for ALL to take His most Holy Blood in communion, is by the above definition a heretic.
Stav
It seems to me that the current financial system in the US is very similar to the Weimar situation in Germany after WW1.
The Jews now own 60% of the US GNP, in Germany they owned 95% of Germanys’ wealth.
The EU is a corrupt entity now, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Ireland and Spain have had assets stripped.
The jewish agenda is nearly complete.
It is hard to believe that the jewish population in the US is roughly 6 million, and that they hold such power in the White House.
In the wake of the economic recession, I think the President should solicit the public, as well as the business sector, for the best ideas regarding job creation and marketing American products to other countries.
And to structure these jobs so that everyone shares in a productive, profitable business.
Also to stimulate small business to grow so more people can be independent and maintain local communities.
Dear Stav,
Shall we use a gun to kill the fly on the pope’s forehead? Unfortunately, absurd as that seems, yes it is a common, very common, habit to do so.
The bugs of the West are bugs well recognised by many popes themselves. For example the deviation from Gregorian chant is well recognised as being a departure from the ideal. Polyphony, the product of the Renaissance is not considered so healthy for use in worship.
In order to appreciate the RCs you have to divorce the disease from the virtue – much like if one was to appreciate the East they must divorce the disease from the virtue. Let us take the plank out of our own eyes first – then yes we shall convert many others to the Truth.
Only then may one come to peace with themselves and comprehend the mysteries of God and the reasons for disunity and the collapse of the Church in its apostolic mission and witness.
Read some of the encyclicals of pre Vatican-II popes, particularly of Pius X, and they all give you a good idea of where the West is today. It is sad to say that many of these errors are consuming the Orthodox also, but we just don’t seem to realise it.
We are slowly becoming Luthers, Protestants etc, rather than bearers of Apostolic Tradition and virtues.
And in case someone has not realised, this Protestant trend draws us much closer to our post Vatican II “brethren”.
Sorry, I’m not joking.
KathJuliane, Fr. Joseph, & Suzanne –
Your testimonies brought tears to my eyes.
KathJuliane, your account of the agony of the Serbian Nation was, a bucket of ice water over my head to put it mildly.
I was somewhat cognizant of this history through my Russian heritage even up to our failure to maintain our solidarity with you during the Anglo-American Blitz, but the grist is in the details, the full magnitude of which had completely escaped me until reading your postings.
I’ve placed “The Guardians …” at the top of my “must read” list!
Suzanne and particularly, Fr. Joseph,
Your deeply moving rendering of what it really means to partake of the Sacraments, has whacked me upside the head as some might say. Although I was baptized in the Orthodox Faith and have always regarded myself as Russian Orthodox, my tenacity to my Faith had been flagging and was never a fitting example, in any case.
I guess I could make excuses about this and that, the seemingly frivolous canonizations, the internecine bickering, the seeming deviation from what appeared to me to be the essence of Christ’s Teaching:
That you love your neighbor one and all, no exceptions (which includes Jews, I may add, and everyone else, no matter how dastardly, (because of something said about casting the first stone…))
However, even in my jaded state the almost Scriptural account of the tear-soaked store-front ‘church’-member asking for, being denied, and then finally being offered and given the Sacrament of the Eucharist, made me realize what is meant by the One Holy Universal Apostolic Church of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
How She exists Undivided, existed, and always shall in the deeds of faith, mercy and love, like those of Fr. Joseph’s seminary instructor. I’m always going to remember this story and will relate it to others…
Christ has, indeed, Risen!
God Bless!
Vladimir
Dear Stav,
I am reasonably certain that Orthodoxy is systematically the closest approach one can make to what was really taught by Jesus Christ and the Apostles. But in a very certain sense ‘the map is not the country’.
By this I mean that, despite the great tradition which has been handed down to us, the fact remains that the Orthodox community is in fact:
1.) penetrated by Freemasons and sorcerers (the Mataxakis affair, Orthodox Masonic lodges, the vampire cult);
2.) in certain cases led by corrupt, condescending embezzlers who may have resorted to murder on occasion (the OCA and the so-called “repose” of Fr. Job in a motel room);
3.) suffering under considerable confusion between ethnicity and faith (post-commie materialist religious attitudes).
So, despite having what could certainly be called “right doctrine”, the Orthodox Church still doesn’t seem to have enough people engaged in “right practice” to properly honor this great inheritance.
Of course we can count this as sin rather than false teachings, but at the end of the day I am not satisfied that actual saintliness belongs to a great majority of so-called Orthodox. Meanwhile, you have Protestants and Roman Catholics who suffer from most of the same problems and yet still produce saintly people with about the same regularity.
I guess what I’m saying is what good is correct doctrine to a hard heart? It actually can make it worse, apparently. How do you frame the failure of the “right doctrine” to prevent a great falling away from Christ, anyhow? Does this make us better, worse, or the same on a fundamental level as all other branches of the Church?
Dear Michael K,
Let’s assume you are right. I know from the many Greek communities that I have visited, that the ethnic component in many cases takes over. In fact, I have had many arguments against this with various people who clearly put Greece and Greeks before Jesus Christ and His church.
But, let me ask you, since you your self admit that the OC is closest to the Apostolic Teaching, then Why not follow it unfailingly?
While what you say me be true at times and places, this does not diminish the true value of Orthodoxy. Masons, hypocrites and lukewarm followers of just about any ideology are the majority just about everywhere.
Look at the sheer number of corrupt politicians, does that take away the fact that the Republic is one of the best ways to govern a state?
Look at the medical science, how corrupt it is, the pharma companies etc. etc. Does this take away from objective Medical Science? No.
Look at the hypocrisy that exists in the financial market today… Does that take away from sound economical principles that society should really be using? No.
In the same fashion, Orthodoxy is there for the brave and clear of mind and spirit to practice. If it is partially infiltrated, by hypocrites just like any other walk in life, that does not take away from it’s True value, which is Jesus Christ.
Stav
Dear George,
I see what you are saying, I mostly agree. But I feel there is an important component missing in your position.
IMHO there are two components to the disaster called the Great Schism. The first is undoubtedly the clash between the worldly powers of East and West. No question about this, I would never refute that.
However, the other 50% (or more), is ideological, spiritual if you will, and bares IMHO just at least as much weight as the political reasons.
I would not characterize the vast differences in outlook in life, spirit and intellectuality between the East and the West as a mere bug to shoot off one’s head. Even today, there is a deep rift. This is a very deep void that presents a nearly impenetrable inability to understand what is called the Eastern, empirically fueled spiritual experience, by the West and vice versa.
For example, in Europe, a German or British person is unable to “get it”, get what a Greek thinks when they act and live. And likewise, most “traditional” Greeks, are unable to understand the mentality of a German or British person. Appearances can be deceiving. Just because two people are wearing the same current style in clothing, does not mean that they understand each other.
What happens invariably, is merely an imitation of the others actions, in the cases of so called cultural “conversion”. I should know, as I have lived in families and groups that are composed of both sides. In my experience, these clashes, persist even after many many years of close interaction between the two sides.
You see, this then, does present some much more profound and important than a mere circumstantial different that plays a minor role. An Easterner such as a Greek, will say: “Let’s take it easy, let’s ponder on this for a few months/years.” In other words, they are saying, let’s wait for God to offer us a sign or insight.”
A Westerner, will say: ” I have analyzed, sorted, codenamed, counted, accounted for, re-analyzed, quickly and efficiently, and have established the unmovable rules and laws. So why not just act now? In other words, they are saying: “Why do I need God, I have already done all the work anyway!”
IMHO, from the first approach, comes wisdom. From the second come practical results and knowledge. The “trick” is to combine the two in just the right proportions.
Believe me when I say, that the practicality of a Westerner, even in the simplest matters of everyday life are for the most part imperceptible by the Easterner. And likewise, the reasons for the general life outlook and attitude of an Easterner remain a matter that cannot be grasped by the majority of Westerners.
This clash, is not a mere cultural difference. It permeates and saturates every single action that one takes. Learning history, achieving academic status, will invariably NOT get anyone closer to this practical and almost primal understanding.
There is an expression:
“If you have to ask, then you are not ready to understand.”
In this context, if one truly want’s to understand either side, then they must practice it first, and then understand the theory. There is NO other way. One must humble themselves in front of God, take the leap of faith, and then understanding will be granted. But it is not an understanding that can be transferred by word alone.
Thus it was, for at least 1200 years, between the greater sides, the East and the West. The West, scholastically and analytically, put just about anything under the microscope of reason. At the same time, the East, has combined authorized spiritual experience with Classical (Greek, mostly) philosophy in order to arrive at the basis of Orthodoxy, which is our tradition, the Bible and the Orthodox Church.
While today’s Orthodox Church may have somewhat changed over time and perhaps acquired some different aspects to the original, the doctrine and faith and empirical nature, combined with Classical thinking has not changed. The difference is glaringly obvious to any careful observer.
One is employing spirit and a love for the Truth. The other is employing a love for analyzing and total and complete authority. That is true for both Roman Papism and most other Protestant denominations, although they ascribe the “authority” in completely different ways.
The difference is faith. If one put’s no faith in God’s Grace, they will be forced to fill in this gap with human made “control structures”. This is not a small difference and as I stated before, it permeates just about every single thing one does. It is a MASSIVE difference.
Thus, while I agree with the reasons for the Schism as you present them, I do want to make it clear that there is another component at play here, which is at least in part spiritual in nature and to some other extent a difference in value priorities.
From this, everything that happens derives. Even the negative things, which are obviously apparent even in the Orthodox Church. But let me assure you, today’s Greek, today’s Russian, Serbian, etc. etc. are IMHO UNABLE (even if they wanted to) to establish or convert to (even gradually) to a Christian Church, which is as clinically operated as are the Roman Papists or the various Protestant ones.
The “clinical cleanliness” alone, is repulsive to them. We love our “mess” in a good sense. The way we do things, is “chaotic” in a good sense. That does not fit in with organized and clinical expressions such as the ones present in the West. It is not that I believe that it is not going to happen because “we are perfect” but rather because I truly believe that it is impossible given the serious and very deep differences in mentality.
Stav
Dear Stav,
You say:
“The “clinical cleanliness” alone, is repulsive to them. We love our “mess” in a good sense. The way we do things, is “chaotic” in a good sense. That does not fit in with organized and clinical expressions such as the ones present in the West.”
Yes that is exactly what I am saying about the period of the judges vs. the kings of Old Israel.
The period of judges was quite disorganised and chaotic and relied on good will and cooperation, whereas the period of kings was highly organised and particularly under Solomon, repressive.
I hope you now understand what I mean about the governance of the Old Israel and its parallels to the New Israel, and what this means for East and West.
In Christ
George
Stav,
On and on it MUST GO, now mustn’t it – your DIGS in we “Papists”!
Regarding the ‘Supreme LAW’ of the Church, which is the SALVATION OF SOULS, to what you would PREFER, your Greek ‘guidelines’.
Well now, are the Ten Commandments God’s Own LAWS or are the Ten Commandments ‘guidelines’ and ‘suggestions’ and ‘considerations’ to you of the GREEK Church???
– Fr. Joseph
Stav,
Welcome back!
Can you tell us something about how things are REALLY going in Greece these days?
We hear alot of things, but maybe you could give us a truthful update?
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Fr. Joseph,
Sorry I took so long to reply…
You said, “Surely, you DO NOT denounce nor deny Christ Jesus’s OWN Church’s Canon of Sacred Scripture!
From that SAME Canon of Sacred Scripture:
A second time He said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love Me?’ He replied, ‘Yes, Lord, you know I love You.’ Jesus said to him ‘LOOK AFTER MY SHEEP.’ – John 21:16”
I don’t see where that says Peter was a bishop.
Then you said, “‘Now I have something to tell your elders; I AM AN ELDER MYSELF, and a witness to the sufferings of Christ, and with you I have a share in the Glory that is to be revealed. BE THE SHEPHERDS OF THE FLOCK OF GOD THAT IS ENTRUSTED TO YOU; WATCH OVER IT, NOT SIMPLY AS A DUTY BUT GLADLY, BECAUSE GOD WANTS IT…et al’ – 1 Peter 5:1-4″
There you have it – straight from the Church’s Own Canon of Sacred Scripture.”
That doesn’t say Peter was a Bishop either.
The word ‘Elder’ comes from the Greek ‘Presbuteros’…
We know Peter was aware of the word ‘Bishop’ (Greek ‘Episkopos’) because he uses it in I Peter 2:25:
“For ye were as sheep going astray ; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.”
According to St. Iraneus both Peter AND Paul founded and organized the Church in Rome… not just Peter.
Irenaeus also lists off the Bishops of Rome from the beginning… He lists:
First – Linus
Second – Anacletus
Third – Clement…
And so on, but my point is he refers to Peter & Paul as Apostles – not as Bishops. It seems to me that just as Linus and the successive Bishops were not Apostles – neither were the Apostles Bishops.
Stav,
While CATHOLIC ‘Papists’ still have their Pope, you ORTHODOX ‘Emporerists’ NO LONGER have your Emperor.
According to Psalm 2, Christ Jesus is KING over all that is seen and Unseen.
One would think that BISHOPS of the Church owe their allegiance to CHRIST and not to some Emperors.
But alas, such is the legacy of the actions of those who’ve lived centuries ago.
And while THE MOTHER of Christ the King gave instructions to the Bishop of Rome as to how to secure world peace for all – as you say, you Orthodox LIKE things ‘messy’ and ‘chaotic’.
Hence, your Orthodox Church’s refusal to accept the Mother of God’s Fatima Apparitions.
‘Messy’ and ‘chaotic’ – such has been the past 100 years for those of RUSSIA and SERBIA…
…and now, ‘messy’ and ‘chaotic’ describes GREECE.
World Peace – apparently people DON’T WANT IT!
– Fr. Joseph
Prodigal Son,
The 3rd century Church historian, Eusebius, gave the ‘Organizational Chart’ of THE BISHOPS of the Church.
The EMPEROR was not – and I repeat NOT – at the top of that chart.
– Fr. Joseph
Dear Vladimir,
I was given a moment of Priestly grace to share with you – but as you see, Stav and Prodigal Son “ruffled my feathers” BEFORE I could share what the Spirit gave to me to share with you.
Our spiritual vocation as Christians is a two-fold simplicity – first part, our sumbitting to Christ’s Will, Teachings, Revelation and Instructions – second part, our sucumbing to His Divine Graces.
With respect to receiving Him, His Body and Blood in the Church’s Sacrament of the Eucharist, IF IT IS POSSIBLE for you at your attending your next Russian Orthodox Divine Liturgy – AFTER Holy Communion – allow yourself the ‘spiritual luxury’ of simply remaining STILL, QUIET, ATTENTIVE and RECEPTIVE to what Christ Jesus Himself would want to do within you and for you.
We Sacramental Christians MISS many Divine Graces our All-good God, Creator and Savior desires to bestow upon us and into us on account of our ‘NOT PAYING ATTENTION’ to Him and His Workings within us during that time AFTER we receive Him in the Divine Sacrament.
– Fr. Joseph
Stav, Prodigal Son,
I haven’t the foggiest idea if sharing the following webpage will somehow bring about a spirtual ‘METANOIA’ in those ORTHODOX minds, hearts, souls and spirits, but I want for the two of you to OPEN YOUR EYES to what is going on all across our World with all of the RAMPANT-UNCHECKED EVILS being perpertrated against people and entire nations of people – to ask yourselves whether or not our All-good God, Father, Creator and SAVIOR created this planet earth and our human race INTENTED and/or INTENTS for us all to live vexed by such evils.
Then, think about the UTTER ABSURDITY of the last line in this article’s paragraph:
“Now Is The Time
“The article ‘Now is the Time’ argues persuasively regarding one of the main reasons Vatican officials have not yet properly consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. IT IS FOR FEAR OF THE ORTHODOX, WHO LOOK UPON SUCH A CONSECRATION AS AN INSULT.” – from
http://www.fatima.org/apostolate/eparchive/ep_0409.asp
Our contemporary World and our entire Human Race have to suffer/experience DEFEAT at the hands of Satan, his elemental demonic spirits and his Christ-hating/rejecting human stooges, dupe and allies ON ACCOUNT OF…
….OFFENDING ‘ORTHODOX SENSIBILITIES’!
My gosh, Stav! My gosh, Prodigal Son!
Where, O Where, is your Orthodox Church’s COMMON SENSE and the COMMON SENSE of the Catholic Church???
– Fr. Joseph
Fr. Joseph,
I’m not talking about the Emperors… I’m talking about Bishops.
Does Eusebius say that Peter was Bishop of Rome? If so – can you provide me with a link to his writings?
I’ve tried to locate him saying such a thing… but I have been so far unable to.
Franklin Graham’s Warning !
Franklin’s warning of coming persecution of Christians echoes what his mother Ruth and father Billy have clearly stated. Re Ruth, see search engines including Google for “Letter from Mrs. Billy Graham.”
To see what Billy has written, Google “Famous Rapture Watchers – Addendum.”
Since Franklin blamed the Obama administration for his own National Day of Prayer snub and persecution, and since he accused “Christian” Obama of “giving Islam a pass,” readers can get some rare insights into Obama and his fellow travelers by Yahooing and Googling “Obama Supports Public Depravity,” “Obama Avoids Bible Verses,” “Separation of Raunch and State,” and “David Letterman’s Hate, Etc.”
To see some exceptional in-depth studies of coming persecution, see two unique books by media figure Joe Ortiz entitled “The End Times Passover” and “Why Christians Will Suffer ‘Great Tribulation’ ” – both published in the US and UK by AuthorHouse.
Prodigal Son,
Regarding BISHOPS – from BISHOP Pope Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians dated 80 A.D., a mere 47 years AFTER the Resurrection and Ascension of THE LOGOS:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Apostolic_Succession.asp
– Fr. Joseph
Fr. Joseph,
Yes, thank-you…
But I asked about Eusebius and his list of Bishops in Rome, not Clement…
I understand Apostolic succession (which incidentally also requires Apostolic FAITH to be valid)… but there is nothing on that page which says that Peter was a Bishop in Rome.
According to Irenaeus, it was St. Paul who had ordained Linus – not Peter… and he lists Linus as the first Bishop of the ancient Church of Rome – not Peter.
So… ??
†IC XC†
†NI KA†
Dear Fr Joseph,
According to St Irenaeus, the Church in Rome was founded by the Apostles, Sts Peter and Paul. The succession of bishops comes from this Apostolic foundation.
“Since however, it would be very tedious in such a vol as this to reckon up the successions of the churches, we do put to confusion all those who in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings…by indicating that tradition derived from the Apostles of the very great, the very ancient and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles:
Peter and Paul as also the faith preached to men which comes down to our time by means of the successions of bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this Church on account of its pre-eminent authority…”
St Iranaeus. Against Heresies. 3:3:2 (AD 180)
“In speaking of Peter, the recollection of another Peter (St Flavian his own bishop) has come to me, who has succeeded to the virtue of Peter (in the Chair of Antioch). For this is the one great perogative of our city (Antioch) that it received the Coryphaeus of the Apostles as its teacher in the beginning.
For it was right that she (Antioch) who was first adorned with the name of Christians (Acts 11:26) before the whole world, should receive the first of the Apostles as her pastor. But though we received him as teacher, we did not retain him to the end, but gave him up to Royal Rome.”
— St John Chrysostom. Homilies in inscr Acts 11, 6; Vol III : 86 [75]
Dear Father Joseph,
As you know, our Lord asked the French King to have France consecrated to his Sacred Heart by the witness of St Margaret Mary Alocoque. Alone and awaiting execution in prison, King Louis XVI did attempt to get the French bishops loyal to the Holy Father and to France to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart.
But the Church was in dire persecution, most of the true priests had been martyred. The bishops loyal to the Holy Father were martyred or in hiding or had fled. It was not possible for the solemn, collegial consecration to be done at Rheims.
The Masonic partisans of the Revolution were victorious. It was to prevent that victory that our Lord had requested the Consecration of France. After the Revolution, it was humanly speaking – too late.
The same situation applies today. Everywhere Communism is coming to victory because the Consecration to the Immaculate Heart was not done.
And Sr Lucia did say that if it was not done, every nation would become Communist.
The Consecration will be done, but I think Divine intervention will have to occur for it to be possible.
The Vatican currently ‘walks in the Tradition of the Elders’. The Sanhedrin is certainly not going to permit Benedict to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Prodigal Son,
Ask STAV to verify that THE GREEK TEXT is correctly translated from which the following ENGLISH is quoted for your benefit and personal Orthodox Church’s edification:
“It is, therefore, recorded that Paul was beheaded in Rome itself, and that Peter likewise was crucified under Nero. This account of Peter and Paul is substantiated by the fact that thei names are preserved in the cemeteries of that place even to this very day. It is confirmed likewise by Caius, a member of the Church, who arose under Zephyrius, BISHOP OF ROME. But I can show the trophies of the Apostles, for if you will go to the Vatican, or to the Ostian way, you will find the trophies of those who laid the foundations of this Church.” – from
http://www.earlychurchtexts.com/main/eusebiusofcaes/neronian_persecution.shtml
Now tell me, tell ALL OF US, my dear Prodigal Son – WHERE WERE 1) the Patriarchs of Russia, Serbia, Syrian or Greece at this period of time written of by Eusebius???
And one other thing – WHO set you up to be the Divine Abitrator, the Divine Judge of WHO had ‘Faith’ and who has ‘Faith’ in the Catholic Church in our contemporary World?
I personally have ‘FAITH’ that if the Bishop of Rome along with the Bishops in spiritual union/unity with him performed a public and solemn Collegial Consecration of RUSSIA to the Immaculately Loving Heart of THE MOTHER OF THE LOGOS INCARNATE, that THE LOGOS written about in the Gospel of St. John the Apostle WILL grant our entire World and our entire Human Race (to INCLUDE all of the Russians, Serbians, Syrians and Greeks the world over) WORLD PEACE!
Where, oh where, is YOUR ‘Faith’???
– Fr. Joseph
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!
Brother Nathanael Kapner will be on the famous radio show, THE POLITICAL CESSPOOL Saturday, May 8, at 8 PM EST.
Visit http://www.thepoliticalcesspool.org/index.php and the radio slot can be heard FREE tonite or thereafter.
+BN
Dear Fr. Joseph,
I’m not trying to antagonize you… I don’t mean to upset you. If I have that was not my intention – so please forgive me.
I don’t dispute that St. Peter was in Rome… I don’t dispute that he was martyred there, along with St. Paul.
Thanks again for the link to Eusebius… but again – I don’t see anything there saying that St. Peter was the Bishop or pope of Rome!
You wrote, “Now tell me, tell ALL OF US, my dear Prodigal Son – WHERE WERE the Patriarchs of Russia, Serbia, Syria or Greece at this period of time written of by Eusebius???”
Well, Russia and Serbia came later of course – but they do nevertheless today possess Apostolic faith.
But Syria and Greece?
First of all, St. Paul himself was converted on the road to Damascus (Syria)… He was also baptized BY the Christians in Damascus after having his sight restored by a disciple named Ananias.
After the death of Alexander the Great, Antioch (where the disciples were first called Christians) became the Syrian capital. Antioch was part of the Syrian tetrapolis, along with Laodicea.
As for Greece – Cyprus was the first state entity anywhere to become OFFICIALLY Christian. Then there were the Greek cities of Thessalonica and Corinth (perhaps you’ve heard of them?)…
St. John wrote the book of Revelation FROM the Greek island of Patmos – written TO the seven cities in Asia Minor which were ancient Ionian Greek cities become part of the Roman empire.
If all roads lead to Rome, then all of those same roads also lead AWAY from Rome.
You asked me, “WHO set you up to be the Divine Arbitrator, the Divine Judge of WHO had ‘Faith’ and who has ‘Faith’ in the Catholic Church in our contemporary World?”…
I’m not judging anybody… I’ve asked a simple quesion; I’ve made a few observations. God judges – but as Scripture tells us we may know them by their fruits.
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.”
– I John 2:19
I personally don’t believe that your Mariology will save you or anyone. Salvation comes through faith and obedience to God’s one Mediator – Who is Jesus Christ.
THAT is where my faith lies.
May God bless you Fr. Joseph…
†IC XC†
†NI KA†
Dear Prodigal Son,
St Peter was INDEED the first pope of Rome.
I have studied the Acts of the Seven Ecumenical Councils and whenever the popes of Rome addressed the Greek Emperors who called the Councils into being they always referred to St Peter as the “first pope of the Holy See of Rome.”
NEVER has their assertions been refuted by any of the Eastern bishops. Never.
+Brother Nathanael Kapner
Russian Orthodox Christian
Dear Br Nathanael,
Yes. One only has to scan the Orthodox services of Sts Peter and Paul, St Peter’s chains, St Leo the Great and other saintly Popes of Rome, to come to terms that up to 8th century at least this was the case. Also, a quick perusal of the relevant acts of the 4th Ecumenical Synod shows this.
If one was to be precise, Apostle Peter is the foremost of the apostles alongside with Apostle Paul. Both were martyred in Rome. These are the “horns of the Cross”. They were symbolically the rock of prophet Daniel, which were smashed into the toes of the Roman Empire. They are also symbolically the heel of the Virgin that crushed the head of the snake, and thus the empire was converted – sooner or later to Christ. The infrastructure of Satan was consumed by God’s New Israel.
We do not need to look at historical fossilised relics to work out who the first bishop of Rome was. Rather it is a matter of living tradition. The early Eastern Fathers recognised Rome as the seat of Peter, not because of Linus or Clement or any personality of Rome, but for what Rome was, in regards to the foremost Apostle Peter.
Many RCs say he is the first bishop of Rome. Well that doesn’t mean anything because an apostle is an apostle, and his nature as the primate of the twelve apostles is simply an office which had to belong somewhere after St Peter’s martyrdom. The Church does need to have an ultimate jurisdiction and final point of judgement.
It was Rome that demolished Jerusalem, the capital of Judea, destroyed the old Temple of Solomon, and dispersed the kingdom of Old Israel (which was now clearly Esau). The throne of David was removed from Jerusalem. Thus Rome took the spoils of the war, and this was not just the worldly treasures.
In Christ
George
Hi George,
Welcome back. You haven’t missed much, we are still arguing about the papacy. Much more lively than the official RC and OC bilateral talks between the commissions that have been going for decades. I hope you would agree.
I like your statement “the infrastructure of Satan was consumed by God’s New Israel”. I think that archetypal pattern is going to have a replay.
In Christ
Lynda
Dear Fr Joseph,
You say:
# Fr. Joseph May 7, 2010 @ 12:17 am
Stav,
“Regarding the ‘Supreme LAW’ of the Church, which is the SALVATION OF SOULS, to what you would PREFER, your Greek ‘guidelines’.”
I am not sure of your point here, as I recall, Jesus states the Supreme LAW here:
Mark 12:28-31 (King James Version)
28 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all?
29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
Secondly, you say:
“Well now, are the Ten Commandments God’s Own LAWS or are the Ten Commandments ‘guidelines’ and ’suggestions’ and ‘considerations’ to you of the GREEK Church???”
First of all, there IS NO GREEK Church as such. There is the One, Apostolic, Holy and Catholic Church, which is the Orthodox Church. Whether one is Greek, American, Italian, Pakistani, Japanese, Eskimo, or WHATEVER, does NOT matter.
Secondly, I was talking about what you Papists like to refer to as Canon Law, not the commandments given to us by God Himself. That is, I was talking about the collection of canons written by men, in the Orthodox Church inside the Holy Tradition and in the Papist religious Community, outside of it.
In this context alone, the ancient view is that they are a “Pydalion”: Steering wheel and “Canons”: guidelines. The wording used to ascribe them and collect them, alone, makes this clear. Why even refute such an obvious statement.
Furthermore, it is a well known fact, that you Papists, put the Pope over and above anything else, including the Bible, Holy Tradition, Logic, Reason, Jesus Christ and even God the Father Himself in certain cases. So, why are you surprised that I don’t trust your views and always want to present an alternative point?
I have already proven to you beyond any doubt, how Papists like to disobey Jesus Christ’s own commandments and like to offer new “Supreme laws” in their place. Yet, as usual, there is no comment forth coming from you on this.
And if you want to “consecrate” anything, go ahead, I have no problem with it, but be SURE, to consecrate your Religious Community back to a true Church status, by humble repentance before you go ahead with anything else, because otherwise, things are going to go VERY pear shaped for you…
Stav
Prodigal Son,
You might be familiar with one of those Hollywood mind/heart/soul/spirit WARPING movies of the past given the title ‘NETWORK’.
And in that movie, after enduring all of the mind/heart/soul/spirit WARPING of both TRUTH-IN-REPORTING and of their human natures, people begin to open their windows and begin to scream/cry out ALOUD:
“I’M MAD AS HELL – AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY LONGER!”
I have been here on RZN for some time now – and ALL I GET from all of you who call yourselves ‘ORTHODOX’ has been HOSTILITY on account of my Catholicism and my Catholic Faith.
So, YOU ARE going to hear it from ME, Prodigal Son…
“I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY LONGER!”
I come here to give Br. Nathanael ALL THE HELP I possibly can in order to fend off all of these Christ-haters, these Human Race haters, these SPIRITUAL ENEMIES of God our Father who are flaunting and arrogantly relishing their combined collective conspiratorial collusion and crimes against THE LOGOS – and all that you of the Orthodox Church here is cause me GRIEF with your overt and insinuated denouncing of and belittling of the Catholic Church!
Now Christ Jesus – THE LOGOS INCARNATE (if you’ve forgotten/overlooked THAT Most Critically Important facet of OUR One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith – specifically tells PETER “Look after My sheep”.
That is a DIVINE COMMISSION given to a specific HUMAN BEING – and Things of a Divine Nature DO HAVE an enduring and lasting Substance endowed into and onto them.
THE LOGOS Divinely Commissions St. Peter to be His ‘BISHOP’ to and for His Church and makes St. Peter the FIRST ‘Pope’!
For your information and religious instruction – the word origins (from THE GREEK) of Bishop and Pope:
Bishop:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bishop
Pope:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pope
Now what would be YOUR response and reaction if someone, anyone, came right out in public and started to relentlessly call YOUR ‘father’ a drunken, good-for-nothing, useless, bloomin’ IDIOT of a man who did not know which way was up and which way is down.
THAT IS what all of here on RZN do when you DENOUNCE and BELITTLE the Bishop of Rome!
And when you all do THAT – you are but one very short step from applying that sort of religious IRREVERENCE to your OWN Bishops and your own ‘Popes’ who you all prefer to refer to as your ‘PATRIARCH’, the ‘Holy Father’ of YOUR particular brand of nationalistic ‘Orthodoxy’!
YOU ‘want a fight’? I’ll GIVE you a fight!
We have all sorts and types in our contemporary World who are doing everything in their powers with the resources at THEIR disposal to DISCREDIT and DISHONOR the ‘Grand Patriarch Of Us All’ Who just so happens to be our DIVINE FATHER in Heaven.
And our Divine Father, our Divine PATRIARCH, sent His Divine Son into our world to be our Divine Teacher, Divine Savior and Divine Lord.
And this Divine Lord of OURS conferred His Own Divine Commission onto mere mortal men to be POPES, PATRIARCHS, BISHOPS to and for the entire Human Race!
Either DEFEND your own Religious and Spiritual FAMILY here on earth – the Church Militant and ACCEPT there is a Divine Order to both God’s seen and Unseen Creation – and that our God and Father in Heaven is a GOD OF ORDER – or go willy nilly smiling about just how much you like ‘things messy’ and ‘things chaotic’!
– Fr. Joseph
Br. Nathanael,
Can you help me with a link to the acts you referred to? In any case, as Fr. Joseph provided – the word ‘pope’ originally meant nothing more than ‘Father’. It never had the expanded meaning it has today…
Sts. Peter AND Paul were both in Rome, and St. Paul we can assume was also called ‘Father’ by his own spiritual children (alluded to in the N.T.). Paul was also known as ‘Apostle to the Nations’ (Gentiles)…
It’s clear from the disagreement between Peter & Paul over whether or not un-circumcised Christians would have to be circumcised, and the fact that Paul won out – that Peter did not ‘give Papal orders’ as some suggest.
So if St. Paul’s judgement won out over Peter’s; if St. Paul was the Apostle to the nations; if St. Paul was also a Father (papa/pope) who was also martyred in Rome, and if the apostles themselves were equals…
Then was St. Paul also one of the first ‘popes’ of Rome?
I found a quote from Eusebius:
“After the martyrdom of Paul and of Peter, Linus was the first to obtain the episcopate of the church at Rome. Paul mentions him, when writing to Timothy from Rome, in the salutation at the end of the epistle”.
– Eusebius, ‘Church History’ Ch. 2
So Eusibius also (along with Irenaeus) says that Linus was the first ‘Bishop’ of Rome.
St. Peter also ordained at least one Bishop in Antioch… Why then isn’t the Bishop of Antioch considered ‘THE pope’ since he was the FIRST successor to Peter?
Fr. Joseph provides us with:
“Bishop:
O.E. bisceop, from L.L. episcopus, from Gk. episkopos ‘watcher, overseer,’ a title for various government officials, later taken over in a Church sense, from epi- ‘over’ + skopos ‘watcher,’ from skeptesthai ‘look at’.
Given a *specific sense* in the Church, but the word also was used in the N.T. as a descriptive title for elders, and continues as such in some non-hierarchical Christian sects. The chess piece (formerly archer, before that alfin) was so called from 1560s.”
All I’m saying is that Peter wasn’t a Bishop in the *specific sense* in which it is now understood. If Peter was a ‘Bishop’ in Rome – then Paul also was a ‘Bishop’ in Rome at the same time.
And Linus, having had been ordained while Peter & Paul were yet alive would mean that there were (at least) THREE ‘Bishops’ in Rome at that time.
“Pope:
O.E. papa, from M.L. papa ‘bishop, pope’ (in classical L., ‘tutor’), from Gk. papas ‘patriarch, bishop,’ *originally ‘father’*.”
Applied to bishops of Asia Minor and taken as a title by the Bishop of Alexandria c.250. In Western Church, applied especially to the Bishop of Rome since the time of Leo the Great (440-461) and claimed exclusively by them from 1073. Popemobile, his car, is from 1979. Papal, papacy, later acquisitions in English, preserve the original vowel.”
According to that (also from Fr. Joseph’s links), the word ‘pope’ was “applied especially to Bishops of Rome” only from the time of Leo the Great. So before then – many Bishops were called ‘pope’… but it didn’t have the same meaning or carry the same connotations of ultimate power as it does today.
So if Peter was called ‘pope’ – it doesn’t mean much, because many, many Bishops were also called ‘pope’ – but none of them were the ‘supreme commander-in-chief’ of the entire Church.
But I still have yet to see any primary texts which refer to Peter as anything other than an Apostle in Rome… And everything I have read indicates that Sts. Peter and Paul were equals in Rome.
Is it possible that even among the 12, they didn’t know that Peter was the ‘pope’ of ‘popes’?
“Then a dispute arose among them as to which of them would be greatest.”
– Luke 9:46
And what of this?:
” But Jesus called them to Himself and said to them, ‘You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.
Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all.'”
– Mark 10:42-44
I’m not trying to be difficult – I’m just trying to understand… It just seems to me that Peter was never the sole authoritarian dictatorial ruler over the entire Church (which is what the title ‘pope’ means today) and the Bishop of Rome today isn’t either.
Listen to this:
http://audio.ancientfaithradio.com/download.php?podcast=hopko&file=stt_2008-06-25_pc.mp3
The preceding is a podcast by Fr. Thomas Hopko – who is Dean Emeritus of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in new York and he also says that none of the 12 Apostles were actually ‘Bishops’ per se…
Thanks,
†IC XC†
†NI KA†
Fr. Joseph,
You say, “I have been here on RZN for some time now – and ALL I GET from all of you who call yourselves ‘ORTHODOX’ has been HOSTILITY on account of my Catholicism and my Catholic Faith.
So, YOU ARE going to hear it from ME, Prodigal Son…
‘I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY LONGER!'”
In my last post – the first thing that I said to you was:
“I’m not trying to antagonize you… I don’t mean to upset you. If I have that was not my intention – so please forgive me.”
So why are you upset? How do you get “hostilty” from a simple question?
If Peter really was the Bishop of Rome… it should be EASY for you to demonstrate that to me from the earliest Church writings!
You say, “THE LOGOS Divinely Commissions St. Peter to be His ‘BISHOP’ to and for His Church and makes St. Peter the FIRST ‘Pope’!”…
Then why don’t you just prove it to me? Why are you instead getting “MAD AS HELL”?
You say, “THAT IS what all of you here on RZN do when you DENOUNCE and BELITTLE the Bishop of Rome!”
I didn’t “denounce” the Bishop of Rome… I simply asked you to prove to me that Peter was ever called ‘Bishop of Rome’.
It’s obvious that you can’t – and that’s why you’re “MAD AS HELL”!
You say, “YOU ‘want a fight’? I’ll GIVE you a fight!”
I don’t want a fight… I just asked a simple question.
Sorry.
Dear Prodigal Son.
The “Seven Ecumenical Councils” are online in the Nicene Fathers Series.
Simply do an Internet Search: “Nicene Fathers Series.”
I would suggest you begin with Pope Agatho’s opening address to the Emperor in the 6th Ecumenical Council.
His references to St Peter as the first pope of Rome are all over the place. +bn
Dear Prodigal Son,
FACT: St Peter was the First Pope of Rome. (See the Acts of the 7 Ecumenical Councils)
FACT: St Paul Was NEVER a bishop of Rome or any other metropolis. (Your reasoning is not logical).
FACT: St Paul stated in his Epistle to the Corinthians that Christ did not send him to “baptize” (which is the function of Bishops and their presbyters) but to “preach” the Gospel and “ordain” bishops in every city to do the baptizing.
+Brother Nathanael Kapner
I agree with your observation.
I guess we can only laugh at the foolish Zionists who boast of the fact that they have consumed the Vatican’s material apparatus, setup false ecumenism etc.
Sooner or later that same heavenly rock will smash the toes of the Zionist kingdom and sent it straight into the hands of God’s servants.
The Psalms words “Let all nations confess the Lord, for the Earth has yielded its fruits” will be proven. The fulfilment of the Gentiles will finally have arrived.
Meanwhile we can only painfully and patiently wait for this time and pray that it happens sooner rather than later.
MIKEY WEINSTEIN, JESUS-BASHER
What kind of wine has Mikey Weinstein been drinking?
As an anti-Christian Jewish supremacist and as the president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, he’s doing all he can to create an anti-Jewish backlash and help bring about the predicted endtime Holocaust of Jews that’ll be worse than Hitler’s.
Neither Falwell, Hagee nor any other Christian initiated this prediction. But Weinstein’s ancient Hebrew prophets did.
In the 13th and 14th chapters of his Old Testament book, Zechariah predicted that after Israel’s rebirth ALL nations will eventually be against Israel and that TWO-THIRDS of all Jews will be killed!
Malachi revealed the reasons: “Judah hath dealt treacherously” and “the Lord will cut off the man that doeth this.”
Haven’t evangelicals generally been the best friends of Israel and persons perceived to be Jewish? Then please explain the hate-filled back-stabbing by David Letterman (and Sandra Bernhard, Kathy Griffin, Bill Maher etc.) against followers of Jesus such as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.
Weinstein wouldn’t dare assert that citizens on government property don’t have freedom of speech or press freedom or freedom to assemble or to petition the government.
But God-hater Weinstein maliciously wants to eliminate from government property the “free exercise” of religion – especially by evangelicals – a freedom found in the same First Amendment. Significantly, this freedom was purposely listed FIRST by America’s founders!
And Weinstein wouldn’t try to foist “separation of church and state” on strongly-Jewish Israel, but he does try to foist this non-Constitution-mentioned phrase on strongly-Christian America.
In light of Weinstein’s Jewish protectionism and violently anti-Christian obsession, Christians in these endtimes should be reminded of Jesus’ warning in Mark 13:9 (see also Luke 21:12) that “in the synagogues ye shall be beaten.”
Maybe it’s time for some modern Paul Reveres to saddle up and shout “The Yiddish are Coming!”
Dear Fr. Joseph, Lynda etc.
Christ is Risen!
Just to make my self clear one more time, this is mainly for the benefit of the unsuspecting reader of some other posts here.
I am offering an alternative to the implied or unintended views of Papists, who in many cases seem to have no problem mixing or even recommending either Orthodoxy or “Roman Papism” simply to imply that we are the same anyway. We are NOT.
And to make my self clear again, this is NOT a personal attack. I know many good people who are Catholic or Protestants (Including blood-related family and close friends). I believe that Fr. Joseph, Lynda etc. are such good people. I bet that they are indeed Very good people.
BUT, I DO disagree with their Christian outlook and perception, which I truly and genuinely believe is “tainted” somewhat, by heretical doctrine. Don’t like it? Feel free to hate me. But rest assured, I will most definitely not hate you back, no matter what. I pray for most of you.
The problem as I see it, is not with the theoretical institution of the Pope/Bishop of Rome. It even is somewhat irrelevant, who the Pope’s successor was. Not that St. Peter, St. Paul or any other Saint is irrelevant, but rather whether there is any usefulness in determining exactly who he is in this context.
The fact of the matter, as I see it personally, is that the specific Popes as we know them for the years after the Schism, but even more glaringly obviously in the last 150-200 years or so, are not valid Bishops, period.
– Not by their de facto status as deniers of Scripture.
– Not by their de facto status as deniers of the Ecumenical Councils.
– And not by their de facto status as followers of various heretical ideas.
Anyone who gets outraged by the three above statements, need only to be presented with one example of each of these de facto statuses of the Popes, to be convinced in a logical sense. However I am fully aware off course, that the emotional “convincing” takes much, MUCH more and a much longer time.
But regardless, here goes what you don’t want to see, just three logical factual reasons why the Popes are heretics, not because I say so, but because of the facts:
1) The Pope is a de facto denier of Scripture, when they ignore Jesus Christs specific commandment to offer His Most Holy Blood to ALL and not just some.
2) The Pope has a de facto status of a heretic, by disobeying the ecumenical councils, which specifically forbid the changing of even a single word in the Creed.
3) The Pope is a de facto heretic, by his implicit and or explicit acceptance of various heretical ideas such as a obviously diminished Christology and an obviously enhanced Maryology.
Period, The end. That should be enough logical reasoning for anyone. In fact, even just one of the above should be enough. Pick your choice and make the change.
I know this is going to sound offensive etc. etc. I am going to hear, “orthowarp” , etc. etc., “I am angry now”, etc. etc., “could not sleep”, etc. etc. “I do not accept your facts..” etc. etc. kind of thing.
But, then again consider how a “consecration” of Russia by a “Catholic” sounds to many Orthodox. And consider how destructive, offensive and downright disgusting a practice such as the Uniates is to an Orthodox. And consider how an Orthodox views your “holy crusades” as including the slaughter of innumerable Orthodox “Fellow Christians”.
And consider how offensive and angering the various Orthodox martyrdoms by the hands of Papists are. (Recently read the life of the Saint Peter of Aleut, who was tortured and killed by a Spanish Catholic Priest http://orthodoxwiki.org/Peter_the_Aleut )
Thus, let’s agree that some things said (or done) by either side, will sound and/or be offending.
And for all of you Papists who come to this forum, realize, that from time to time, after a clearly Papist comment has been posted, you will get some backlash. It should be no problem to you as you know where you are posting and what the allegiance of this site is.
It is absurd to me that you sound so surprised. If you were not up for an argument, you would not bring up any of your denomination specific ideas, and we’d all be fine and happy. But since you do, I find it absurd that you present so much “sock and dismay”.
If you do not want any backlash, I suggest, you stick with quoting the Bible, which is something that we all agree in at least and not your Pope. But if you do not do this, expect the minor and harmless backlash that you are getting.
The point here is, that the problem as most Orthodox see it, is not institutional or whether Rome should have a Pope etc. etc. It’s not even, whether Rome should be First amongst equals. At least not in a doctrinal sense.
The real problem, is, the radical, absolute, obvious, outrageous, blasphemous (in some cases), refutation of Holy Tradition, including the 7 Ecumenical Councils, and the Bible it self, by the so called Catholics.
That, is the problem – it’s serious error in the matters of Faith. It’s not some kind of peripheral issue to do with authority, “style”, cultural or historical differences. It is pure and universal (within the body of the Papist religious community) heresy and totally objectively as defined by the word heresy.
You cannot lift (from the Greek Aίρω => Αίρεσις => Heresy) previous established and explicitly forbidden to change doctrine and not be “labeled” a heretic. It’s impossible. It’s like refusing to accept to be called white if you are white. It’s absurd.
In short, the problem is true heresy, it is not a matter of “style”. It’s ignoring the Bible and writing your own rules, overriding Jesus Christ’s. And heresy it is, when this happens on a massive scale.
Unfortunately, while this may happen in a small scale with many many people regardless of denomination, even Orthodox people, it is a different matter when these heresies are officially and “authoritatively” presented as “pure doctrine”. That is the problem.
To discuss who is, or where they came from, or who has worldly authority is besides the point.
One should be asking instead:
1) Have they changed the faith that was there since the beginning?
2) Are they ignoring Scripture?
3) Are they disobeying the 7 Original Councils?
4) Are they contradicting with Holy Tradition?
The answers to those are: Yes, yes, yes and YES!
Stav
Stav,
YOU TELL ME which of the 7 Ecumenical Councils gave the BYZANTINE EMPEROR the ‘Divine Power’ TO DEPOSE of a duly appointed BISHOP in Constantinople.
When YOU find that ‘Canon’ in ANY of the 7 Ecumenical Councils the Church THEN, and ONLY THEN, will I accept that ‘Orthodoxy’ is the UNCHANGED Faith of the Apostles.
You EMPERORISTS have your fair share of explaining things to us PAPISTS.
– Fr. Joseph
Stav,
IF the idea ever gets into the thought processes of those heading up the US State Department, US Homeland Insecurity, etc. that by REPLACING the current crop of Orthodox Church Metropolitans here in the USA in order to bring the Eastern Orthodox here in our Masonic United States of America “in-line” with what THEY wish to geo-politically engineer throughout Eastern Europe and on the Russian borders – then PERHAPS you will find yourself thinking like a ‘PAPIST’!
Instead of placing your fidelity and loyalty to the successor of the Apostles to whom the LOGOS INCARNATE entrusted His set of “Keys”, you ‘Emperorists’ placed your trust in the Byzantine Empire.
The Byzantine Empire is NO LONGER with us.
Constantinople is NOT the Christian Capitol of the World.
The Byzantine Emperors are long DEAD and GONE.
Yet, the Most Holy Theotokos herself PROMISED that if the ‘Holder of THE KEYS’ entrusted to him by her Divine Son and the BISHOPS in spiritual union/unity with him performed a PUBLIC and SOLEMN Collegial Consecration of RUSSIA, then her Divine Son would see to it that Satan’s head is CRUSHED.
The BISHOP OF ROME, the Apostolic succesor to St. Peter, the Holder of ‘THE KEYS’ can save the lives of many of the Orthodox Church’s Patriarchs, Metropolitians, Bishops, Clergy and members of the Laity from a Satanic inspired-sought after thermonuclear Third World War.
The Orthodox Church’s hierarchy would rather see our entire Human Race EMBROILED in a Satanic thermonuclear Third World War than to ADMIT that he, the Bishop of Rome, is the holder of those ‘KEYS’!
The Seven Ecumenical Councils AREN’T going to be worth much to people the World over when they are busy picking PLUTONIUM DUST from their nostrils.
And if the current Holder of ‘The Keys’ DOESN’T SUBMIT to the Authority of the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who just so happens to be THE MOTHER of the Logos Incarnate and who just so happens to be the Spiritual Daughter of God the Father and the Spiritual Spouse of God the Holy Spirit as she is BOTH the Mother of the Church as well as God’s Own NEW EVE to and for all of Mankind:
Then as a CATHOLIC ‘PAPIST’ CHRISTIAN, my own Patriarch has seen to it that I shall DIE – and the members of my family shall DIE – and my sons shall DIE – and my grandchildren will DIE.
Christ Jesus had HIS ‘Judas’.
It’s a very distressing and religiously demoralizing thing for a ‘son of the Church’ to have to accept that one’s own ‘Holy Father’ has decided, by his patriarchial powers, to send me and my entire family to the “thermonuclear gallows”.
And all this time – I held that there was this SACRAMENTAL SPIRITUAL UNION between me, my family, my relatives, my friends, my fellow countrymen and our respective Church’s PATRIARCHS!
If ‘patricide’ is the murdering of one’s own FATHER – and if ‘matricide’ is the murdering of one’s own MOTHER – then what is the proper word for one’s own FATHERS or MOTHERS of the Church seeing to it that their SONS and DAUGHTERS are murdered off en masse?
– Fr. Joseph
Dear Br. Nathanael,
Thanks for your reply. I do appreciate it.
I’ve been searching… but I must say – I still haven’t been able to find anything from an early source that names Peter a Bishop or a pope!
I’m really trying!
Are you saying that – of the Apostles… that only Paul was not a Bishop, but that the other Apostles were Bishops?
Or are you saying that Peter was the pope – but that he wasn’t a Bishop?
And if Peter was a Bishop – how is it possible that the Dean Emeritus of St. Vladimir’s Seminary would not know this?
Did you listen to the podcast?
Thanks again!
†IC XC†
†NI KA†
Dear Prodigal Son,
READ THE ACTS OF THE 7 ECUMENICAL COUNCILS.
There you will find MUCH PROOF that St Peter was the FIRST BISHOP OF ROME.
END OF DISCUSSION.
If you CONTEST my ASSERTIONS on this AGAIN I will DELETE YOUR POST.
+Brother Nathanael Kapner
Orthodox Christian
MUCH STUDY OF ORTHODOXY
Dear Fr. Joseph,
I get your point, I really do. But I am not sure that you get mine.
When one person, even if it is an emperor, does something wrong, for their own sake and their own reasons, the error is on their heads.
However, when someone tries and succeeds in establishing heresy in a global fashion, the error is not only on their heads, but also every soul they managed to deceive. And this is what I am saying.
Think about it, everyone of us, has erred in a personal fashion, for example, who can say that they never made an error in mathematics while learning at school? But it is a whole different matter if one tries to pass a mathematical error as fact and tries to force this and establish it as fact.
If you cannot understand the most significant difference in this, then the “error” is on your “personal” part. Heresy, is contagious, and tends to deteriorate over time. Simple transgressions do not exhibit this most terrible consequence.
You also say:
“Constantinople is NOT the Christian Capitol of the World.”
Why dear Fr. Joseph, are you so concerned with what city is the Christian Capital, or who has the authority? Why does it matter so much to you, from what worldly source authority comes from? What secret and hidden obsession is this? What will you possibly use this for if it was proven to be one, or the other way?
The authority comes from God, and may change over time, as per His plan. Authority in the context of the Church, derives from the Grace of God. Jesus Christ is the Authority of the Church and it is Him and His Saints we look to, when we seek confirmation, whether big or small.
The Papist mentality, which primarily and obsessively, seeks a human and/or a city to look up to, a worldly, visible power to stand behind, reveals a profound lack of faith in God. Don’t you see this? Don’t you feel it in your heart?
Stav
Stav,
It was GOD INCARNATE Himself who told His Apostles to make DISCIPLES of all the peoples of the nations of the world.
That it HIS Divine Idea – not mine, not yours and most assuredly NOT the Byzantine Emporer’s.
It follows then that if GOD INCARNATE Himself gives His Divine Commission to His Apostles by which He would build HIS CHURCH here on earth IN ORDER TO ensure His Divine Instructions, Commands, Teachings and Revelation are PRESENTED TO to peoples of the nations of this planet earth of ours, then His Visible Church here on earth has an VISIBLE STRUCTURE.
Christ’s Divine Revelation and Teachings to the peoples of this world is EXOTERIC in nature – and NOT esoteric – Divine Revelation and Teaching are NOT ‘gnostic’!
It is God Incarnate’s Expressed Divine Will that His Divine Revelation to the peoples of this World were communicated by HUMAN BEINGS He Himself placed in charge in and over His Own Church.
Christ Jesus DID NOT give His Divine Commission to the peoples of this world via a “publishing of a book” in Gutenberg’s time – a collection of writings, a ‘Biblia’, a ‘Bible’ from which they could either IMPOSE or EXTRACT their own cock-n’-bull much desired PERSONAL ‘gnostic’ and/or ‘esoteric’ psuedo-Christian, psuedo-religious and psuedo-spiritual constructs, doctrines and dogmas.
That is why our contemporary U.S.A. is so ROYALLY FOULED UP on account of these misled, used, manipulated ‘Christian ZIONISTS’.
It follows then that if the ‘Biblia’, the ‘Bible’ is NOT the final authority of Christ Jesus’ Own Divine Teachings and Revelation, then the 27,000+ denominations which are the result of the Protestant Revolt, their leaders, their pastors, their congregations, their media outlets, mission activities, etc. are REJECTING the Divinely Appointed Leadership of His Church Militant here on earth.
If the PROTESTANTS the world over are REJECTING the Leadership of St. Peter and his successors, then you of the Orthodox Church are doing the same exact thing with the modification that you of the EOC still hold to the DIVINE SACRAMENTS of the Apostolic Church while REJECTING the Head, the Chief of the Apostles who was St. Peter.
Instead of holding St. Peter and his duly appointed successor as holder of ‘The Keys’, the Bishops way back when in 1054 A.D. actually gave those ‘Keys’ to the Byzantine Emperor!
Once again, you of the EOCs break the solidarity of the Universal Church on account of TWO specific reasons – 1) ‘The Filioque’ and 2) the successor of St. Peter being the one who is the holder of the “Keys”.
Being either entirely unaware of or ignorant of the Apostolic Teachings (cf Acts 2:42) is a personal and communal DEFICIENCY in the minds and hearts of the vast majority of people throughout our contemporary World.
The Apostolic Faith has been “crowded out” with the introduction and infusion of any number of STRANGE and FALSE religous doctrines, dogmas, beliefs and practices.
If one CANNOT obtain the Apostolic Teachings and the Apostolic Faith from ANY of these non-Christian and anti-Christian cults, sects and denominations throughout our contemporary World – and if one CANNOT obtain the Apostolic Teachings and the Apostolic Faith from one’s own interpretations of and from ‘The Bible’, then WHERE must people turn to to get the Real, True and Authentic Teachings and Revelation of GOD INCARNATE’S Own Apostles?
From the SUCCESSORS of those APOSTLES!
And it is Christ Jesus Himself Who MAKES A DIVINE COVENANT with all of Mankind and HIS OWN Church here on earth.
The New Covenant of His Body and His Blood are STILL AVAILABLE to every last man, woman and child currently living and alive on planet earth via His Apostolic Church’s Divine Sacrament of THE EUCHARIST!
And Christ Jesus’ Own Covenant with HIS OWN CHURCH is STILL AVAILABLE to those who are the successors of His Apostles who are HIS CHURCH’S BISHOPS throughout this World of ours.
And His Own Church’s BISHOPS can always and everywhere and constantly and immediately CALL UPON Christ Jesus Who is our Human Race’s HIGH PRIEST before the Throne of God for His Divine Help, Guidance, Assistance precisely because CHRIST JESUS HIMSELF promises to remain Ever Faithful to His Church until the End of the Ages of Ages.
His Church’s BISHOPS of our contemporary World can AVAIL THEMSELVES of the Logos Incarante’s Personal Divine Assitance and Help in the face of these horrendous satanic evils, machinations and global conspiracies against BOTH the Human Race and His Own Church in enjoining their spiritual and sacrament SOLIDARITY with the successor of St. Peter who is this holder of ‘THE KEYS’.
If the BISHOP OF ROME who is the current holder of those ‘KEYS’ somehow managed to obtain from his brother BISHOPS throughout this contemporary World THEIR spiritual cooperation in calling upon Those in Heaven for THE LOGOS’ Almighty and Supernatural HELP in dealing with these engulfing oceans of satanic evils, brutality, violence, vice, etc. –
Then our Ever Faithful LORD Who just so happens to be GOD Who is the CREATOR of all that is seen and Unseen will see to it Himself that SATAN’S HEAD IS CRUSHED and with his head, his legions of unseen elemental demonics and his entire cadre of occult/secret-society/Zoharists human dupes, stooges and allies throughout our contemporary World of 2010 Anno Domini.
But the BISHOPS of the EOCs have this “blindness”, this “fixation”, this “mesmerization” which PROHIBITS THEM from seeing the Satanic DANGER hanging over BOTH the Church and all of Mankind.
They are FIXATED on ‘Filioque’.
They are FIXATED upon ‘Primacy’.
They are FIXATED on ‘holding FAST to 950+ year Schism’!
THE LOGOS, to Whom ALL POWER and ALL AUTHORITY over all that is seen and Unseen by His and our Eternal, Almighty and Divine FATHER in Heaven became A MAN.
THE LOGOS, in Divine Obedience to His Eternal and Divine Father, TOOK ON our own Human Nature!
THE LOGOS took on our very own Human Nature in THE WOMB of a Woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, the Most Holy Theotokos.
THE LOGOS wants for ALL THE PEOPLES of ALL THE NATIONS of our contemporary World to both RECOGNIZE and to PUBLICLY HONOR this Woman by whom THE LOGOS took on our very own Human Nature.
And THE LOGOS wants the PUBLIC HONOR of His Mother to be made known WORLD-WIDE via the holder of the ‘Keys’ LEADING all of the Bishops throughout our World in a public and solemn Collegial Consecration of RUSSIA to His Mother’s Most Immauclately Loving and Caring Heart.
Now if the holder of those ‘Keys’ entrusted to the Apostle St. Peter and all of the Patriarchs, Cardinals, Metropolitans, Archbishops, Bishops bethink to themselves that THEY, individually or collectively, are ‘THE LOGOS INCARNATE’ themselves –
And that THEIR ‘authority’ is equal to or GREATER than God’s Divine Authority, then we have the Sin of Adam and Eve having RE-INFECTED the Ecclesiastical Authorities of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by the LOGOS INCARNATE Who entrusted His Divine Teaching and Revelation to all of Mankind to His APOSTLES and their successors.
If our contemporary World Leaders and Global ‘Movers and Shakers’ DON’T WANT TO submit to the Divine Will of Christ Jesus the Divine King of all that is seen and Unseen – and if the contemporary Church’s SUCCESSORS to the Apostles DON’T WANT TO submit to the Divine Will of Christ Jesus the Divine King of all that is seen and Unseen –
Then what Divine Option is there left to GOD HIMSELF but to BURN UP this entire planet earth as per the Mother of God’s 1973 A.D. Messages as Our Lady of Akita, Japan to one Japanese Catholic Carmelite sister, Sr. Agnes?
What good is ANYONE’S “Holy Tradition” if there is absolutely NO DESIRE WHATSOVER to act upon, submit to and OBEY Divine Instructions and God’s Own Divine WILL???
– Fr. Joseph
Dear Fr Joseph,
The salvation of souls is the supreme law of the Church and both you and Br Nathanael are consistently fixed on this.
The prayers of the children of Fatima were consistently fixed on this, the prayer of the Archangel Michael which he taught them was fixed on this. Our Lady at Fatima was fixed on this.
The power of the Keys is to be used for this purpose in the consecration of Russia.
Really, this is not a complicated plan.
Every Rosary said for the intentions of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and our suffering Holy Father brings us closer to the day when our Lord will clear all the obstacles to the consecration and the Holy Father and the bishops in communion with him will act.
Dear Lynda,
If people want to spend their lifetimes in a split-level ranch house with 5, 6, 7 or more bedrooms sitting on any sized parcel of land, have plenty of food to eat and to live in peace with their neighbors and ‘those other people’ who happen to live ‘across the border’ or ‘across the ocean’, that’s perfectly permissible per the Divine Will of God.
But for people to take these human natures of theirs and TO DO EVIL THINGS to those ‘across the border’ and ‘across the ocean’, that is an overt VIOLATION OF and REBELLION AGAINST the Divine Sovereign Will of our All-good God and Creator.
Human beings ARE affected by and wind up using their God-given FREE WILLS in this, His ‘Cause and Effect’ seen All of His Creating by 1) what they know 2) what they believe and 3) by the influences of OTHERS – those ‘others’ include the seen members of our human race – a race of incarnate spirits – AS WELL AS the legions of ELEMENTAL SPIRITS who work incessantly in influencing the KNOWLEDGE, the BELIEFS and the UNSEEN INTERNAL DISPOSITIONS of people the world over.
Christ Jesus, THE LOGOS INCARNATE, took on our human nature in the WOMB OF A WOMAN just over 2,000 years ago – and as God Incarnate Himself REVEALED to our Human Race God’s Own Knowledge Of and For this seen Creation of His and OUR place and part IN it.
God Incarnate, Christ Jesus, the Logos Incarnate IRREVOCABLY gave and gives our Human Race 1) what TO KNOW and 2) what TO BELIEVE.
And it is through the Spiritual Graces of His Own Holy Spirit that He, GOD HIMSELF, grants us these internal unseen dispositions caused by His Divine Life-Giving Graces in order TO ASSIST US in getting on with carrying out His Divine Will for us, for our neighbors, for our fellow countrymen, for our fellow members of the Church, for our entire Human Race.
This WOMAN, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Most Holy Theotokos, happens to be the Spouse of God the Holy Spirit.
She is ‘ONE BODY’ with God the Holy Spirit.
And God the Holy Spirit plumbs the Depths and the Scope and the Breath and the Heights of the Divine Life of God Himself.
If this WOMAN who is Eternally and Spiritually United In Total WITH God the Father as His Daughter, WITH God the Son as His Mother and WITH God the Holy Spirit as His Spouse says to the BISHOPS of her Son’s Church…
…PERFORM A PUBLIC AND SOLEMN COLLEGIAL CONSECRATION OF RUSSIA TO MY IMMACULATELY LOVING HEART in full view – in front of the very eyes of EVERY LAST HUMAN BEING alive on planet earth – and WHEN you do that, my Divine Son, the LOGOS INCARNATE will grant all of you members of the Human Race World PEACE…
…a World Peace on account of the ELIMINATION of Satan’s and his evil hordes SPIRITUAL INFLUENCES of what people the world over KNOW (and don’t know) and what they believe (and don’t believe) and what resides within them 24/7/365 that is INFLUENCING THEM (and not influencing them) in the way they act, behave and conduct themselves…
…then the BISHOPS of her Divine Son’s Church here on earth and dispersed in the midst of all the races of peoples of Mankind really OUGHT TO get on with the Supernatural Business of bringing God’s Own Divine SALVATION and Divine REDEMPTION to all the nations of the peoples of our World.
For THAT is the ‘Divine Commission’ given to them and entrusted to them TO DO!
‘Salus Animus Suprema Lex’
The SUPREME LAW of the Church IS the Eternal Salvation of Human Souls from the clutches and evils of SATAN, his unseen elemental demonic legions and his currently allied human STOOGES, DUPES and ALLIES who have ‘Sold Out’ both the Church and all of Mankind for THEIR ’30 pieces of silver’.
Let us GET ON WITH the Divine Business of seeing to the CRUSHING OF SATAN’S HEAD.
Then – after THAT – we six billion members of the Human Race can get on with OUR business of seeing to it that our God and Creator’s Divine and Holy Will GETS DONE here on planet earth – and ALL OVER and ALL ACROSS this planet earth of ours.
Sheeshhh….I agree with you Lynda…it’s SO SIMPLE – just some honest-to-goodness FAITH IN GOD and some honest-to-goodness OBEDIENCE to His All-good, All-loving and All-merciful Divine Will!
– Fr. Joseph
Dear Lynda and Fr. Joseph,
Salvation is indeed the supreme and good message of Christ.
However, salvation is the profound expression of His LOVE. And LOVE is inseparable from the TRUTH.
Whoever is concerned about SALVATION, should be concerned about LOVE, which in turn, should make them VERY concerned about the TRUTH.
This is one of the reasons why, Jesus Christ described Himself as The Way, The Truth and The Light. In fact, He also said:
“no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
Thus, if you want to get to Him, you should attain the Truth, which is Him. And seeking the Truth, which is Him, is not only equal to seeking Love and salvation but also more importantly, necessary.
It is a fallacy, both in logical terms (as per Jesus Christ’s own words) and spiritually (As per the Divine Law) to attempt to skip and disregard the importance of Love and Truth (Which ultimately is Jesus Christ) as a means to obtain salvation.
Thus, your simplistic reduction of everything that I said to a matter of:
Faith and obedience and looking for salvation just like that without any regard for the truth, will not be effective.
If you want guaranteed salvation, you MUST get to the Truth.
And the Truth is, that as I said in my previous post, the RCC has diluted doctrine and practice. There’s no way around this.
Finally, I have to repeat, and be boring again, that your attempt to “nullify” my claims by trying to present “some other” more important and prevailing matter, will not work.
You try to displace the burning matter of heresy to a lesser importance than the matter of salvation. But you do not realize that salvation is in part a result of pure doctrine, even if it is just practiced purely without explicit knowledge of it.
As usual, your attempt is a classic, sneaky (even if unintended) miss direction. You try to say that what I presented is irrelevant and of little value as compared to the message of salvation. But it is not. Salvation is NOT irrespective of the Truth and His Love.
Thus, your attempt at miss direction, is a failed one and more to the point, reveals your intention to ignore the Truth.
But ignoring the Truth, will not bring you salvation.
Bear in mind, that your attitude, is one that is used by Protestants too, and by other religions/sects too. Many of them, say, that salvation is a matter of personal interpretation or that salvation is something to be achieved by various ways, irrespective of doctrine.
So, in this context, what is your differentiating aspect which allows you to claim that as long as you focus on salvation? The answer is implied, but not expressed: It is your “Church”. And everything that comes with it. Thus, what you are implying, is that you have “settled” the matter of Truthfulness in your religious community and thus you can “go ahead” and attain salvation.
But, you also make another striking assertion (which you have done many times before): You essentially say that all we need to do is to focus on the matter of salvation and forget about the differences in the “Churches”. But then, are you not completely disregarding the importance of the Truth? Is it not true, that there are directly conflicting differences between the OC and RCC?
If there are, then as I have proven above that salvation is inseparable from the Truth and doctrine, then it could not be both that can provide salvation, can they? And if that’s the case (which logically it obviously is), then, are you not saying/implying here that Truth (which is Jesus Christ) does not matter?
I predict, that you will fail to understand all of the above. But then again, this is not really for you, it is for the unsuspecting reader who may have otherwise been “bitten” by your emotional, simplistic and full of logical and spiritual traps, miss placement of the Truth.
Stav
Dear Father Joseph,
I believe that those in power (Freemasons-Jews) in our Churches and governments are really frightened with performing the SOLEMN COLLEGIAL CONSECRATION OF RUSSIA TO Mary’s IMMACULATELY LOVING HEART because this entails a tremendous amount of DIVINE JUSTICE.
Entire nations will be punished for all the damage, pain and sorrow inflicted to others, especially beyond the several “borders”.
And men shall really be afraid of God’s justice!
@Michael K
Well I know nut jobs and hypocrites of all nationalities, religions and levels of intelligence or lack of it.
I live in multicult Canada. I’ve seen Croat Catholic hypocrites and nut jobs, Serbian ones, Italian ones, Ukrainian ones, French ones, Irish ones, Phillipino ones, it goes on and on.
But in every nation and community you also have intelligent and polite people. For example, Prince Aleksandar Karadjordjevic of Serbia is wonderful to talk to. He is a very nice man with a good sense of humour. You should email him some time.
Serge Trifkovic is also a very nice and intelligent Serbian individual you could talk to. I am also told that Radovan Karadjic is very nice to talk to, if you don’t fall for the Jewstream media vilification.
Then there are the people, Serbs and others at the Nikola Tesla Society, and the society of the memorial of the Serbians who rescued American pilots during WW2.
These are not nut jobs.
There is an old saying in Serbian, which other slavic readers here may understand “s kim si, takav si”…the onus is on you to seek out the better of society.
Your frame of reference is severely limited.
Stav,
Accept THE TRUTH – the Logos Incarnate gave KEYS to His ‘Rock’ Apostle, St. Peter.
– Fr. Joseph
What are “The Keys” of the kingdom of heaven?
“‘Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.’ Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Men and brethren, what shall we do?’
** Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.’ **
And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, ‘Be saved from this perverse generation.’
Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.”
– Acts 2:36-42
UN-AMERICANS FIGHT FRANKLIN GRAHAM !
What kind of wine has Mikey Weinstein been drinking?
As an anti-Christian Jewish supremacist and as the president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, he’s doing all he can to create an anti-Jewish backlash and help bring about the predicted endtime Holocaust of Jews that’ll be worse than Hitler’s.
Neither Falwell, Hagee nor any other Christian initiated this prediction. But Weinstein’s ancient Hebrew prophets did.
In the 13th and 14th chapters of his Old Testament book, Zechariah predicted that after Israel’s rebirth ALL nations will eventually be against Israel and that TWO-THIRDS of all Jews will be killed!
Malachi revealed the reasons: “Judah hath dealt treacherously” and “the Lord will cut off the man that doeth this.”
Haven’t evangelicals generally been the best friends of Israel and persons perceived to be Jewish? Then please explain the hate-filled back-stabbing by David Letterman (and Sandra Bernhard, Kathy Griffin, Bill Maher etc.) against followers of Jesus such as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.
Weinstein wouldn’t dare assert that citizens on government property don’t have freedom of speech or press freedom or freedom to assemble or to petition the government.
But God-hater Weinstein maliciously wants to eliminate from government property the “free exercise” of religion – especially by evangelicals – a freedom found in the same First Amendment. Significantly, this freedom was purposely listed FIRST by America’s founders!
And Weinstein wouldn’t try to foist “separation of church and state” on strongly-Jewish Israel, but he does try to foist this non-Constitution-mentioned phrase on strongly-Christian America.
In light of Weinstein’s Jewish protectionism and violently anti-Christian obsession, Christians in these endtimes should be reminded of Jesus’ warning in Mark 13:9 (see also Luke 21:12) that “in the synagogues ye shall be beaten.”
Maybe it’s time for some modern Paul Reveres to saddle up and shout “The Yiddish are Coming!”
PS – Some, like Weinstein, are so treacherously anti-Christian they will even join hands at times with enemies, including Muslims, in order to silence evangelicals. It was Weinstein, BTW, who put pressure on the Pentagon to dis-invite Franklin Graham from speaking there on the National Day of Prayer!
PPS – Weinstein is an echo of the anti-Christian, anti-American Hollywood which for a century has dangled every known vice before young people.
We seriously wonder how soon the lethal worldwide “flood of filth” (global harming!) that Hollywood has created will engulf and destroy itself and help to bring to power the endtime Antichrist (a.k.a. the Man of Sin and the Wicked One)!
Although, if any of you talk about Jews negatively in public he will get arrested.
Isn’t that funny?
A lot of people knew some very deep & creepy Jewish secrets affecting in all the world badly, and they are just reading and leaving comments.
How long will this continue?