Cornelius ☦️

Staunch defender of Orthodox Values.
Faith, Family, Fatherland.

1Thessalonians 14-16

[Or☦︎hodemia @LayOrthodemia]

When I was a Protestant, I believed in an invisible church and without realizing it, I had made myself its center. My reading of Scripture was the measure, it really was. If I found people who interpreted it the way I did in some way, we had fellowship. If they didn’t, well they were wrong because this is how I read it and I believe it to be true. The self stayed on the throne. I called it following the Bible which ignorantly and pridefully made me the authority to judge the Holy Scriptures, God's written word which I FELT I HAD the objective meaning 😂🤦🏽‍♂️ absolutely ridiculous looking back at that.

Then the Orthodox Church confronted me. She challenged the presuppositions I had carried for years about Scripture, about authority, about what the Church even is and I found I could not defend them. That didn’t sit well with me at all, I didn’t try to make excuses, but something in me felt dry. Not because I lacked verses but because the framework underneath them did not hold once I looked at it honestly. Man when that happened, I had only a few options. I could submit to the Orthodox Church the Church of 33 AD, born on the day of Pentecost, preserved by the Fathers who received the faith from the hands of the Apostles themselves Or I could remain prideful, keep the self on the throne and call my refusal “conviction.”

That is the choice and it is sharper than most discussions ever admit. It is not finally about which side has the better proof-text. It is about whether the self is willing to be unseated, are you willing to submit to the authority in which Christ has established, are you willing to submit the priesthood and the high priest, are you following the church that is not man-made, but is self identified and self defined? Or are you going to continue to make yourself the sole authority?

This is where the real disconnect between Protestants and Orthodox lies. Orthodoxy does not ask you to find a community that agrees with your reading. It asks you to be incorporated into the Body that has been reading the Scriptures, in the same Spirit, since Pentecost and to receive its mind rather than impose your own. To submit to her own identification and definition.

The Church is a hospital for the sick. We come to her wounded and we get well through the Mysteries, through the life of prayer, through repentance. There is a self-emptying at the heart of it a kenosis, the same self-emptying St. Paul says was in Christ Jesus, who “made himself of no reputation” and humbled himself even to death Phil 2:5-8. The Church confronts our self will, the pride, the thousand small sovereignties we build around ourselves. She does not conform to us. She asks us to be conformed to the undivided Trinity and the truth of his Church.

That is hard. It was hard for me. The framework I came from was built around the sovereign self with a Bible in hand and Orthodoxy meets that self and asks it to be crucified so that Christ can live in it Gal 2:20. No wonder it feels like a wall to so many coming from where I came from. The wall is the self and the door through it is humility. The devil has laid snares all throughout the Earth and just like Saint Anthony the great he says what can get through such snares and he heard a voice saying humility.

This is why the discussions go in circles when they stay at the level of proof-texts. The real difference is not which verse wins. It is whether the self is the measure of the faith or whether the faith is the measure of the self and we orthodox believe that that faith is a lift out faith it is a true living faith, born out of grace and love and a willingness to give everything to Christ and his Church which keep in mind or not two separate things. I had to face that, and submit. The Church of Pentecost was here long before me and will be here long after me. The only real question was whether I would lay down my pride and come in.
I did that. honestly, it took months of prayer, fasting and tears.

[Cornelius ☦️ @JusticeOrthodox]

You would think that ordaining women and allowing them to preach would be enough, they would be happy with ending their revolution against society, and they will finally return to focusing on the word of God.

[Protestia @Protestia]

"I'm not exactly a woman, but sometimes I round up to woman. And I'm White"

Lutheran pastrix (they/them) gives the REAL history of female ordination in the ELCA church.

[UOJ - America @UOJ_America]

LINK:
https://t.co/JMWWVxEoyd

[Orthodox Ethos @OrthodoxEthos]

Dear Protestant apologists and critics:

What do you answer?:

[Jay Dyer @JayDyer]

it cant get any faker and gayer

[Cornelius ☦️ @JusticeOrthodox]

@noetic_healing Have you read the book before criticizing the author and his beliefs exposed in this book? Are you aware of the historical context in which the book was written?

[Protestia @Protestia]

Let's keep this energy going!!!💪💪💪

[RosarySon @SkyVirginSon]

THE EXECUTIONER’S PROBLEM

SHOCKING FACT: Why didn’t the Romans just produce the body?

The easiest way for the Roman Empire and the Jewish Sanhedrin to crush Christianity in 33 AD was simple: produce the corpse of Jesus.

The tomb was sealed with a Roman stamp. It was guarded by an elite squad of soldiers. Yet, weeks later, the Apostles were preaching the Resurrection in the exact same city where Jesus was killed. The authorities used bribes, beatings, and executions to stop them but they never produced the body.

Because the tomb was empty.

Drop a 🔥 if you serve a living King!

[Based Serbia @SerbiaBased]

One of the greatest holy relics of the Orthodox world, the Belt of the Most Holy Theotokos, arrived in Belgrade, where it was welcomed at Nikola Tesla Airport by Patriarch Porphyrios and President Vučić.

The belt will be carried tomorrow through the streets of Belgrade.

☦️

[Cornelius ☦️ @JusticeOrthodox]

Repost of Fr. Purdum.

[InTheFilth @_InTheFilth]

Fr. Jonathan weighs in on "OrthoBros" and @JayDyer 💪

[Orthodoxy Above The Clouds @noetic_healing]

"IN THREE DAYS (from the moment of death to funeral) the body o. Seraphim did not undress, did not begin to decompose, despite the summer heat. The skin did not acquire a gray-brown shade, but remained warm, golden in appearance, was soft like a "sleeping baby", according to one of the pilgrims. Another, a Berkeley professor, said the body was “like holy relics.” Immortality has long been considered a sign of holiness in the Orthodox Church. Everyone in the monastery at that time believed that this was a manifestation of the grace of God.
The face o. Seraphim in the coffin became clearer, smoothened, radiated with peace and happiness, and although the monastic custom prescribed to cover the face of the deceased, they could not do so. He lay as if he was alive, and looked younger than when he was alive. His entire appearance testified to his victory over death, and many people spent long hours praying at the coffin. Little children were hardly forced to be driven out of the church - such was the mood of love, peace. “Sleep now, tired eyes.

-Abbot Damascene-

[Siegfire @SiegfireDotcom]

St. Seraphim of Platina, pray for us! ☦️📿

[TheOrthodoxWay @_theorthodoxway]

“Despair is not for a Christian. Despair is only for a man who is attached to the material.”
- Elder Iustin Pârvu

[𝕊𝕠𝕝𝕒 ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕕 🎚️ @sola_chad]

If atheists actually cared about evidence, they’d be Christians.

[Jay Dyer @JayDyer]

Since according to Vatican 2 Hindus also love the one true “god,” what’s the problem?

[Fr. Daniel☦️ @Fragbaza]

The Forest of Butovo— Where over 1000 clerics were executed

The Butovo Forest was an execution site of the Soviet secret police located near Drozhzhino in Leninsky District, Moscow Oblast from 1938 to 1953.

Butovo was used for mass executions and mass graves during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, with 20,761 prisoners of various nationalities documented as being transported to the site and executed.

In the winter of 1937 a group of priests, including an old bishop, were transported in the "black crow" (Stalin's closed trucks of the Communist secret police) to the scene of the execution. The ground was icy, hard as a rock.

The guards, with their faces covered, ordered them to come out. The procedure was regular, cold and fast. However, something happened that the municipalities did not expect.

As they were set at the edge of the plough, the bishop, with a trembling but clear voice, began to sing "Christ is Risen".
The other priests, instead of crying or asking for mercy, joined him. Their chants echoed in the forest, breaking the absolute silence of death.

An officer yelled to stop, marking the bishop in the face. He looked at him in the eyes with a peace that seemed eerie. "We forgive you, my children," he whispered, "for you do not know what you do." Every time a priest fell into the gap, the next would pick up the hymn from where the previous one had left off.

With the last priest standing, the congregations were frozen. It wasn't the fear of death that shook them, but the lack of fear on the part of their victims. The last priest made the sign of the Cross, blessed his shooters, and fell into the pit before the final bullet was even heard.

It is said that for years later, the inhabitants of the surrounding areas avoided approaching the Butovo Forest. They said that at nights, when the wind was blowing from the north, you could still hear the heavenly chants coming from through the earth.

Today, a magnificent temple is erected on that spot. At its foundations are guarded thousands of objects found in the excavations: small crosses, etc., witnesses to a faith not defeated by bullets.

From the book: Testimonies of Butovos - the Calvary of the Russian New Martyrs.

[UOJ - America @UOJ_America]

MUNICH — According to UOJ sources, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) has canonized Hieromonk Seraphim Rose as a saint. This was first reported by UOJ-Germany.

The decision was reportedly made during Monday's deliberations by the sobor and remains unofficial until a statement is issued by ROCOR. Tentatively, Fr. Seraphim is the first U.S.-born saint of ROCOR and the first American convert to be numbered among the saints.