Dear brothers and sisters,
I am writing this brief note from the depths of my heart,
firstly to congratulate you for your courage to seek out the true God – our
Lord Jesus Christ – but also for your courage to turn away from Islam and come
to Christianity, even though you are aware that this could mean you will be
facing a deadly danger.
It is my sincere hope that the Holy and True God will
protect you and guide you and your families throughout your new life.
However, this note is also written in the fervent hope of
informing you of something more: to invite you humbly, with love, to acquaint
yourselves with the ancient and authentic, original Church, which was founded
by the God-Man Jesus Christ Himself; that is, the Orthodox Church.
You may
already know, or you may perhaps be hearing it for the first time, that the
Christian group that calls itself “Catholic Church” was created about a
thousand years after Christ, when the Pope of Rome – the spiritual
father of the Christians of Western Europe (that is, the “Patriarch” of the
West) – excised himself (and unfortunately all of the Christian nations in the
West) from the other four Patriarchs of the original Church, who were all co-equal
to him and to each other. The Pope then
demanded that he become the general head of all Christians in the world and,
when he didn’t succeed, then a little after 1000 years after Christ he
separated himself from the rest of the original Church and created, with the
help of European royalty of that time, what is nowadays called “Catholic
Church” or “Roman Catholic Church”.
We Christians who have remained steadfast in the original
Church – that is, the Christians of the East – refer to this religious
community of the Pope more correctly as “Papism” or “Papacy”, (in other words
implying the teachings and the followers of the Pope), and have been waiting
for the past 1000 years for their return to the One and only, ancient and true
Church, of Orthodoxy. We continue to wait, with patience and love,
even though there have been cases (even in the 20th century) where the armies
of the Pope’s followers have victimized our peoples (for example http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/serbian_newmartyrs.aspx).
The Orthodox Church today has nine Patriarchs:
(1) of Constantinople,
(2) of Alexandria in Egypt and all Africa (who has the title
of “Pope and Patriarch” since ancient times),
(3) of Antioch in Syria,
(4) of Jerusalem
(5) of Russia
(6) of Serbia
(7) of Georgia
(8) of Rumania
(9) of Bulgaria
as well as
several independent (“autocephalous”) Orthodox Churches, all co-equal to each
other, which together (and individually) comprise the One, Holy, Catholic (the
Greek word “catholic” means “full”, or “overall” or “universally true”) and
Apostolic Church of Christ – the Body of Christ – having ONLY Jesus Christ as
Her Head, and all of us Orthodox as Her members (1 Cor.12:12-27).
Given that the
Papacy has (from the beginning of its existence) made itself a political power
that thirsted for domination, having its own army and competing against the
kings of Western Europe, many Christians fled from its clutches after 1500
A.D., and created other, new Christian groups which were referred to as
“Protestants”. The main
Protestant groups were the Lutherans (followers of Martin Luther) and
Calvinists (followers of John Calvin), who naturally reached other extremes
themselves, and made their own mistakes.
Anyway, these two
groups eventually splintered into other groups, then others and others, thus
forming what is known today as the “Protestant area”, which contains tens of
thousands of assorted groups and heresies.
It is out of these groups that the so-called “Pentecostals”
appeared in the USA, a little before 1900, who characteristically work
themselves into a trance-like state and are convinced that they have been
visited by the Holy Spirit !!...
All of the above are much more recent “versions” of
Christianity, with absolutely no link to the ancient and authentic Church that
the Lord had founded – which has existed throughout the ages without any
interruption and continues to exist unchanged to this day and is (as mentioned
earlier) the Orthodox Church.
In the Papacy and in Protestantism there have been several
important researchers who sought the authentic form of Christianity, only to
discover that it has been preserved by the Orthodox Church. Many of them even found the courage to
become Orthodox Christians themselves, to tread on the sure and safe path of
salvation, within the Holy Body of Christ.
Some of
these examples are fr.
Placide Deseille, the bishop and New-Martyr of Mexico Paul de
Ballester-Convallier, professor fr. Gabriel Bunge, professor Jean-Claude Larchet, professor and bishop
Kallistos Ware, philosopher and hieromonk Seraphim Rose, fr. Peter Gillquist, Matthew Gallatin,
Klaus Kenneth and many others.
More here:
Without the
need to feel obligated, you might like to research several sources - with a
free conscience – where you will find an abundance of information on the
Orthodox Church.
You could
browse through the following sources:
The books
of the bishops Hierotheos Vlachos, Kallistos Ware and Anthony Bloom and elder
Sophrony of Essex, and websites like these:
Fr. Anthony Alevizopoulos, Th.D., Ph.D, THE ORTHODOX
CHURCH – Its Faith, Worship and Life: http://oodegr.com/english/biblia/orthodox1/orthodox1.htm
Orthodoxy's
Worship, By Protopresbyter Fr. George Metallinos, Dean of the Athens University
School of Theology: http://oodegr.com/english/ekklisia/genika/latreia1.htm
BASIC
DOGMATIC TEACHING – An Orthodox Handbook, by
Protopresbyter Fr. Anthony Alevizopoulos: http://www.oodegr.com/english/biblia/Alevizopoulos_Dogmatiki/perieh.htm
The
Orthodox Christian sentiment regarding the persecutions of Christians by
Islamists: http://o-nekros.blogspot.gr/2014/07/the-orthodox-christian-sentiment.html
You might
note that throughout the 20th century, millions of Orthodox Christians have
suffered exiles, incarcerations, torture or even death for their faith in Jesus
Christ (thus becoming martyrs and saints, many of whom are miracle-workers even
after their physical death), by having stood up to inhuman and anti-Christian
regimes. Some examples:
I would
like to thank you and to congratulate you once again, and I pray to God that we
will one day welcome you into Christ’s holy Orthodox Church – the Church of
Saints – if of course your research leads you here.
With in-Christ love,
Sincerely Yours
Theodore
Riginiotis
Orthodox
theologian
Greece
Translate by K.N.
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