Inspired Orthodox Positions

My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE. Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ.

INSPIRED ORTHODOX POSITIONS
By Saint Nicholas of Ochrid

The Lord said: Repent and believe in the Gospel. True repentance is not only to grieve over the sins one has committed but a complete return of the soul from darkness to Light, from the worldly to heavenly, from me to God.

What does faith in the Gospel mean? It means to believe the Good News (Evaggelion) that the Heavenly Messenger (Angel), the Son of God and God brought to the human race. In other words, it is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and His revelation. The Revelation of Christ is the greatest revelation since the creation of the world. It is the only revelation that can change the man-worm into man-god and a son of God.

Only "the One Who descends from Heaven, the Son of Man Who is in Heaven (St. John 3:13)" could bear witness to the world what exists in Heaven, Who God Is, what the spiritual reality is in the other world, how the spiritual world is that encompasses God, and what happens to human souls after bodily death. "What we saw we preach and what we heard we confess (St. John 3:11).

We could say His witness is on a spiritual level, completely empirical. He does not bear witness according to worldly logic, or according to the conclusions of human understanding or according to the wisdom or philosophies of the earthly man but according to Him Who has seen and heard. He is the Heavenly Messenger of the heavenly reality. "And to this end am I come to this world, that I should bear witness to the Truth" (St. John 18:37), which no one of those born on earth could bear witness to accurately. He Himself calls this witness Good News.

The Heavenly Messenger of the Good News bears witness that: God is one, in the Triune harmony of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; that God is not only the Creator but also Father, namely the most beloved and closest relative of all who wish to become His children; that God as Father is True Love, and out of love for the human race He sent His Only-Begotten Son to save the world. He bears witness: that the soul of man has greater value than the whole material world and that there are Legions of innumerable Angels in that world who--sometimes invisibly and at other times visibly, ceaselessly nonetheless--work for people in the events of this world; that after their death, the righteous of this world shine like the sun in the other world; and that the Son of God came down to the world with the purpose of making warmish men the son of God, to make them gods, according to the will and mercy of the Father. He bears witness to the just judgment of God, the Resurrection of the dead and eternal life, and to many more things--none more joyous than the other.

Christ called men to believe this Good News: repent and believe in the Gospel. This means that He called us to believe Him and in Him, in His every word. Since for humans there is no other way to come to the knowledge of the Truth about the most important questions of life and existence, other than accepting to believe His words, seeing as He is an eyewitness to the heavenly and spiritual truths. Either they will believe in Christ or they will continue to walk in the dark and stormy seas of life, guessing and hypothesizing about the earth and the edge of the ocean. A third solution does not exist in the history of the human anthill to this day.

From this it becomes obvious that the Christian faith does not in the least resemble the other faiths and theories of the world, since the other faiths are manmade, from the earth and of the earth, by people who spoke about the spiritual world, either according to their natural reasoning or through the deceit of evil spirits. None of the founders of other religions said about himself that he had descended from heaven, or that he had been sent by the Father, or that he bears witness to that concerning heaven which he saw and heard and that he will return to heaven. For this reason, there can be no talk about the equality of or similarity between the witness of Christ and that of the other religions and confessions of the rest of the world.

Do not ask a Christian if he believes in God but ask if he believes in the Gospel, in the Good News (Evanggelion) of Christ. For if he says he believes in God according to his own logic but not in the Gospel, then he is regressing and is a pagan, since he arrived at faith just as people who lived some two thousand years ago (e.g. some of the philosophers of Greece and Asia). Then for what reason did Christ descend from Heaven? For what reason did He seal with His Blood His revelation to the world, the Good News? Such a Christian has in truth the all Holy Blood of the Son of God on his head like those who cried, "Crucify Him, crucify Him!"

The Holy Orthodox Church--the only Church of Christ in the world--has kept the faith in the Gospel, without looking right or left, without being supported by other faiths, or by pagan philosophies or by the natural sciences. For if one follows a far-sighted and keen eyed leader, it is useless and laughable to ask the crooked and blind for directions.

While Christ says: "without Me you can do nothing" (St. John 15:5), the heretic world in thousands of ways expresses the following saying: "Without Christ we can do everything". The entire contemporary culture is turned against Christ. All the modern sciences complete in seeing who will succeed in serving the hardest blow to Christ's teaching. It is a revolution of the vulgar servants against the mistress of the house, a revolution in our days boils down to what has been written with such clarity: "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:22).

Truthfully, no one knows where the greatest insanity of the modern world that has fallen away from Christ lies: in the each person's private life or in marriage? In school or in politics? In the economic structure or legislation? In war or in peace? Everywhere one sees what we call vulgar and barbaric. Falsehood and violence triumph.

(To be continued)

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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!"--Saint John Chrysostom

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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God

+Father George