Posted on 02/08/2023 6:31:59 PM PST by marshmallow
Originally published at Patristic Faith.
“Christianity must remain eternally unchanging, in no way being dependent on or guided by the spirit of each age. Instead, Christianity is meant to govern and direct the spirit of the age for anyone who obeys its teachings.” - St Theophan the Recluse
Millions upon millions of martyrs; a concrete number is hard to ascertain. Indeed, it is beyond staggering the multitude of lives that were lost to the new world of Secular-Humanistic Marxist dialectic materialism, not only in the former Soviet territories (such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, and so forth) but around the world.
Within this vast number stands an incredible ocean of Christians. Martyrs. Men, women, and children. Bishops, priests, monks, nuns, laity – royalty and peasants; known and unknown. Their stories of courage and steadfastness in Christ are to this day unfolding like a splendid field flowering in the spring.
This period of Christian history should be of utmost importance to contemporary Christians, most of all Orthodox (more Christians were martyred in the 20th century alone than the first three centuries of Christianity combined; we may well wonder how the 20th century is the bloodiest century of human history). Yet, it provides current serious Christians with a model for dealing with the all too similar new world mentalities of our times.
In America and the West, it may act as a guide when one is confronted with various philosophies that desire to radically reform society and all traditional models. The New Martyrs of Rus’, and the persecutions and situations which they endured are an instruction book for Christians of these last times (remember, St. John says, My little children, it is the last hour, 1 Jn. 2:18).
The specific branch of Marxist.......
(Excerpt) Read more at gorthodox.com ...
Ping
Ah, Bolsheviks. Yes......
.
Believers in the same ideology that animates the demonicRAT Party.
The Demsheviks will do exactly the same and so much more if given the opportunity.
Ping!
Save Thy people, O Lord,
and bless Thine inheritance.
Grant victory to Thy Church over her enemies,
and protect Thy people by Thy Holy Cross!
According to The Orthodox Church by Metropolitan Callistos (Timothy) Ware more Christians were Martyred under the Bolsheviks and Stalin than during the first three Centuries.
Yes, he did. No proselytizing of foreign faiths. No LBGYN, CRT, no desecrating churches. etc.
Of the centuries of Russan Orthodox Catholics, I read there were only sixty (60) RO churches left in all the land, I believe it said when Putin came into power. There are now 2000 and growing.
Putin isn’t messing around with modernism. Russians fear it as well. “No salvation outside the Church was true for centuries”, that is until it wasn’t, in the Modern West, so they have no patience for “new” developments.
I’ve read eyewitness reports about this, also quite gruesome accounts of priests nailed to church doors, etc., so gruesome I won’t go into. And listened to accounts of family members of persecuted priests and nuns. It was beyond horrific what went on, and so little published or told about it.
Now for some comic relief. Among the reports, one from Bolshevik officers tasked with informing farming villages that marriage had been abolished in the new commie utopia (around 1921 IRRC) and checking up on compliance. Well, sure enough, they announced but when they returned to a certain village, found the men cowering in a hay crib while the women brandished their spikey pitchforks at them. Seems the women of the village caught their husbands visiting the town pump after the announcement and none too pleased with their menfolk. So out came the pitchforks. Soon afterward, the commies abandoned the abilition of marriage thing.
I wish I could tell it like the original, which was quite funny. What isn’t funny: what communism does to human beings.
Chinese communists did this too. They’d say if you don’t renounce Jesus you can die like Him.
Mere sophistry. Evangelicals - the ones most likely to share the gospel of the NT church - has been the most conservative major religious group, far more than Catholics. So much for the desperate attempt to justify dictator Putin's ban on them as being in order to prevent modern western perversion. And Ukraine has its own spiritual problems as well.
Moreover, the only one true church is the mystical body of Christ which the Spirit baptizes one into (1 Co. 12:13) upon regeneration by heart-purifying faith, (Acts 10:43-47; 15:7-9) and to which Christ is married, (Ephesians 5:30-32) for it alone only and always consists only of true believers, while the organic fellowships which believers are normally part of end up being admixtures of wheat and chaff. In contrast, the RO professes some of the same distinctive Catholic teachings that are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels).
Thus Russia actually needs conversion to true Biblical faith.
2023: Top 10 Countries with the Highest Abortion Rates (annually per 1000 women) - United Nations
2021: Below are the top countries in the world with the high rate of alcohol use disorder in males:
- Russia (16.29%)
- Hungary (15.29%)
- Lithuania (13.35%)
- South Korea (13.10%)
- Latvia (11.54%)
- Belarus (11.43%)
- Estonia (11.09%)
- Niue (10.58%)
- Colombia (10.33%)
- Thailand (10.18%) - https://www.abbeycarefoundation.com/alcohol/alcoholism-by-country-statistics/
| Country | All | Male | Female | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Lesotho | 87.5 | 146.9 | 34.6 | |
 Eswatini | 40.5 | 78.7 | 6.4 | |
 Guyana * | 40.9 | 65.0 | 17.0 | |
 Kiribati | 30.6 | 53.6 | 9.5 | |
 Micronesia | 29.0 | 44.3 | 13.2 | |
 Mozambique * | 23.2 | 42.6 | 8.9 | |
 Suriname | 25.9 | 41.3 | 11.8 | |
 Central African Republic | 23.0 | 39.6 | 9.3 | |
 Russia * | 21.6 | 38.2 | 7.2 | |
 South Africa | 23.5 | 37.9 | 9.8 | |
 Zimbabwe | 23.6 | 37.8 | 13.5 | |
 Lithuania * | 20.2 | 36.1 | 6.2 | |
 Botswana | 20.2 | 35.5 | 7.8 | |
 Vanuatu | 21.0 | 33.1 | 9.0 | |
 Ukraine * | 17.7 | 32.7 | 4.7 | |
 Solomon Islands | 17.4 | 32.2 | 2.4 | |
 Uruguay | 18.8 | 31.1 | 7.7 | |
 Mongolia | 18.0 | 31.1 | 5.6 | |
 Kazakhstan * | 18.1 | 30.9 | 6.9 | |
 Belarus * | 16.5 | 30.1 | 5.3 | |
 South Korea * | 21.2 | 29.7 | 13.4 | |
 Latvia | 16.1 | 29.0 | 4.6 | |
 Cape Verde | 15.2 | 27.4 | 5.1 | |
 Eritrea | 17.3 | 27.2 | 8.3 | |
 Ivory Coast | 15.7 | 25.7 | 5.0 | |
 Zambia | 14.4 | 25.7 | 5.3 | |
 Montenegro | 16.2 | 25.4 | 7.9 | |
 Cameroon * | 15.9 | 25.2 | 7.6 | |
 Namibia | 13.5 | 24.9 | 4.4 | |
 Burkina Faso | 14.4 | 24.5 | 6.5 | |
 Togo | 14.8 | 24.0 | 6.5 | |
 Gabon | 13.1 | 23.3 | 3.8 | |
 Somalia | 14.7 | 22.8 | 7.1 | |
 Slovenia | 14.0 | 22.7 | 5.5 | |
 United States * | 14.5 | 22.4 | 6.8 | More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate#Latest - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate#Latest |
Thanks - anyone who drinks the Putin Kool Aid about Russia being a successful paragon of morality probably was exposed to much lead as a child.
mark
Did you steal your tagline from Saint Theophan?
2nd amendment ping
should you, being Orthodox and possessing the Truth in its fullness, betray Orthodoxy, and enter a different faith, you will lose your soul forever.
.....Russian Orthodox Catholics......
They are really Russian Orthodox Christians!!!!
Please leave the term “Catholic” for the Roman Catholics—except in the Creed—”one holy catholic and apostolic Church”!!
You should read Saint Theophan the Recluse.
It was a tongue in cheek comment because Saint Theophan has written what many Christians think is the most profound work on repentance and salvation ever written outside the Bible. He has written your tagline for you, whether or not you believe it.
I’ve read this work,and have turned to it frequently. “turning the heart to god”
Try it. Even you would admit it. (I think)
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