OUR WEBSITE CELEBRATES ON SEPTEMBER 14. IT IS DEDICATED TO THE HONOURABLE (PRECIOUS) AND LIFE-GIVING CROSS OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

In loving memory of my flesh father who taught me the life in our Orthodox Christ. May your memory be eternal, dear brother.

The Holy Light was once again (Pascha 2010) miraculously bestowed upon Christ's Church, the Orthodox Church, and to the Orthodox Church alone, as it has done so for the past 2000 years, it being the Light of the World. As regards the "skepticism" on the Miracle due to the fake "testimonies" of Armenian (non-Orthodox) clerics it should be noted that they often cause problems against Orthodoxy out of jealousy that the Light does not come to them.  Their hatred is not something new, as History clearly shows. Recently (2009 & 2008), members of the Armenian para-church violently attacked the Orthodox as can be seen here. Please also refer to this link for more information on the Miracle of the Holy Fire. For more information please watch the video here (Greek with English subtitles) and conclusions from the conversations on the Holy Fire found here (for now only in Greek). You can download an ISO image of the 2010 ceremony from here.

Red Alert: Dearest Orthodox! Please visit our Dogmatics and Patristic sections to read and distribute new essential articles (those with the New! logo) that centre around the Heresy of Ecumenism. Also please read the Confession of Faith against Ecumenism here and sign it by emailing the Monastic Fathers, if you have not already done so. We have a difficult Cross to carry these days, but do not lose your courage --  the One Ecclesia always prevails in the end!

What is Orthodoxy? According to St. Anastasius the Sinaite, one of the earliest fathers of the Church, "Orthodoxy is a true conception about God and creation". Orthodoxy -the Truth incarnate - is the continuing experience of the Church of Christ on earth, and not some abstract theoretical belief cut off from the real need of today's man or woman (which is the same as the need of any man or woman of any age): salvation.

This age is known by the Fathers as an "age of confusion". Once again, many parts of our world live in times of apostasy away from Christ, and -- not unexpectedly -- the "christs", "eschatologists" and "saviours" have multiplied again, affecting even baptised Orthodox. Even "the elect will be deceived", the Bible reminds us.

And yet, bleak and disheartening the situation may seem, Christ has neither abandoned us nor will He abandon us in the future, faithful to His promise that the "gates of Hades" shall not prevail against His Body, the Church, "until the end of the eon". Even with the deviations of individual people, Orthodoxy as a whole will not go astray despite the persecutions that she faced and will continue to face by the "gates of Hades" (e.g. religions, heresies, political leaders).  For instance, Moslem Turks slaughtered more than 1.7 million  Orthodox Christians in Asia Minor (underlined text leads to useful links) in a period of less than 30 years, by the end of WWI. Ante Pavelic, head of the Croatian Papist Ustase, joined the Germanic-Italian forces in 1941 slaughtering (according to conservative estimates) more than 800 thousand Orthodox Christians in Yugoslavia, an area that recently underwent the cruelty of new "Crusades", this time by NATO. Years before the massacre and dissection of the Serbs that had been foretold by St. Kosmas the Aetolian, Stalin alone had brutally killed an estimated 60 million Orthodox Christians in Communist USSR. Croatia, Romania, Poland; they all had trying fates at various points of their bloody history ... The list of those who tried to attack the Orthodox is endless: In recent centuries, the (Orthodox) Church has seen a much greater persecution than the first Church of post-apostolic years had ever seen.  And yet, these enemies achieved nothing in the end. Orthodox Christianity is still there, a "thorn" to their diabolical plans. Since Christ is at the helm, nothing can destroy Orthodoxy, for "it is painful to kick barefoot on a wall of nails".

Of course, the above sad events only show the hatred of the man-hating devil who uses people to conduct evil against Orthodoxy. We must never forget that despite the persecutions, we are to love our enemies and pray for them: they are only slaves to the man-hating devil, so we must pray that God helps them.Also, Christ allows for us to carry our Cross in this way too for the hardships and tribulations stemming from "external" attacks, aimed against the members of the Church, make sure that She stays strong "in Christ". And, as the Bible reminds us, we did not come into this world to find a snug berth but to prepare for our journey: our true life awaits us after death. As a matter of fact, the greatest proof for the genuineness of Orthodoxy and Her true pride and joy are not so much Her innumerable miracles but Her innumerable mass of martyrs and confessors; for She is "not of this world" and thus the world did hate Her. Our true aim in life is to rise up spiritually towards theosis (glorification) while at the same time shine like "bright lamps" in our world of darkness and thus help ecclesialise the world. After all, that is why we are members of the Ecclesia of Christ: our aim in life is to reach towards theosis and in the process help those around us achieve this goal.

In recent years, however, we have stood witness to the opposite process in many parts of our world, where we let the "fleshly" world change many of us instead. This "Westernisation" of our global society -- viz. the affiliation of the global man to a vain mimicking of our contemporary Western culture, whose distorted ethos is the result of Protestantism's and in effect Papism's poisonous influence on Western society -- makes it very difficult for today's man or woman to seek the Truth, and almost impossible to get answers, honest and in detail. Our pleasure-seeking world of self-centred egotism leaves no room for Christ.

The fleshly "churches" we have created substitute the real Christ with a Christ totally alien to the One presented by the Fathers of the past two millennia, and totally cut off from the Holy Writ and the liturgical life in Christ, dogmas and ethics. Christ is constantly being "corrected" in Papism and has largely been replaced by the Bible amongst the Protestants; in both cases, the Incarnate Logos (Word) is replaced by scholasticism (separation of intellect from life) and heresy.

Most of the "deviations" are not essential except to demonstrate how much their acceptance (aiming at adapting the "easy life" of the Western society with its constant pursuit of success, riches and sensuality in opposition to Orthodox spirituality), has inevitably led to this specific problem. These signs only show the "tip of the iceberg": the underlying problem is a deeply rooted "Westernisation" that hinders in many ways the spiritual progress. Why do we fail to see this sad reality, however? Because modern man and woman cannot usually even formulate the right questions (let alone begin to move up the ladder of perfection) because they have learnt to ignore major issues by behaving like ostriches, hiding their heads in the sand of comfort and material worry and thus stay sadly frustrated. At the same time, contemporary "gates of Hades" (e.g. pseudo ecumenism, media, political correctness, modernism) changed tactics and do not "aim straight". Today they will not so much try to proselytize the Orthodox under fear of the sword, but show a friendly face, to promise riches, to try and confuse, to attempt to present the Truth as scattered, to reward heresies or other enemies of the Truth, to call anyone opposed to their views as "spiritually abusive", "backwards", "fundamentalist"; even "racist". They will always camouflage their attack by a pretense of friendliness. For this reason exactly, they are infinitely more dangerous than they used to be. And modern man and woman are fast asleep in their bed of ignorance!

The above terrifying reality, together with the fact that heresies and para-christian groups have mushroomed in the West, especially in the United States, make the need to speak out clearly and without hypocricy of the utmost urgency. People need to be aware of these realities and learn to stay vigilant. Orthodox Christians in the West need to understand many things about Orthodoxy and how to defend Her from Her enemies, how to hold this treasure that was "entrusted unto them", how to help the people deceived by heresy and its heresiarchs, and how to lead a less comfortable and more ascetic life, so they can begin to climb the spiritual ladder to salvation.

True and false doctrines are not discerned by whether one can logically "deduce" them in some sense from the text of the Bible or the writings of a particular Church Father. Our aim here is not to provide a "logical path" that corrects the errors of Protestants and Frankolatins ("Roman Catholics") because our "logical approach" was somehow "more careful". Orthodoxy is neither based upon the Bible nor is it derived from a set of oral teachings running parallel to the Bible. The Orthodox Church is the living Body of Christ -- the living experience in the history of the union of mankind with God in the divine-human Person of the Only-Begotten. The Prophets, the Fathers, and all the Saints, both of the Old and New Covenant, are those who have seen and heard and touched the Word of Life (c.f. 1 Jn. 1:1). The Divine Scriptures and the writings of the Saints are the written witnesses to this experience, but they are not the source of this experience.

Nevertheless, for reasons of economy (oeconomia or Orthodox "dispensation"), the Orthodox Church has a small presence on the web so that: a.) people away from Christ do not despair, and b.) people who know very little, if anything, about Orthodoxy (even if baptised Orthodox), arm themselves with some knowledge so that, living in this age of confusion, do not fall prey to the half-truths of the heretical and ecumenist beliefs.

We will attempt to present some of the beliefs of the Orthodox Church, using a  "question-answer" format. These are based upon very real conversations from our personal discussion lists, formal discussions, but also answers to informal questions and issues raised by various people in the past 40 years. Next we will compare her beliefs with those of others, examine Ecclesiastical History and Holy Tradition - which we will define and see eventually what exactly it is - so that we can see how all the beliefs, biblical analyses et cetera presented cope with the test of History.  Do they pass it? How about the various "denominations"? What are they trying to hide from you or us? Or perhaps more importantly, what are they trying to hide from themselves? Not all people are well-meaning and interested in the Truth of Christ: we will not shy away from exposing a lot of lies that were created on purpose to distort Holy Tradition as well as other tricks used by various heresiarchs who aim to satisfy their own financial needs and justify their erroneous beliefs no matter what the consequences for the deceived Protestant and Roman Catholic laity, leading thus innocent souls to destruction.

The Orthodox Church is the One Church which always opposes the rationalist and humanist current of the world and has done so for the past two millennia. It is neither Papic nor Protestant, always persecuted - like Her Head was - being the only Church that is truly catholic (whole), nothing less than the One Church of Christ. She receives thus the blessing of ecumenical miracles; miracles that are repeated year after year throughout  the eons in order to show her uniqueness amongst the various other confessions, which cannot receive such miracles in their bosom for they are in heresy and thus void of the grace of Christ in their totality. Miracles such as the Holy Light -- also known as the Holy Fire -- in Jerusalem during the Orthodox Pascha (what is known in the West by the pagan term "Easter"), or the Holy Cloud in the Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor during the Orthodox Feast of the Transfiguration are examples of such ecumenical miracles, largely unknown in the West because the Devil does not wish for these to become more widely known: indeed, each time non-Orthodox confessions attempted to imitate their version of the Liturgy the miracles did not happen to them. However, the Orthodox Church is the only true witness of Christ and her millions of authentic non-demonic miracles shine her authenticity and construct her, through Christ's grace that is with Her. Not because she needs the presence of miracles in order to define her existence based upon these; it is, rather the other way around: the miracles bear witness to her catholic glory upon the already existing set of teachings of the Chief Cornerstone, Christ, found in the Holy Tradition. She is the Church that did not go through reformations or counter-reformations. The Church that did not create "doctrinal developments" to suit the sophistry needs of various heresiarchs. She is the Church that stayed put to the true dogmas and ethics throughout the centuries, going against man's pride expressed by his tendency to seek power (even that of individual Orthodox who went astray at times - for no one is infallible): the Church that is not of this world.

In this light, we shall also present miraculous events in the life of the Church so that: a.) the faithful are nourished by these events and have their faith strengthened; b.)  these are seen as testimonies of the authentic teachings of Christ and a living witness that re-confirms the One Faith, "breathing" the air of the doctrines of Christ upon which they can be evaluated, and  c.) we learn to differentiate in practice between genuine and demonic miracles, by noticing which ones are faithful to Holy Tradition and the life of humility taught by Christ and which ones are not, either cut off demonic events or psychological cult-like phenomena centred upon pride, the seeking of miracles and/or frenetic ecstasy. (Of course, it is not always possible to deduce if an alleged miracle is such nor do we go screaming "miracle! miracle!" whenever some story turns up in the news; clearly there one must always factor "scams" both by only-in-name-Orthodox and non-Orthodox people).

We stress that this web site is not for "ostriches". And it is not for those who believe in self-righteous retribution against others, or for those who believe that they are essentially good and decent people, or for those who seek to understand things only with their rationale.

It is rather for those who suspect they might have the spiritual cancer of heresy and want to see where their man-created congregations have gone wrong. It is for those who are well-meaning agnostics in search of the Truth but have some idea on what the various "Christian denominations" believe. It is especially dedicated to the "lukewarm" in Orthodoxy who know of their spiritual isolation. In other words, it is for all those who while away from Christ, nevertheless know it, realise their sinfulness and imperfection, and cry out together with the Publican of the Parable, with tears in their eyes, for God to forgive them and to show them the Truth, for they cannot find it by their own powers.

And since Christ is the Truth, if you  are well-meaning and good-natured in your approach, you may allow the Spirit to descend upon you dear reader, Who will help you understand the deeper meaning of the words you read. At the same time, if you live in the West, we strongly urge you, the reader, to visit Orthodox monasteries so you can begin to learn how to live the liturgical life of Orthodoxy in a more clear way, and with God's help, find yourself a spiritually adept monastic to act as your spiritual father. Theology (literally "word about God") cannot be separated from the Orthodox life.  We need to be in the right "frequency" to understand some things; our intellect does not suffice. We need the Truth Incarnate; not the relative truths of philosophy that cannot become "incarnated".

We will attempt to show how Orthodoxy is not just a way of life but the Divine Revelation of Christ Who is the Truth; in other words the way of life. If by religion we mean man's attempt to seek God, then we shall see that Orthodoxy is God's attempt to find man. Strictly speaking, Orthodoxy is not a religion.

We sincerely hope these pages will prove useful to your spiritual guidance dear reader. If you are benefited at all by these, please pray for the soul of Orthodox theologians (alive or asleep) the world over, and for the holy monks of the Holy Mountain whose immense guidance turned our life around by 180 degrees. This we dedicate to them.

Know this, dear reader: there is nothing in the world that would give us greatest pleasure than knowledge that you are moving "dynamically" (i.e. with correct praxis, action, Orthopraxis) within Orthodoxy.

May the love of our Christ, through the intercessions of His Saints and His All-Holy Mother, lead you to His Orthodoxy and protect you.

The Eastern-Orthodoxy.com team