OR Staff Introduction: This article is about Judaism as a religion and certain aspects of the culture to which it has given rise. Writers examine religious cultures all the time, sometimes coming to quite negative conclusions about them and their influence. Right now online, you can read articles debating the true origins of the Quran (and if Muhammad even existed), whether the Roman Catholic priesthood is a gay subculture, whether Russian Orthodoxy is a tool of government political control, whether American Evangelicalism is an antisocial cult. Every religion and religious culture is seemingly fair game for examination. Except for Judaism, which is off limits. Any critical appraisal (no matter how mild) of any aspects of Judaism and/or Jewish culture gets immediately labeled as antisemitism. At this point, even criticism of individual Jews (politicians included) is increasingly considered taboo.
Such as situation cannot continue. As a group, Jews exert enormous cultural, political, and financial influence over the United States. This influence has been used to drive fundamental changes in our society. There is a principle in Jewish culture called “Tikkun Olam” (repairing the world) which encourages Jews to change the world for what they perceive as for the better. A short video from the World Jewish Congress on Twitter provides examples. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink is Jewish. His investment fund controls over 10 trillion dollars. In this 2017 video, he was very explicit about using his investment capital to force companies to adopt an ESG agenda. Many more examples can be given of powerful followers of Judaism (whether religious devotees or simply shaped by it culturally) who see themselves as entitled to, perhaps even obligated to, fundamentally “repair” Western culture. As a result, we have every right to honestly examine and appraise both Judaism and Jewish culture. The author of this article would like you to know that this essay may be republished freely without permission.
And all the people answered and said: “His blood be upon us and upon our children.” This imprecation upon the Jews continues until the present day. The Lord’s blood will not be removed from them. This is why it says through Isaiah: “If you wash your hands before me, I will not listen; for your hands are full of blood.” The Jews have left the best heritage to their children, saying: “His blood be upon us and upon our children.”
–St. Jerome, Commentary on Matthew
But these Jews are gathering choruses of effeminates and a great rubbish heap of harlots; they drag into the synagogue the whole theater, actors and all. For there is no difference between the theater and the synagogue. […] They live for their bellies, they gape for the things of this world, their condition is no better than that of pigs or goats because of their wanton ways and excessive gluttony. They know but one thing: to fill their bellies and be drunk, to get all cut and bruised, to be hurt and wounded while fighting for their favorite charioteers.
–St. John Chrysostom, First Sermon Against the Synagogues
Or should Jerusalem not have been subdued, nor the temple laid waste, after the horrible insanity of the Jews against the Lord? Could these things have occurred justly in some other way, and not through the hands of the Romans, to whom the Jews, the enemies of their own life, betrayed our Lord? Therefore, there is a time when the evils of war are also approved justly for those who deserve them.
–St. Basil the Great, Homily Explaining that God Is Not the Cause of Evil
Whoever does not worship the Crucified is to be anathema and ranked with the God-slaughterers.
–St. Gregory Nazianzen, Letter 101.5
And under this [Daniel 7:24] was signified none other than Antichrist, who is also himself to raise the kingdom of the Jews.
–St. Hippolytus of Rome, Treatise on Christ and Antichrist
The Jews will rejoice and give honor to the reign of the antichrist more than anyone else. And he, under pretense of preference, and being industrious with them, will designate for them all a place and the temple.
–St. Ephriam the Syrian, quoted from Fr. Andrew Anderson
So now, since the true Christ is to come a second time, the adversary, taking advantage of the expectation of the simple, and especially of them of the circumcision, brings in a certain man who is a wizard, and most expert in the beguiling craftiness of sorceries and enchantments; who shall seize upon the power of the Roman empire, and shall falsely style himself Christ; by this name of Christ deceiving the Jews, who are looking for the Anointed, and seducing those of the Gentiles by his magical illusions. […] At first indeed he will put on a shew of mildness, (as though he were a learned and discreet person,) and of soberness and benevolence: and having by the signs and lying wonders of his magical deceit, beguiled the Jews, as though he were the expected Christ, he shall afterwards characterize himself by all kinds of excesses of cruelty and lawlessness, so as to outdo all unrighteous and ungodly men who have gone before him; displaying against all men, but especially against us Christians, a spirit murderous and ruthless, merciless and crafty.
–St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Fifteenth Catechetical Lecture
The watchmen were thus instructed by the lawless: Conceal the rising of Christ, and take money, and say that, whilst ye were asleep, the Dead One was stolen from the grave. Who ever saw, who hath heard at any time of a dead being stolen, more especially anointed, yet naked, and with the things appertaining to burial being left behind in the grave? Do not be deceived, O ye Jews, study the prophetic sayings and learn that He is truly the Redeemer of the world and All-powerful.
–Octoechos, Great Vespers, Fifth Tone
Let no one in the priestly order nor any layman eat the unleavened bread of the Jews, nor have any familiar intercourse with them, nor summon them in illness, nor receive medicines from them, nor bathe with them; but if anyone shall take in hand to do so, if he is a cleric, let him be deposed, but if a layman let him be cut off.
–Council in Trullo, Canon XI
For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.
–1 Thessalonians 2.14-16
I don’t care. Good! I hope the Jews did kill Christ. I’d do it again! I’d f*****g do it again in a second.
–Sarah Silverman, Jesus is Magic (2005)
The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don’t believe in authoritarianism. Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream (and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs), its subversive character becomes more charged. … I believe in me. I’m God. Screw God. God is your need to believe in some super being. I am the super being. I am your God, admit it. We’re random. We’re the flea on the butt of the dog.
–Al Goldstein, founder of Screw magazine and pornography pioneer
It was, indeed, not until I re-entered Germany that I understood about hate, a hate that was more than desirable: justified. It escapes us, disappears as the events that engendered it have disappeared. A Jewish poet in an extermination camp prayed: “O God, give me the strength to hate.” … Yet today, even having been deserted by my hate during that fleeting visit to Germany, I cry out with all my heart against forgiveness, against forgetting, against silence. Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate — healthy, virile hate — for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the dead.
–Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Legends in Our Time, chapter 12 “Appointment with Hate”
Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel. … Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created.
–Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, whose funeral in 2013 was thought to be the largest gathering of Jews since the second temple
The clear tradition of the Church is that the Jews hold collective guilt for the death of Jesus and will bring about the Antichrist as their preferred Messiah. But what are we to make of this? Can there be such a thing as collective or ancestral guilt? If Jesus and the apostles were all Jews, then do they also bear this guilt? What about our Orthodox Christian brothers with Jewish ancestry?
An important principle in the New Testament is that ancestry is based on faith. In Galatians and Romans, St. Paul lays out clearly that “that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham” [Galatians 3.7] and that “he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.” [Romans 3.28-29].
But this principle is inverted for the unrighteous. Jesus tells the Jews, “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.” [John 8.44] Likewise, St. John writes, “In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.” [1 John 3.10]
Consider also that many Arab and Greek Christians likely have an Abrahamic ancestor. There were eleven more sons beyond Judah, plus Jacob’s daughter Dinah, plus Esau and his children. And for Abraham himself, he had Ishmael and then six other children from his second wife Keturah. The descendants of Abraham are far more than merely the descendants of Judah. There is also evidence that the Ashkenazi Jews have little or no ancient Jewish ancestry, although this is inconclusive, and academia would never admit it if it were true. [Introductory links here and here.]
After the spread of the early Church, the Jews and other Abrahamites who believed in the Gospel were absorbed into the gentiles and lost their Abrahamic identity. So in a very real sense, the children of Abraham and Jacob by the flesh did enter into the new covenant, and the promise was not merely spiritual.
It is the Jews (and Samaritans) who rejected Jesus that retained their identity. After the destruction of the temple, only the Pharisaical sect was strong enough to survive. All the Jews who have come down to us today are part of this Pharisaical tradition that killed Jesus. There are religious and atheistic Jews, Orthodox and Reformed Jews, libertarian and socialist Jews. But all of these are Pharisees. When Jesus was criticizing their man-made traditions [Mark 7.1-16], these traditions were the beginnings of the Talmud. Jews do not follow the Old Testament or the Mosaic law – they follow the Talmud and other later rabbinical writings. Many Jews do not even know that the prophets exist. Jewish culture is inseparable from the tradition of the rabbinical commentaries, because it is this rabbinical community that has given them their cultural heritage. This is a basic anthropological fact that should not be controversial.
That is to say, the problem is not Jewish genetics. The problem is Jewish culture. The specifics of Jewish culture and its subversiveness have been dealt with enough elsewhere that I will not go into detail here. I would recommend these articles by Roosh as an introduction: here, here and here. They even brag in their own publications about this cultural subversion:
“Jews were among leaders and rank-and-file activists in all the great movements of the past century — labor, civil rights and civil liberties, feminism, environmentalism, gay rights and the crusade against militarism – that have made America a more humane, democratic and inclusive country.”
The Bolshevik Revolution was largely a Jewish movement and had almost universal Jewish support. Jews make up almost every important position in Biden’s cabinet, and Zelensky is a Jew. Presently the Ukrainian government is about to outlaw the canonical Orthodox Church. That is to say, the same religious group of people, who slaughtered priests and dynamited churches a hundred years ago, are doing the same thing again and in the same geographic place. These are not “Nazis” or “Nationalists”. It is the murderers of God who are beating priests in the streets and passing legislation to put an end to the liturgy by force. They are doing exactly what St. Paul warned the Thessalonians of – forbidding the Gospel, being contrary to all men, and filling up their sins to the fullness of God’s wrath. [1 Thessalonians 2.14-16]
But how can they still be murderers of God? That was 2,000 years ago! How can we blame modern Jews for what a tiny fraction of their ancestors did?
The Church is the Body of Christ, and we have been promised the same persecutions that Jesus went through. “The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” [John 15.20] In their attempts to destroy the Church, the Jews continue to murder God. This is most obvious in Europe. In the EU, and especially the UK, it is effectively illegal to be a Christian. The 20th century communist persecutions are well-known enough that there is no need to rehash them here. The Jews also welcomed and collaborated with the Mohammedan invaders of Spain and Eastern Rome, for which they still feel nostalgia. But in America it is more difficult to destroy the Church outright, so they subvert it with homosexuality, divorce and the secularization of Christmas.
Nearly every mid-century Christmas song was written by a Jew. They took our holy day about the Incarnation and made it into something mercantile and nostalgic about snow and Santa. They redefined our holiday for us, although we ourselves really bear the blame for accepting it. Christmas, as we understand it, is a Jewish invention. By erasing the Incarnation from Christmas, they abort the infant Jesus and sell us cheap glittery merchandise made by Chinese slaves. And every year we lap up their slop like a dog and pray for it to snow.
Jewish culture is offended by you, as you are the Image of Christ. Most Jews realize that Jesus was the Messiah, and it drives them to insanity with jealousy to see the gentiles enjoying all the blessings they were promised. This is what Pilate meant by calling Jesus “the King of the Jews,” and his ridicule of the Jews is most strongly felt in Mark 10.9-12:
“But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews? For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy. But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews? And they cried out again, Crucify him.”
Pilate was saying, “You Jews have been talking about this Messiah for centuries. If this man is not him, who possibly could be? How is this man not your promised king?” And they responded, “We have no king but Caesar.” [John 19.15] That is to say, “We do not want the covenant. We do not want the promises. If this man is the promised one of the covenant, then we would rather be pagans than submit to Him.”
And so God gave them what they asked for. You can have the world, or you have God, but you cannot have both. The Jews chose the world. What else could “We have no king but Caesar” mean? “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” [James 4.4]
All of this is to say that the Jews do not bear collective guilt merely because their ancestors murdered God in the distant past. They bear the guilt of deicide because they are still persecuting the Church. They are still murdering the Body of Christ. They are still rejecting the faith of Abraham and the covenant. They are still slandering Jesus and staging show trials in the media. They are still teaching the rabbinical tradition and ignoring the Law and the Prophets. They are still forbidding the Gospel and being contrary to all men. They are subverting all decency and normality to build the religion of the Antichrist, who St. Paul tells us will reign from the third temple in Jerusalem. [2 Thessalonians 2.4] Everything the Jewish culture pushes – feminism, equality, pornography, homosexuality, pharmacology, gun control, mass immigration, global warming cult, electoral subversion, COVID, the military industrial complex – prepares the way for the Antichrist, whom they will accept uncritically.
The Antichrist will be a Jewish homosexual, as Daniel 11.37-38 tells us, “He shall regard neither the God of his fathers nor the desire of women, nor regard any god; for he shall exalt himself above them all. But in their place he shall honor a god of fortresses; and a god which his fathers did not know he shall honor with gold and silver, with precious stones and pleasant things.” We see here that this will be a very mercantile, consumerist religion that is invented for its own sake. Although this passage about the King of the North most directly applies to Antiochus Epiphanes, St. Jerome explains that it is a prototype of the Antichrist as the expected Jewish Messiah:
“But those of our persuasion believe all these things are spoken prophetically of the Antichrist who is to arise in the end time. … It is he who is destined to arise from a small nation, that is, from the Jewish people, and he shall be so lowly and despised that kingly honor will not be granted him. But by means of intrigue and deception he shall secure the government, and by him shall the arms of the fighting nation of Rome be overcome and broken. He is to effect this result by pretending to be the prince of the covenant, that is, of the law and testament of God. And he shall enter into the richest of cities and shall do what his fathers never did, nor his fathers’ fathers. For none of the Jews except the antichrist has ever ruled over the whole world. And he shall form a design against the firmest resolves of the saints and shall do everything [he wishes] for a time, for as long as God’s will shall have permitted him to do these things.” [Commentary on Daniel, verse 11.24]
The Orthodox doctrine of the Antichrist as the Jewish false Messiah is most fully explained in brief in St. John Damascene’s Exposition 4.26, which is the unquestionable golden standard of Orthodox Christian dogma.
Jesus tells us, “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.” [John 5.43] Does that not demonstrate that the Jews rejected the Father and the covenant? Jesus tells us himself that they would rather have any deceiver or scam artist if it means rejecting Jesus. And the Antichrist surely will be the greatest conman in human history.
If Jesus is the way, the life and the truth, then the rejection of Jesus will only lead to chaos, death and falsehood. And this is what the Jews and all post-Christian secularists push. The rejection of Christ never leads to a more ethical, peaceful world. It leads to modern medicine and endless wars. Anyone who consciously rejects Christ will suffer the same depravity of Jewish culture and the same ultimate damnation. The fate of the Jew is the fate of everyone who does not crucify himself and follow Christ unconditionally.
But this collective Jewish guilt can be as easily expunged as any other sin. All it takes is sincere repentance. Historically there are the Catholic saints, John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila, who were from converso families. St. Jerome had many converso friends, particularly St. Epiphanios of Salamis. St Romanos the Melodist was an ethnic Jew. In our own time, and in our own American Orthodox Church, we have Brother Nathaniel and Fr. James Bernstein, among many other less famous but equally inspiring stories. There is also a very good interview on Jay Dyer with an ethnic Jew who became an Orthodox Christian. One of my close Orthodox Christian mentors, a lay leader in the OCA Diocese of the South, is 1/16 Jewish. While you may disagree with many things that some of these people say, no one can deny their sincere commitment, particularly those who are first-generation Christians.
It is easy for a Greek to be Greek Orthodox. It involves some sacrifice for an Anglo to convert. But for a Jew, converting is rejecting his family, social infrastructure and ethnic heritage for the sake of salvation. This is a complete renunciation. The conversos scorned the world, abandoning everything for the sake of Christ. Who cannot admire their dedication? What greater crown could one receive at the final judgment? Are the true conversos not living martyrs?
St. Paul tells us in Romans 11 that “all Israel shall be saved” and that “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” What this specifically means, we do not know. But it is clear in the last days that there will be a return to the covenant for many Jews. In the last century there was a great increase in conversos, although these were a very small portion of Jewry, and very few of them became Orthodox Christians. So there is hope. Not all Jews will accept the Antichrist. Some will turn to the true Christ in the last days and finally break the curses of their ancestors.
And God has certainly not forgotten them. Why did God allow the Holocaust? To bring the Jews to repentance! God did not send Hitler, but in his love God allowed for the Holocaust to teach the Jews to not focus on worldly things, to understand that all their power and wealth could be instantly stolen from them. And God sent his Christians to hide the Jews, risking their own lives with no personal benefit from the purity of selfless Christian charity. Does this not demonstrate God’s provision for his ancient people? And yet the Jews responded with even greater hatred against Europeans and Christians, pouring out their wrath on the Germans for slaughtering them, while forgetting the Germans who saved them and suffered with them. The heroes and villains of Nazi Germany are conflated into a singular German menace that must be excised like a cancer.
Likewise, many Jews seemingly have no gratitude for the American and British soldiers who liberated them. They actively work to destroy our countries to punish us for the sins of other nations. They believe that mass immigration and diversity are the keys to weakening White Christian America so that a Holocaust can never happen again. Even though it was White Christian America that fought against the Nazis and allowed Jews to immigrate here.
This ingratitude and scorn are closely related to what Jesus meant by the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. When God works His providence and love, one is unable to recognize it and responds with even more hatred. If you do not recognize the Spirit when He acts in your life, and if you consider Him to be something malicious, then there is no possibility of repentance. [Mark 3.30]
So there is very little hope for the mass repentance of the Jews, I think. If something as catastrophic as the Holocaust could not cure them of their carnality and worldliness, then I do not think anything can. But it shows that God still has faith in the Jews, regardless of their own faithlessness. “If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.” [2 Timothy 2.13]
Finally, the Jews’ hatred of Christ and his Church is itself a testimony of Christ. That they have such a burning hatred for Christians shows their jealousy. They do not share this hatred for Mohammedans and Buddhists. They do not blaspheme Shiva and Zeus. Even in their rejection of Christ, they continue confessing his relevance and the existential pain they feel over Him. And so in a very real sense, the Jews remain the special people set apart by the ancient covenant. The Jehovah of the Old Testament and his manifestation as the Son of God is imprinted on their souls, and they bear witness to him through their continuous deicide.
— Augustine (Austin) Martin
I commend OR for publishing this despite the taboo nature of the subject. The comments section demonstrates that many are still under the spell and conditioning of the media/educational establishment which forbids us from even mention Jews in the context of discussions regarding the decline of the West and attacks on the Church. This spell was broken for me only because of those like yourselves who were courageous enough to speak out about it. Thank you and I pray that this article is brings many more to an understanding of the seriousness of the issue.
Exactly. The outraged comments here show how “normie” many Orthodox Christians are and how much of the mainstream media mind massage they have allowed themselves to go through. Posting this article is a bold statement that should be commended. Shine a light on the darkness.
This article is wrongheaded, not well constructed, and unnecessarily provocative. I am disappointed that OR published it, for all the various reasons highlighted by the commenters who are pushing back on it. The elites are all some form of satanists or pagans; that is their common characteristic that is germane to discussions of current events.
The satanism and paganism are blatant and strong because Orthodox Christians around the world are weak in faith, love, and repentance. Whose fault is that?
We have published articles touching on Paganism, Gnosticism, Satanism, Freemasonry, Woke as a political religion, and COVIDism. Judaism and Jewish culture also play a role in the weakening of the West. This article was an opening discussion of that role. Practitioners of Judaism are not alone in this, hence all the other articles. In fact, we have intentionally avoided for years publishing anything like this article, primarily because we knew that once we did – a good chunk of people would forget everything else we ever said, and instead focus on how we are singling out “the Jews”.
And to your other point about being weak, that was the central point of the article on UOC Martyrdom and the article on Paganism – we have ourselves to blame for our sorry spiritual state.
This is an important time to begin evaluating where we are. The Israeli Government is persecuting the Church in Israel to the extent that the Church may be extinguished. We are largely silent over this in the West, because any criticism of Israel is likely to get you labeled “antisemitic” which is a death sentence for your career. That is if you don’t land in jail for Hate Speech, an increasing likelihood in many places. The other issue that put this at the forefront of our minds, and made us willing to publish this piece, is the push to present Judaism in an ecumenical fashion as compatible with Orthodoxy. Engagement with Judaism is an urgent priority for the Patriarch of Constantinople:
https://publicorthodoxy.org/2023/04/25/two-people-ministering-the-god-of-abraham-isaac-and-jacob/
The Abrahamic Faith concept is where ecumenism appears to be heading – Judaism, Islam, and all branches of Christianity can be combined into one meta religion. Clearly, we are opposed to that.
So the entire situation is of concern. We should continue to preach and seek the conversion of Jews. Talmudic Judaism is not compatible with Orthodoxy, it is an explicit rejection of Christ, something that 1st Century Judaism was not.
Jews with Marxist beliefs have been at the forefront of our societal breakdown.
So much damage, but as soon as Talmudic Judaism comes up, the conversation is to be shut down. We are not willing to do that.
Your initial inclination to avoid this topic and not go riding “the third rail” was correct. This article does not handle the topic well. The intro/disclaimer at the top is clumsy. The piece should not have been published. The piece on paganism this month was more appropriate to OR in scope, style, and content.
The topic of first-century Judaism being different than modern-day rabbinical Judaism is interesting and is explained in the book “The Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century,” by Stephen de Young. A thoughtful and careful article reviewing that book would have been more profitable and appropriate here.
All your long arguments are vain. You clearly reject the Words of Christ on the Cross:
“Father Forgive them, for they know Not what they do.”
You think you know better than Him. You hold the Jews responsible for their great sin, which Christ has forgiven them for.
You cling to a doctrine of collective guilt; not the Word of God. I urge you to reconsider and repent.
Good topic to discuss with your priest. Have a blessed day.
You are kidding me, right? I could say I forgive you for being an idol, but that would be insulting and you would have to forgive me for being insulting, both are forms of sin (probably your sin more than mine, but again I am not asking for forgiveness, because you need a spanky-spanky, or you will spread your ignorance to others). Your fundamental error is common among the Orthodox who have a strong tendency to go into the ditch on the other side of the road and cannot drive it down the middle of the road, because they cannot be upright in all their ways. The clergy who teach that mess, should be defrocked for malfeasance.
Jesus said I was to forgive my neighbor, but He never said I had to trust him.
Your thinking makes you a co-dependent enabler of abusers in the Church, and I am so tired of the BS.
Let’s just say—for illustration—a mother is in a very abusive situation. At some point, she must take into consideration her own wellbeing (a holy trust) as well as the wellbeing of her children (the holiest trust) and get out. Forgiveness is required for salvation, and, often, the abused will never be able to forgive the perpetrator without getting away from danger.
Here is a story from real life. I was an insurance agent for 20 years having a relationship with all my clients with some level of insight into their situations. In one case, a 30-something woman came in to write auto insurance. Nearly destitute, she could barely afford the premium and paid in cash. When I asked about other drivers who would drive her car she mentioned her “boyfriend”. Knowing that adding him to the policy (DUIs)—the right thing to do—it would put the cost beyond and she would not be able to get car tags to get her to her new job. I wrote the insurance without the “other” driver as liability only, barely getting her over state requirements.
Each month she came in and paid with cash as the bank would not issue a checking account due to some previous transgressions financially. One time she came in to pay; she divulged he was physically abusive, especially when he got drunk he was violent. He was living off of her, and whatever incomes she could muster.
Seeing what the situation was, I advised her to get out as soon as possible or I would be reading about her in the newspaper. Being co-dependent—either for emotional reasons or out of fear—she did not leave.
About 3 months later, she came in; I was stunned; her face was black and blue, eyes swollen. Sitting down in front of me, she told the story of how trying to escape his drunken rage, she ran out, got in the car to drive off. Following her, he jumped on the hood, kicked the windshield in. When she stopped the car, he opened the door, drug her out and beat her. She wanted to know if the insurance would repair the damage as the windshield made it inoperable. But, she could not afford that coverage and was without remedy. I was just glad he did not stab her with a butcher knife.
I did see her months after that, and he was back in jail—as I recall.
Let’s bring it home. The GOA hierarchs are the abusive husband, now showing gross signs of being dangerous. If this is the way they are in public, imagine what they are in private. And, beyond that, I will guarantee you; any pedophiles in the congregations will remain hidden, even protected by these slithering “snakes in the grass”. The GOA is a pedo magnet! We have been pointing fingers at RC for the priest sex abuse of children and we are now in the same boat, and I am here rocking that boat. Some will have to bail, all parents must bail.
If you have not figured it out, let me help you out here:
First they say, “You have no right to be judgmental of anybody” (like the Jews who now run the world). They work by shaming.
If that does not work, then they say: “you must forgive them”—code word for, let them into the Church.
If that does not work, they say, we must let them in order to win them; after all the Church is a hospital.
A special thank you to those who operate this site as it’s a true labor of love. Without pay and a lot of hassle, their reward is God’s smile.
Now then I say, did God Himself repudiate His people? MAY IT NEVER BE! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God did not repudiate His people whom He foreknew . . . (Romans 11:1 – 2,
That was written by the Apostle Paul, who was actually an Israelite from historic Israel. Now, was he actually a descendant of Abraham by blood? Maybe not, but there is a good chance. Are you a descendant of Abraham or the actual Israelite community? Probably not.
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/try-it-youll-like-it-should-jews-proselytize/
Judaism is a religion. At various points in history, it was a very successful proselytizing religion. In the 4th Century, it was still in there slugging it out with the Christian Church for converts. Hence the bad blood between the two communities. At least as far back as the Hasmoneans, Jewish evangelism was quite successful. Had it not been, then Jews would be no more common today than Samaritans. So the greatest odds are that your ancestors converted to Judaism outside Israel at some point in history (prior to the 5th Century, possibly as part of the Khazars, possibly at another juncture) and you actually have zero genetic connection to the Apostle Paul, to Israel, or to the people in the crowd that day who chanted “Crucify Him!”
Also, Rabbinical Judaism with its Talmud did not exist in the 1st Century. That was an entirely different religion based on the existence of the Temple. The early Christians, being Israelites themselves, continued to worship in the Temple even after the Day of Pentecost. The sacerdotal religion based on the Temple and the practices of the Synagogue were continued in the Church, which is the continuation of Israel. The sacerdotal religion of Judaism died with the Temple, and was replaced by a religion of scholasticism and debate.
https://blog.israelbiblicalstudies.com/jewish-studies/jamnia/
So – you are not genetically Israelite. You grew up in a Jewish family, perhaps, but that is a religion and a culture, not a bloodline going back to Abraham. Well, generations of breeding in Europe and elsewhere in a closed-in system that was no longer welcoming converts might be said to have created one. But it is not everlasting and is not related to Abraham. The Judaism of the 1st Century was not the faith you grew up in. Not even close. Jesus did come first to the House of Israel, but chances are very high that wasn’t your family. And, even if it was, the religion your family practiced died in the 1st Century and was replaced by a faith completely foreign to Christ and the Apostles.
The article talks about the religion of modern Judaism as it arose in the 2nd-6th Centuries as a rejection of Christ. Which is factual. The Talmud contains explicit rejections and slander against Christ:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691143187/jesus-in-the-talmud
The article doesn’t blame you for Deicide because you were born into a Jewish family. The article concerns those who willingly, knowingly, embrace Talmudic Judaism with full knowledge that they are embracing the belief that Jesus Christ is in Hell boiling in excrement. It is the religion and the attendant culture that are toxic, not people themselves who are made in the image and likeness of God and can embrace Christ just as they can reject Him.
This is as clear as we can possibly make it. Finally, why did we publish this article? Primarily to counter the increasing movement in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, especially, to engage in ecumenical dialogue with Judaism. This has been labeled, along with engagement with Islam, as a major priority. Patriarch Bartholomew said:
Bartholomew looks very much like he will schism from Russia sometime in the future, and lead whomever will follow him into a syncretistic religion which mixes all flavors of Christianity with Judaism and Islam. Concrete steps towards that, which could very well be the future religion of the anti-Christ, are being made.
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2021-06/abu-dhabi-abrahamic-family-house-2022-human-fraternity.html
This article was not meant to hurt your feelings. It was not meant to be a stumbling block to Jewish conversion. From our perspective as publishers (the author has to speak for himself), our interest in this article was to start a discussion around Jewish cultural influence and to counter the idea that somehow, as both are “Abrahamic Faiths”, Christianity is compatible with Judaism. You can plainly see that it is not, anymore than Orthodoxy is compatible with Islam or Roman Catholicism. We are anti-ecumenical engagement as it harms the unique witness of the Church.
It is probably better, if this hurts your feelings this much, to simply walk away from our site. Have a blessed day.
Are you not “putting the tradition of men”, your theology , overt the Word of God: “Forgive them “ ?
Christ prayed “Forgive Them , for that know not what they do”.
Why can’t you ?
Is your theology preventing you? It seems that your theology is an impediment to your humility
“Collective Guilt”
“Continuous DEICIDE”
All that’s missing are other “Christian” traditional teachings like Jews baking Passover matzah with the blood of gentile children or just plain Murder of innocent Christian children and then even proclaimed them martyrs. Yes among the other traditional folk beliefs in Romania, as literal vampires, where the cruel Vlad the Impaler is a saint compared to lesser dignitaries.
As a child in the fifties I heard your same accusations from others . There wasn’t any nuance about it. Just as bold and absolute a proclamation as your own collective libel. It didn’t affect me as much as my Jewish mother who knew now more than ever that Christians were our enemies. You are a Stumbling Block to me and many. What good do you accomplish? As far as I can I can see, you are the Tares among the Wheat of the Church who Christ will put on His left side on Judgment day. You will cry out Lord ! Lord! He will say I never knew You! You libel the very people Christ came first to
save and block their entrance into the kingdom of heaven. You nearly threw me off the Orthodox path. You and others online. Thank The Almighty I found some humble Orthodox Christians and a Church where I was welcomed.
You are greatly harming the genuine witness and reputation of the true Church in the world.
Do not engage online, if the engagement is going to hurt you spiritually. You are doing the right thing getting offline, and focusing on your local parish. Good move.
We can understand that you feel the way you feel, but we firmly reject your characterization of this article and the intent behind it. One of our contributors is drafting a further response to the article, addressing some of points raised in discussion. We recommend you not read it. In fact, it would probably be best if you never read any of our content ever again. Especially in light of your comment that Christians are your enemies now more than ever. These are not conversations you should participate in. Have a blessed day.
I did NOT say that “ Christians are my Enemies now more than ever”. Your misreading speaks to your own prejudice.
If you read what I said I was discussing my mother’s reaction to my experience as a child with Christian children: that I was called a Christ – Killer. I and every Jew was and collectively responsible for DEICIDE, and as you so charitably add CONTINUING DEICIDE. How do you expect my Jewish Mother or any other Jew to react to a Death by Guilt Sentence? If we Jews are such enemies, to Christians, then we are justified to see Christians and what they represent as a Dangerous enemy.
: Is this Christian Love? This is what You are Defending.
The article speaks for itself. Please go do things that are more productive for you spiritually.
Very interesting that this article was posted on the same day that the OCA released a document in which you can find this heretical phrase – “Christianity regards contemporary Judaism as a true religion and as worshipping the one true God, but considers it to be deficient, since it stumbled at a step where it was called to mount up.” More about that here: https://www.orthodoxtraditionalist.com/post/public-statements-of-heresy-the-oca-s-adoption-of-the-heretical-branch-theory
That is interesting. At the same time it is very revealing that the OCA has totally lost its way, no longer represents anything resembling the Faith of the fathers, and is now on board with the globalists agenda of bringing everything under its control. At least at the leadership level. Some–how many I’m not sure–priests are bucking the abdication and remaining true.
keep in mind what you are looking at is the tip of the iceberg.
The OCA hierarchy is particularly hideous in that it outwardly maintains a facade of being true to the Faith once delivered. Functionally–this all looks planned–, it provides a landing place for those bailing out of the GOA shocked by the public stance favoring LGBT agenda. (They are going for the children–they always do; don’t put yours in harms way ). Bottom line: we hear about Elpi all day long, but nowhere do we hear about–he who shall not be named–the Tisroc (may he live forever [not!]) running the OCA into the ground–hell.
I am willing to bet money it was the Tizroc, who set the wheels in motion for St Tihkon’s to do the Pfizer infomercials. (Still not paid for that? I would go on strike) He is untouchable because he works by subversion always having others do his dirty work–the sure workings of a subvert. Because I have personal experiences with OCA, I have particularly grueling insight. Now others do as well (was that Montana?). Yup, He’s a nasty piece of work–more so because he slithers under the radar all day long: a hidden puppet master. BB & KK (or is it AK), and JP (the “fall guys”) channel him all day long. The source of the commonion is always at the top. (If the GOA is going for the children, make no mistake, the OCA will follow suit, but you’ll never know it until its too late.
In my high honor and respect for these men (tongue in cheek) and for the safety of our children (even the unborn whose mother’s were vaxxed by OCA protocols), I hereby as a duly baptized Orthodox convert dedicate this–one of my favorite (notice the artist’s name)–video unto them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJlN9jdQFSc
This OCA document is problematic for a host of reasons, including the one you mentioned. It includes this patently false line: “Today, many religious Jews entertain a more positive conception of Jesus, regarding him as a good Jew whom his followers misunderstood and deified in a way that He never intended.”
On the OCA website, on the post about this glorious new document, there’s this gem: “because of the technology available, it would be a living document that could be periodically refined and perfected.” Hmmm….that sounds strikingly similar to the political left’s view of the US Constitution (always adapted to fit modern secular views). Why was this document even created? Why was there a need for it? Obviously those are rhetorical questions. I mean, is this supposed to supersede the Canons? It is supposed to supersede Apostolic Tradition and Patristic Teaching? It’s almost like The Church was somehow able to get by for 2,000 years without it.
It’s hard to see this document as anything other than pure ecumenist drivel.
First of all, I cannot believe I’m reading this garbage in Orthodox Reflections.
The Jews that handed Christ over to Pilate was the Sanhedrin, not the masses. They did it secretly, in the middle of the night, because they feared the people would rise against them. The masses couldn’t save Jesus from crucifixion for they would have been slaughtered by the Roman legions there. Besides it was God’s plan to offer Himself up.”Blackrock CEO Larry Fink is Jewish…” Carnegie was a Presbyterian, Rockefeller was a Baptist (who by the way, thought he was doing what God wanted), JP Morgan was an Episcopalian. These men were ruthless in their dealings with people. There are also given credit for using their money to “buy” the election of Wm. McKinley against Wm. Jennings Bryant.”. Jews make up almost every important position in Biden’s cabinet, and Zelensky is a Jew.” And they can’t stand the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. They are also big supporters of Islam. AND the Roman Catholic Democrats in our government support abortion, LGBT agenda, pornography, etc.Biden, Pelosi, Newsome, the Kennedys, John Kerry, ALL ROMAN CATHOLICS. “The Jews also welcomed and collaborated with the Mohammedan invaders of Spain and Eastern Rome, for which they still feel nostalgia.” That’s because there were pogroms, inquisitions, and forced conversions of the Jews by Christians. When Muslims conquered, Jews and Christians were offered dhimmi status, “People of the Book”, who were second class citizens. The Sephardic Jews in Spain were even offered asylum by the Ottoman Turks, to escape the Inquisition.”Nearly every mid-century Christmas song was written by a Jew.” Yeah for money. Mormons don’t believe in drinking alcohol but Marriott hotels, owned by the LDS Marriott family has plenty of alcohol available. How many Christian companies sell kosher foods?”–Al Goldstein, founder of Screw magazine and pornography pioneer” a Jew of course. How about Bob Guccione, Penthouse Magazine founder? Born in Brooklyn, New York, of Sicilian descent and raised Catholic in Bergenfield, New Jersey, the eldest child of Anthony, an accountant, and Nina, a housewife. An altar boy, he considered but rejected entering the priesthood.”Why did God allow the Holocaust? To bring the Jews to repentance! God did not send Hitler, but in his love God allowed for the Holocaust to teach the Jews to not focus on worldly things, to understand that all their power and wealth could be instantly stolen from them.” OH PLEASE! So how do you explain all of the pogroms, inquisitions, forced conversions by the Church? You say “God did not send Hitler…” Did He send the Church to persecute Jews? And what was God trying to tell the Ukrainians massacred by Stalin? How about the victims of Mao? Pol Pot?”And God sent his Christians to hide the Jews, risking their own lives with no personal benefit from the purity of selfless Christian charity. Does this not demonstrate God’s provision for his ancient people? And yet the Jews responded with even greater hatred against Europeans and Christians, pouring out their wrath on the Germans for slaughtering them, while forgetting the Germans who saved them and suffered with them.” Are you familiar with the “Righteous Gentiles”? They are commemorated in Israel at Yad Vashem. I have worked with many Jews on Holocaust projects in Miami, FL. I have met many survivors of the Holocaust. They are very grateful people.Okay enough of this malarky. Will the Anti-Christ be a Jew? Well, George Soros fits the bill. And he’s a Jew has also claimed to feel like he’s very similar to God because he believes he helps people. Are there a lot of Jews that hate Christ and Christians? Yeah, but not ALL of them. AND if they ARE our enemy then Jesus Christ, our Lord God, Savior, AND a Jew, said to pray for them. This article reeks of Jew hating. The Jewish Sanhedrin convicted Jesus, the gentile Romans tortured and killed Him.
We solicited a response to some of your points here in this comment.
https://orthodoxreflections.com/3-harmful-myths-most-christians-believe-about-judaism/
This article is the final straw for me with your publication. I am now unsubscribing. You have published many good things but clearly you go off the deep end from time to time. Your position about an activist Church in the world is against Orthodox tradition. We are in the world but not of the world.
Your obsession with the split in the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine, orchestrated by the globalists and their lackies in the Orthodox Church produces nothing and will produce nothing. The soil of Ukraine is soaked with the blood of Ukrainians and Russians and will continue to be as long as the military industrial complex and the globalists have their way. And they will have their way. You take people away from The Way of Christ by dragging them into the world as if it is our Orthodox Christian role to fix the world.
What can be accomplished in terms of the spiritual elevation of your readers when you focus on things of the world. We are directed to work out our salvation with fear and trembling and that is not done by the waving of flags, pointing fingers and casting stones.
What can be accomplished with this article about Jews that cherry picks paragraphs out of the Fathers treating them on equal footing with Scripture to make a case for collective guilt? What was gained from this article except division, and pain for many? As Orthodox did we not learn about the errors of the Western Church’s dogma that the sin of Adam and Eve was their sin, not a sin handed down to all humans born. As far as you are concerned, I guess not.
I miswrote my second to the last sentence. It should read: As Orthodox did we not learn about the errors of the Western Church’s dogma that the sin of Adam and Eve was handed down and stained all humans born after them. This error is opposed to Orthodox theology that states the sin of Adam & Eve was their sin, aka Ancestorial Sin, and that all babies born are born pure without the stain of sin yet learn sin from their parents and the world.
Greetings Mark –
We never ran an article encouraging the Church to get involved in pure politics. That would be budget allocations, most mundane regulations, etc. What the Church should be involved in is opposition to the redefining of sin as virtues. That includes the elites pushing endless, immoral wars, abortion-linked vaccines, gay marriage, transgenderism, climate extremism which hurts the poor most of all, and protecting religious freedom. These are moral issues, and really should be outside the purview of secular law. Everything should be done decently and in good order by the state, with the Church then free to care for souls and encourage virtue. When sin becomes government policy, is the Church supposed to simply sit back and watch? The Orthodox Churches in traditionally Orthodox nations certainly get involved in things such as stopping “Pride” Parades, the undermining of marriage, surrogacy, gay adoption, etc. Why are our bishops supposed to be silent?
That’s just the thing, Mark, how did we get the Church split? The US acting through its special relationship with the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Had Bartholomew said no, the situation would be immeasurably better for the UOC. But he didn’t. He granted a tomos to schismatics, and set the stage for all the persecution to come. The main flock of the Patriarchate of Constantinople is in the West, especially the US. You are doubtless aware that the Patriarchate is not the Church of Greece, which has a big internal flock in the country. Bartholomew has only a few thousand Christians left in Turkey. Support coming from within the US is instrumental in keeping the Patriarchate afloat.
So our rich, Greek neighbors played a significant hand in the persecution of the UOC. Had the Leadership 100 said “no” to the tomos for the schismatic church, would it have happened? Maybe, since the US govt was pushing it so hard. But we won’t know, since the rich Greeks were onboard.
Which brings up another point, the govt we elect spends our tax dollars enabling Christian persecution. This is being done in our name, whether we like it or not. We are not going to sit back and allow that to happen in silence. The first step in stopping anything is awareness. That is what we have been struggling to build.
We can’t fix the world, Mark. That is up to God. If our focus were on “fixing” the world, then we would be millennialists of the communist / woke / Puritan type. We aren’t. This world was made imperfect by the Fall, and will remain imperfect until the day Christ returns to make the end of this age. In the meantime, we are given a task to spread the Orthodox Faith. Which we support, though many, many other resources are fully dedicated to that task. We are also supposed to stand up for the truth and against corruption. Which is what we do. There is no guarantee we will win any of the fights we highlight. We may all be too far gone. But that doesn’t make the fights any less important. More than once we have said – get your own soul right before anything else. When writing about how to help Ukraine, our first suggestion was pray.
We told you upfront in the introduction what we were trying to accomplish by publishing this piece. “Right now online, you can read articles debating the true origins of the Quran (and if Muhammad even existed), whether the Roman Catholic priesthood is a gay subculture, whether Russian Orthodoxy is a tool of government political control, whether American Evangelicalism is an antisocial cult. Every religion and religious culture is seemingly fair game for examination. Except for Judaism, which is off limits. Any critical appraisal (no matter how mild) of any aspects of Judaism and/or Jewish culture gets immediately labeled as antisemitism. At this point, even criticism of individual Jews (politicians included) is increasingly considered taboo.”
Judaism is a religion (sort of an umbrella actually, but there are significant similarities in regards to what this article addressed in the West), and a related culture. As a general rule, Jewish culture in the West skews towards Left-wing political activism. As noted in the WJC video and the article itself, this is not a secret. Leftist Jews are quite happy to take credit for being at the forefront of LGBTQ rights, climate extremism, CRT, Transgenderism, and even Transhumanism. And we simply can’t talk about any of it, because doing so brings up the dreaded charge of antisemitism. If Buddhists had this amount of economic, political, and cultural power – don’t you think someone might ask a few questions about the Buddhist culture spawning such revolutionary activity?
As for collective guilt, the article makes the case straight up that it is not biologically inherited, or spiritually inherited by those who do not partake of Judaism or the related culture. This is directly from the article, “All of this is to say that the Jews do not bear collective guilt merely because their ancestors murdered God in the distant past. They bear the guilt of deicide because they are still persecuting the Church. They are still murdering the Body of Christ. They are still rejecting the faith of Abraham and the covenant. They are still slandering Jesus and staging show trials in the media. They are still teaching the rabbinical tradition and ignoring the Law and the Prophets. They are still forbidding the Gospel and being contrary to all men. They are subverting all decency and normality to build the religion of the Antichrist, who St. Paul tells us will reign from the third temple in Jerusalem. [2 Thessalonians 2.4] Everything the Jewish culture pushes – feminism, equality, pornography, homosexuality, pharmacology, gun control, mass immigration, global warming cult, electoral subversion, COVID, the military industrial complex – prepares the way for the Antichrist, whom they will accept uncritically.”
This is not about an irreligious man whose great grandfather practiced Judaism, who grew up away from that culture, and is not really even aware of having any Jewish roots. Such a man, in need of Christ as he is, does not partake in any kind of collective guilt. Well, not any more than we are all guilty to a degree of crucifying Christ by our own sinful indifference to our Christian duties. In any case, Judaism is a choice. A person chooses to remain in Judaism, or at least to be influenced by the anti-Christian culture of Judaism that leads to political and cultural radicalism aimed at overthrowing Christian culture and the Christian Church. That is what collective guilt is about – embracing an anti-Christian religion and ideals. Not just being born. This is quite similar to the concept of ancestral sin, versus original sin.
As to what this accomplished? Well, we started a conversation at least that many people would like to prevent from even occurring. We also felt the need to do this because there is ongoing pressure within Orthodoxy in America to change our prayers calling for Jewish conversion, and to acknowledge Judaism as equal to Orthodoxy as an Abrahamic religion. See an example here:
https://publicorthodoxy.org/2023/04/25/two-people-ministering-the-god-of-abraham-isaac-and-jacob/
Changing traditional prayers is unacceptable, as is the impetus behind doing so. The movement, as represented by the Patriarch’s quote above, to make Judaism as “sister” religion is also unacceptable. We should seek the conversion of practicing Jews, just as we should seek everyone’s conversion. If we don’t seek to bring them to salvation, then we don’t love them. So will this article make any difference? Well, it hopefully encourages those who will not accept changing Orthodoxy to be pro-Judaism to speak up. This piece should also help to frame their arguments.
DR Staff,
You made a strong effort to respond to me in detail and I thank you for taking the time. It is a witness to your convictions. While I understand them and the motivation behind them I have no faith that they will produce anything. Except that is in having people focus on what is external to their own spiritual development. I agree wholeheartedly with your statement: “There is no guarantee we will win any of the fights we highlight. We may all be too far gone. ”
I am convinced that there is nothing salvagable in any of society’s institutions, local or global. All are corrupt in one way or another. The ruler of the world has achieved too much to quickly in the last 30 years by taking control of all institutions structurally. He now has all people willingly carrying around in their hands the very tool that enslaves them and takes their children from them.
When you overlay the rapid advent of AI with what this ruler has accomplished so far, his power will be exponentially strengthen over those institutional structures and humanity in general, I see no hope to rescue any semblance of what is fast becoming the old world.
You repeat your charge of deicide by the Jews saying: ” They bear the guilt of deicide because they are still persecuting the Church. They are still murdering the Body of Christ. They are still rejecting the faith of Abraham and the covenant. They are still slandering Jesus and staging show trials in the media. ” Yet there are way more non Jews behind this deicide that you outline than Jews. All of these other groups of humans of every race and religion are doing exactly the same things. Why single out the Jews for what everyone else is equally guilty of? You change nothing by doing so. You only add poison into the waters and push many away from Christ. Starting with Jews who may have started to hear His voice.
I am convinced that humanity is being masterfully farmed by Elites. Their farming techniques are becoming more and more refined and are hugely successful witnessed by the Covid experiment on us farm animals across the world. There is no going back, there is no correcting the wrongs done. There is only forward to the Return of Christ. the Lord rhetorically asked: “when I return will I find any faith.” This means that as we go forward in time there will be less and less humans who know the Lord.
We must focus on the teachings of Scripture and the Sacred Tradition. The world is lost and yes so are many of the Orthodox Churches. Archbishop what’s his name will probably end of as Patriarch of Constantinople. I can say no more. I will not convince you, nor you I. I believe that we can agree that Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Light.
Mark
Curiously, since we started publication 3 years ago, we have been accused of singling out more than one group and “pinning” all the world’s problems on them. If you have read our article on the Political Religion of Woke, you’d see that there is no mention of Judaism. We have also recently run an article on Gnosticism, which was treated as a heresy. One older article pegged the beginning of Ecumenism in Orthodoxy on Freemasons operating within the Anglican Church influencing Constantinople at the end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th. We have also been critical of the Roman Catholic Church, and Protestants. You pointed out yourself the number of articles we’ve run on Christian persecution in Ukraine, which religiously is a conflict between canonical Orthodox and schismatics.
So forgive us if we don’t feel that we are unfairly singling out Judaism. This is simply the latest issue within the Church. You have, by now, read the OCA statement:
Christianity regards contemporary Judaism as a true religion and as worshipping the one true God, but considers it to be deficient, since it stumbled at a step where it was called to mount up
The idea that Judaism (perhaps by extension Islam) is an Abrahamic faith that worships the same God as Orthodoxy is a growing heresy. It is reflected in efforts within the Greek Archdiocese as well. Such as these remarks by the Ecumenical Patriarch:
We’ve been quite clear in denouncing ecumenism with heretical Christian bodies. Ecumenism with Judaism is now becoming a bigger issue, so now we address it as well. This is the kind of movement that can materially change the Faith, and if people are not careful they will fall for it.
As for the Deicide, Talmudic Judaism is unique among the world’s religions in that it specifically blasphemes Christ. Islam, for example, treats Jesus with much more respect as a revered prophet, claiming He actually survived his execution. You can make a good case, actually, that Islam is a Christological heresy. St. John of Damascus considered it as such. But within the Talmud, horrible things are said about Jesus.
The Talmud indicates that Christ is in Hell, boiling in excrement, and the same fate awaits His followers. He is called a sinner and an inciter to idol worship. The Talmud claims the Jews themselves killed Jesus by stoning because practiced sorcery, incited people to idol worship, and led the Jewish people astray.
That is the piece you are missing in this discussion. Talmudic Judaism is not just a competing religion, such as Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism, it is a specifically anti-Christian religion that has achieved massive culture influence within the West. This is a fact that official Orthodoxy seems to be determined to paper over in an effort to achieve some kind of unity with Judaism.
You are worried about Jews hearing God’s voice? They won’t if the official Orthodox position becomes – you are fine the way you are! You don’t need Jesus, whom you revile anyway. Don’t worry, stay in Judaism and be “Abrahamic”. If the ecumenists within our Orthodox ranks are left unchallenged, the same thing will be said to Muslims, to Protestants, to Roman Catholics, etc. If all religions are just “many paths to God” then there is no path to God, and we are all functionally Atheists.
So it is incumbent upon us to point out the truth. Talmudic Judaism is not true. It is not equal to Orthodoxy. It not only rejects Christ, but exults in His death and eternal punishment boiling in excrement. We cannot simply ignore all that in order to curry favor with a group that has accumulated so much cultural, political, and financial power.
And yes, we can all agree that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Thanks for this statement. I personally have not been interested in prophecies of the anti-Christ or end times. Not sure what practical significance there is for the Christian life. The Didache concludes with an apocalypse, which seems to me to be central to Christian theology, but does not layout some kind of detailed historical predictions. These are usually wrong. We live in an apocalyptic age. The media pushes a new apocalypse every week. By the same token we need to understand what is meant by the “spirit of the age,” which, in modern times especially, is the very meaning of the anti-Christ. It’s any political leader or movement that promises salvation, not necessarily one group or person. I had not read Fr. Seraphim Rose’s comments on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I appreciate the link posted below. Fr. Seraphim was always a balanced thinker.
I just want to respond to your claim, “ Every religion and religious culture is seemingly fair game for examination. Except for Judaism, which is off limits. Any critical appraisal (no matter how mild) of any aspects of Judaism and/or Jewish culture gets immediately labeled as antisemitism. At this point, even criticism of individual Jews (politicians included) is increasingly considered taboo.”
I have to disagree. The only religion off limits is Islam. Judaism is constantly slammed. A lot of the time it comes from secular Jews. Look at Bill DeBlasio who went after a sect of Orthodox Jews in the city of New York for their refusal to follow the scamdemic protocols. He wasn’t chastised just because they were Jews. It was because he accused the entire Jewish community instead of pointing out that it was one small sect within the Jewish community. That is just one incident. If I had the time I could find more I am sure.
The article was not simply a critique of “Judaism and/or Jewish culture” it was a generalized condemnation of all of the Jewish community. That being said, as much as I love my Jewish friends, our two belief systems are incompatible. But I give thanks for their ancestors who gave us our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, “a light to lighten the gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.”
Considering the US has destroyed multiple Muslim nations over the past 2 decades (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen), they don’t seem to get much of a pass from us. Further, if you write up an article challenging Islam, you can get it published on any of the mainstream conservative news sites, and maybe even some of the progressive ones, depending on what the topic is. Trust us, we know, as we’ve done it. You can also, right now, find videos on YouTube with scholars openly discussing the following topics:
On the other hand, if you write anything critical of Judaism, Zionism, Israel, or Jewish culture – you are not getting it run any where. A video covering those kinds of topics has a short lifespan on Twitter. Give a speech, successfully get an article out there, shoot a video, and get ready to be cancelled.
Let’s look at a concrete example. Remember the Muslim girl who gave the horrid speech at CUNY Law School graduation? It was a commencement speech. The Muslim girl went after America, capitalism, and all the usual targets. She would never have gotten into trouble over any of it, neither would CUNY. But she also went after Zionism, advocated BDS, and supported Palestinian rights. So now the big guns are coming.
https://www.jpost.com/bds-threat/article-746268
Everyone will cave, of course. They always do. Not endorsing her speech, but simply pointing out that no one would have rushed to defend America or the Christian religion, had those been her sole targets. She could have called for every Christian, every American, every US soldier, whatever to “roast in Hell” and gone on CNN later for a glowing interview. She’d be a leftist hero. But she went into BDS and criticism of Zionism. That gets you hung.
Here’s another example. https://canarymission.org/ Below is from the “About Us” page:
They put college kids’ Tweets out there. Don’t like the treatment of Palestinians? You end up on this site. “Ethnically” Jewish, but converted to Christianity and have some things to say about Judaism, you end up on this site. Support ending US economic and military support to Israel, you end up on this site.
Do you know what happens to the college kids who end up this site? Currently talking to several of them who can’t get jobs. One of them is trying to change his name to escape the cancelling.
So no, sorry. Islam is coddled way too much. But fear of offending Muslims is a much lower tier than what happens if you get branded “antisemitic”.
Of course I accept the evidence you present. regarding the prohibition of anti-Jewish comments, articles, etc. Of course it’s a known fact by those of us who know the Jewish community that Jews who convert to Christianity are shunned by the Jewish community. And I can accept Islam being “coddled way too much.” However, some of the things you point to I just don’t buy. A friend of mine is Jewish. He was an outspoken conservative politically. He now rarely visits with people and only communicates through a secure chat app. He won’t discuss anything that he feels will be scrutinized by the feds. He is also a practicing Jew. If I shared your article with him, he would agree on some points and laugh at others. As I mentioned in my original post a few days ago(which no one responded to), it reads like a blanket condemnation on all of the Jewish community and blames only them for what is wrong with our society.
You w
In this alethophobic age, every critique – no matter how accurately it represents the facts on the ground- is stamped with a pejorative “-ism”. The charge of ‘anti-Semitism” was the loudest and has been the longest lasting and, forgive me, your comment reflects that reality.
Yes, Islam in some ways has been off-limits, but the question is why has then been so? Muslims don’t hold reins of power in politics, activism, finance, media, etc., to anywhere near the degree Jews have and do. This is striking in that Jews are a small minority in the West, yet disproportionately hold and exert this power – not to mention that many of those in power have dual citizenship with Israel. Sure, we can get into controversy in discussing on how this happened, but it does not change this fact.
Getting back to why Islam is ‘off-limits’ in a media landscape which is dominated by Jews, is just the right type of question which needs asking. Israel has been portrayed as a victim for decades, with the Arabs portrayed as the vicious perpetrators. Of course, this ignores the fact of the many Arab and Levantine Christians generalized out of the picture, but you know, we need Evangelical Zionists to get on board and all for the ‘conservative’ wing of Christian suicide. Islam has also served the purpose of mass immigration to Europe which has diluted Christianity – even in its fractured, schismatic forms – has formed the basis for a rootless, secularized, individualistic and thus malleable people open to the suggestions of a media landscape of constant lies and guilt: sexism, racism, ageism, transphobia, ad nauseum. The point is, it seems to me, that Muslim immigration are being used for the same purpose that open Nazis are being used in Ukraine: to break true Christianity even further and mold it into an ecumenist unicult toward the ends of Antichrist.
This is only a brief indication of why this is important today, but when we even cursorily read the Gospels, we already perceive what is writ large today: a gulf between Truth and worldly power; ‘rationality’ based in constantly moving goalposts (then Pharisees, now postmodern ‘thought’), money changing (now changing into digital currency and economic control), etc., etc. toward the ends of ‘changing the world for the better’ (or someone’s better more precisely).
Sure, I don’t think everyone who is ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’ by birth is somehow evil incarnate or a ‘bad person. Racism is a sin because it judges someone’s whole being on their ethnicity. But I think it’s rather naïve to deny the obvious of that which only takes moments to verify by a bit of research, a sense of history and, most importantly, what Scripture says happened from the get-go of our Lord’s ministry. As Orthodox Christians it seems a dangerous game to give in to today’s alethophobia for the sake of worldly niceties in the hopes someone doesn’t call one naughty names. Truth is Who we base our lives in, not the ever-changing tastes of popular decorum.
God bless you for taking the time to read this lengthy post.
What is more and more debatable it is… if the Antichrist is going to be a person or a form of AI. On the other hand, the Socialist doctrine is here to stay. However, his supporters will not understand that the Antichrist will have a Socialist mindset. The Socialists always, eventually, will kill their supporters because they may wake up and retaliate against his power. Only God knows when this thing will happen. Until then we will see the progression of the evil as it is so well described in the Revelations. The eschatological outcome is important for us to prepare for His coming.
It also seems to me that the Russia-Ukraine war is just a smokescreen for cracking down on the church in Ukraine. They drive him inside and blow up the temples from the Russian side.
By calling non-Jews “goyim”, Jews forget (or don’t speak) that they themselves are the “goy”. Because “goy” in Hebrew is a people. No more no less. God told Abraham – I will create “goy gadol” – a big people from your seed.
[…] There is actually good reason to not trust in the goodness of Jewish intentions towards Christians, https://orthodoxreflections.com/collective-guilt-a-theology-of-the-jewish-culture-as-continuous-deic… […]
Excellent article … as a student of church history, Russian history … etc, etc … it echoes many observations over many years as yet unspoken … but perhaps no longer …
While this article is pushing into more the controversial, going closer to the sources of evil, if you really want to smack the hornet’s nest, go into depth of Orthodox clerical involvement with secret societies. (Closets with skeletons? Or just white washed sepulchers…for another time)
For the Jewish world controllers to target the “Jews” in the holocaust is a no brainer. First, it’s a great ploy to hide behind. Who would believe it was Jews—the globalists—who put Hitler in power and targeted Jews—if the hidden history is correct (some say not many Jews were killed, others say it never happened at all, I prefer the former). Second, it forever creates a stigma that Jews are themselves targeted; another veil to hide behind. And it worked perfectly. But, take note these kinds eat their own all the time. Yes, it was Jews who killed Jews (or maybe it was just other Europeans, probably Christians.) And the movie Schindler’s List? Was by….you guessed it, Stephen Spielberg…another Jew. This all makes my head spin, but seems more the fact with each new revelation.
Speaking of secret societies, the connection between the two is unmistakable; Freemasonry is the Jewish Cabal gone gentile, which is a regurgitation of Egyptian, Babylonian cults, which is a cousin to Greek and Roman mythology, blah, blah blah and God just laughs at the whole mess (Ps. 2), and so do I. And here, I sense the squirm. Nevertheless, I have a deputized posse of highly motivated and well-armed angels and I’m not afraid to use it…. a la Ps. 91/90, so just step away from the cursing and nobody gets hurt. Does God have a sense of humor? If He didn’t a lot of folk would be toast rite about now. (About the angels, that’s no joke).
As usual I process everything from the cosmic point of view, it all has to fit, and be explained in the universal context of the Everlasting Covenant.
Having listened to Met. Jonah’s videos (good stuff) some years ago, he expressed an interested in Margaret Barker, who—I think—is/was and expert in ancient languages and examined archeological digging and came up with some out of the ordinary conclusions. As I recall MJ’s most enlightening discussion, and I reading her book, it is very safe to assume the Hebrew faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and David not what Jesus encountered in His day; except perhaps in the Essenes, who some of were relatives (feasible). Hebrew and Jew are two very different things. According to Barker—if I recall—the Hebrew Faith was Trinitarian and had a concept of the Holy Virgin. Yeah, how about that?! “Jew” as moniker was only realized at the captivity. King David was not a Jew, but a Hebrew or “son of Israel” according to the covenant of promise.
Along the way something happened. Around the time of Josiah—the guilty party—, a shift took place that brought in something very different, a pure monotheism; that never before existed. Shortly thereafter, they were sold into captivity. The conclusion: the shift from a Trinitarian God to monotheism actually brought about the captivity. Barker demonstrates evidence that the “Jewish” texts—our Old Testament—were altered to hide the shift and make Josiah out to be the good guy, when in fact, he brought about the shift. Barker shows words inserted, not consistent with the grammar of the whole, obvious editing. Bottom line here: the corpus of literature that went into the captivity was a loose assortment—much, much larger—of documents that was edited, compiled, and in some cases wrote for the first time; containing a lot of hind sight, Deuteronomy was probably created there and it does not mesh well with others of the Pentateuch.
Is Barker right? Seems so but sometimes I have reservations about the scale of altering our Old Testament went through (before the LXX), but it could be. It’s true to form; the Jews habitually mess with holy writ to suit their own whims, e.g. translating the Masoretic text, to reduce references to Christ.
In captivity, the temple was lost, many documents regarding the temple were lost, genealogies were lost, and the “rabbis” created the synagogue system as the new locus of culture as an effort to maintain the “Jewish” identity and not be washed out into the general populous—as did the Samaritans.
From that time forward, no longer was the priest central but the rabbi. This shifted Judaism from being sacerdotal to being academic; it’s now about study and no longer worship. With no temple, it was all about the Law and not grace. Everything became about education, but the endeavor was to preserve their identity in captivity.
The second temple was not like the first, many of the old school never accepted it, and that was not edited out of the record. Rather than go into captivity, some escaped to Egypt and their forms of worship reflected the old, never adapting Josiah’s reforms.
When Jesus encountered the Jewish gatekeepers, He had nothing but distain for them, and this was clearly different from how God related to Abraham. What happened? This viewpoint regarding Josiah’s reforms, answers that question.
During the Reformation, the Reformers reached out to the Orthodox in the east for help in “reforming” Christianity in the west. As fate would have it, the eastern fathers were too busy fighting off Islam to give it the attention it needed for a true reformation. So, with many formularies lost, the Reformers took a hard look at Judaism as the model to reform toward, and this is why Protestantism trended toward sermon based whereas Orthodoxy still bears the sacerdotal model of the first temple. Anglicanism, went its own route and kept the sacerdotal early on, while continental reformation trended toward the academic. With the second generation of reformers—Calvin, Zwingli—this accelerated.
During the early development of Christianity from within and outside the Jewish community a few things not in the temple but in the synagogue landed in our temple. When the bishop comes and stands in the middle of the Nave on the little box that is a throwback to the synagogue as the rabbi always spoke in the middle of the people standing on a platform. The concepts of “lines of sanctity”—narthex, nave, and sanctuary—were lost when the temple model washed out in the synagogue. But no harm as Jesus was always in the middle of people.
No doubt for the cradle Orthodox, this article is sort of ho, hum. Orthodoxy has never been enamored with the “Jews” as pointed out in the article. Now, put it over on a site with Evangelical Protestants, and discussion might get brisk.
Today, this is how I connect the dots. Next week, it may have to change.
Margaret Barker is garbage and Metropolitan Jonah’s promotion of Margaret Barker is equally garbage. An Orthodox priest even wrote a short article pointing out some of her main errors, and there are many more. Metropolitan Jonah made a seriously poor judgement call getting into that stuff.
Let there also be the modern Elders and Saints who speak on this here, and God grant the modern-Jews grace to repent. St Paisios, Father Athansios Mitilinaios, St Iustin Parvu, Fr Seraphim Rose on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (published by the same editor, catacomb Russian member SA Nilus, who published the conversation of St Seraphim of Sarov “The Acquisition of the Holy Spirit”.
Blessed Fr Athanasios Mitilinaios, explicator of the Book of Revelation, through the Holy Fathers. Audio lecture, and chapter noted:
13A Pergamos The Throne of Satan.mp3
https://pastebin.com/L6QSnRWR
And now the Lord points out. I know that blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Initially, we need to pay attention to this language of the Lord, a language that we as Christians could not dare to use today. And if we were to use this tome, we would be labeled as harsh, polemic, fanatical, insensitive. And people hate loveless people. Unfortunately, this is the spirit of our times in our ever. So I’m dogmatic and hand holding. Times. Times of unions and unmissable mixtures. The tendency exists among these lovers of all who accuse and criticize those who speak harshly to want them to be godly rather than God, and to be more lenient than God and more polite than God. It’s getting to the point where we need to remind our listeners whenever we are using this language, language of the gospel, that that is. By the way, I’m not saying this race, this God is speaking like this, not me. We find ourselves doing this quite often. Now, if price speaks like this, if the word of God wants to use this sort of language. I am one of his poor servants. One voice inside the centuries. What? Tens of thousands of voices spoke the word of God. Now, who am I to speak on a different tone than the one used by the Lord? Who am I? We must speak with the same language and the same tone of our Lord. And He labels these Jews of Smyrna a synagogue of Satan. A synagogue of the devil and that they blaspheme when they call themselves Jews. But let’s see these things more closely. What is the synagogue of Satan? The synagogue of Satan is the synagogue of those Jews who did not believe in Christ, simply the unbelieving Jews. The title Jew is a title of honor and the Lord himself was a Jew in his human nature. And during his dialog with a Samaritan woman who told her that salvation will come from the Jews. However, this title of Honor to be a Jew, to be a member of the Tribe of Judah was more but more specific, not just a Hebrew or an Israelite, but a Jew, a descendant of the tribe of Judah, the Royal tribe from which Christ would come forth. And this is why Christ, while the Samaritan woman, that salvation is from the Jews. But now, my friends, this title is meaningless simply because the Jews did not believe in Christ, at least in their great majority. And by losing this place of honor, they now remain the fleshly descendants of Judah.
Holy Father Athanasios, Revelation – The Seven Golden Lampstands (Vol 1, ZoePress.com) – audio transcription: “12A The Church of Smyrna”
https://pastebin.com/L6QSnRWR
Revelation 2:9
Revelation 2:9
And now the Lord points out; I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Initially, we need to pay attention to this language of the Lord, a language that we as Christians could not dare to use today. And if we were to use this tone, we would be labeled as harsh, polemic, fanatical, insensitive – and people of hate, loveless people.
Unfortunately, this is the spirit of our times in our ever-so un-dogmatic and hand holding times, the times of unions, and unmixable mixtures. The tendency exists among these lovers of all who accuse and criticize those who speak harshly, to want them to be godlier than God, and to be more lenient than God and more polite than God.
It’s getting to the point where we need to remind our listeners whenever we are using this language, language of the Gospel, that is – by the way, I’m not saying this, God is – God is speaking like this, not me. We find ourselves doing this quite often.
Now, if Christ speaks like this, if the word of God wants to use this sort of language – I am one of his poor servants, one voice inside the centuries where tens of thousands of voices spoke the word of God. Now, who am I to speak on a different tone than the one used by the Lord? Who am I? We must speak with the same language and the same tone of our Lord. And He labels these Jews of Smyrna a synagogue of Satan. A synagogue of the devil and that they blaspheme when they call themselves Jews.
They created the Zionist movement about 180 years ago, which is nothing more than an attempt to take back their rights to punish the nations under the foot of which they were humbled – was Hebrews of the dispersion, and to hold their heads over all the nations and to dominate these nations. This is a terrible reality and this is something very powerful, a very dark power with many tentacles which has spread out and embraces the entire world with a sole purpose to subdue and infiltrate the Christian nations. Mainly, my friends. These are not myths. This is not antisemitism. We are not being prejudiced here.
…
But the important thing here is that the Lord himself classifies the Jews who maneuver by these schemes. He flat out calls them Synagogue of Satan. I don’t believe there could be a more proper and more appropriate description, a more revealing description than the one given by the Lord. And we will see in the following why this happens to be the most revealing description. The fact is that these people infiltrate the political system, the political engine of every nation, every country, and they attempt to hold in their hands the economy of the nations, the stock markets, the government and, if you will, the press. Then mass communication. It is proven that they control the news media. The greatest newspapers of the world are in the hands of the Jews, and they offer the news exactly how they want to. They write exactly as they wish and whatever they want to. This is the way they lord it over the nations. And this can be seen very clearly in the Protocols of the Wise of Zion, a book published last century and now considered a myth in this country only. Do not be fooled. This book is heavily publicized in every language in the European nations. It is quite well known. However, here in the United States, it is very difficult to find. By reading the content of that book, someone can easily see that there are objectives and there are schemes against the nations have been fully revealed and met. But why does the Lord describe them as the synagogue of Satan? He does this and this is a most revealing description because simply the one behind this synagogue of the Jews is Satan.
St Paisios:
It’s possible that you’ll live through much which is described in the Book of Revelations. Much is coming to the surface, little by little. The situation is horrible. Madness has gone beyond all bounds. Apostasy is upon us, and now the only thing left is for the ‘son of perdition’ (2 Thess. 2:3) to come.
The world has turned into a madhouse A great confusion will reign, in which each government will begin to do whatever comes into its head. We’ll see how the most unlikely, the most insane, events will happen. The only good thing is that these events will happen in very quick succession.
Ecumenism, common markets, a one-world government, a single made-to-order religion: such is the plan of these devils. The Zionists are already preparing their messiah. For them the false-messiah will be king, will rule here, on earth.
A great discord will arise. In this discord everyone will clamor for a king to save them. At that moment they’ll offer up their man, who’ll say: “I’m the Imam, I’m the fifth Buddha, I’m the Christ whom Christians are awaiting. I’m the one whom the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been waiting for. I’m the Jewish messiah.”
Fr Seraphim Rose on the Protocols:
https://russian-faith.com/history/fr-seraphim-rose-discusses-jewish-question-protocols-zion-n2386
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was edited and published by Sergei Nilus , who also published the blessed conversation from St Seraphim of Sarov.
-Empress Alexandra’s diary- “Nicholas read to us (Protocols).” April 8, 1918
-Tsar Nicholas’ diary- “Yesterday I started to read aloud Nilus’ book on the antichrist, to which have been added the ‘Protocols’ of the Jews and Masons, very timely reading matter.” April 9, 1918
-The White Army found this very copy in the Tsar’s belongings when they investigated the Ipatiev house after the family was killed.
St Justin Parvu Romania – uncanonized
Therefore I say to you, trust that the Lord will give you power to confess Him. We live in an anarchic world, the entire political class is an enemy of Christ and a servant of evil, that is why even living our simple life without abdicating our Christian principles is a daily confession and martyrdom. So, do not receive this vaccine [swine flu] or anything that the new political powers bring you today. The Zionists rule the world and the Americans work for them and they think they have come to own it because they have no shyness. Everything is in sight and they are aware that they have no opponent to fear and they fight to depopulate the world, with the few who will remain to worship them.
Now they’re studying and sorting, and the way they’re going to distinguish people from each other is the chips. Do you or do you not have a chip? For what is the chip after all? A weapon against Man. And we have no weapons; our youth is weary, that even if they want to rise from the spell in which they live, they have no power.
Our only weapons are only spiritual ones: prayer, humility, love, but also confession [of Faith]. You can’t love without confession [of Faith]. Love is sacrificial, and if we fear to confess the truth, what sacrifice do we have? Or if we do not care about our neighbor who is unaware and we do not inform him and we let him fall prey to this system, what love do we have? Those who still struggle today to awaken their brother, who have not remained indifferent to the future of a nation and a church, those are the children of the love of God, who lay their lives down for their brethren…. It is important to oppose all аntісhrіsts and die with dignity; not to have a cowardly position.”
[On another occasion] “Therefore, you need to pay very close attention, if you are not being told anything in the Church about these things then you need to know that they are being paid to keep silent. And you as simple people, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, rightly feel that there is much more truth coming forth from the little sheep than from the shepherd.
The time will come when you will be sold by your shepherds. They will watch you being ripped apart by the wild beasts and they will not come to your help. Know that these are those apocalyptic times that are about to fall hard on us. An American film was ending concluding microchip = slavery. That is what it means, digital slavery. You do not live anymore, you do not belong to yourself anymore, you are the slave to those that own you.”
https://www.orthodoxtalks.com/elder-justin-parvu/
Dear Editors:
FFT: For those Orthodox who believe we worship the same God as the Jews and Moslems [Roman Catholics and Protestants -all heresy- too]
Doxa to Theo, John DOne God, Same God?
“All religions have the same heavenly Father?” “Of course,” was the Patriarch’s reply, adding: “God is but one, independently of the name we give him, Allah or Yahweh, and so on. God is one and we are his children.”Although the two statements (everyone believes in the same God; and, we are all his children) appear to be self-proclaimed truths, for us Orthodox Christians (and to me, as I understand my faith), they are erroneous, outrageous and totally unacceptable. If the Patriarch is correct what meaning do the words, “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no Savior” (Is. 43:10b-11)? What is he thinking of when he recites the following words in the divine Liturgy (our main worship service): “You are our God, beside You we know of no other [God]” and in the final benediction of the same service, “May Christ our true God… save us…”?No. It’s not a matter of a name (God, Allah, Jehovah, Buddha, Supreme Being, the Power), so that it doesn’t matter what we call Him, as long as we call upon Him. No. Not so! Our God is Christ: “This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:20-21). Outside of Christ every other “god” is an idol.As far as all of us being children of God, clearly we are all God’s creation, but not His offspring. Our heavenly Father has only one Child: Jesus Christ. However, we all have the potentiality to become His children (by adoption): “To all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12). Therefore, unless we belong to Christ’s family (cf. Heb. 3:6), the Church, we are not His children. https://www.orthodoxwitness.org/do-all-religions-have-the-same-heavenly-father/
And this:“The God of the Orthodox Church is the God of revelation, the God Who revealed Himself to the Prophets, Apostles and saints of every age, who are described as glorified and are friends of God. The God of the Church is not the God of philosophers and speculative thinkers, but the God of our Fathers. He is revealed to the glorified, to those in a high enough spiritual state to be aware of communion with Him. …Heresy is a denial of the methodology for knowing God. It replaces purification, illumination and glorification with speculation and moralism, so it produces distorted results. Anyone who speculates about God will necessarily end up with mistaken ideas about God and construct his own God in accordance with his conjectures and imagination. Such a god is non-existent.The glorified do not accept speculation in Orthodox theology or moralism in practical life. Instead of Western speculation and moralism they accept hesychasm. Dogma is the formulation of the revelation and is connected with asceticism, which leads man to the revelation.’ – Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, Empirical Dogmatics, vol. 1‘The Satan-led and fetid pan-heresy of Ecumenism adopts and legitimizes all heresies as “churches” and attacks the uniqueness, exclusivity and dogma of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. A new doctrine of the Church has now grown, is being taught and is imposed by the Ecumenists; a new ecclesiology, according to which no group can claim exclusively the character of “Catholic and true Church”—whether heretics, or even the Orthodox Church. Every heresy, even the Orthodox Church, is only a piece, a part of this new Ecumenist “church,” and not the entire Church. All together these heresies with the Orthodox Church compose the new Ecumenist Church.”’ +Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus https://www.orthodoxwitness.org/a-clear-picture-of-ecumenism/See also: One God? FR. EMMANUEL HATZIDAKIS | FEBRUARY 18, 2017 https://www.orthodoxwitness.org/one-god/
[…]Is Yahweh, the God the Jews worship today, the true God?
No, because they don’t worship Jesus Christ either, who is the only true God. Of course there is an objection: “How can the God of the Old Testament be different than the God of the New Testament?” The answer is, It is not a different God; it is the same God! “But if the Jews pray to the God of the Old Testament, then they pray to the true God, right?” Wrong! – Because the God of the Old Testament is Christ! “Where does our Church say that?” It says that in the inscription around Christ’s “crown of light” (halo), “Ο ΩΝ” declaring that Christ is Yahweh, the One Who Is, the “I Am Who I Am,” the God of the Old Testament. That is why when the Lord said to the Jews, “Before Abraham was, I am” (notice, not I was, but I AM), the scripture says, “They took up stones to throw at Him”–because He was appropriating God’s name (John 8:58-59).