WatchTower-Stop, February 2009

Plenty laughing from the “Watchtower”.org

2012-01-07T18:54:00.000+02:00

1. Jesus Christ is Governmental representative of his Father!

⁵ Before coming to earth Jesus was called the Word of God. This title shows that he served in heaven as the one who spoke for God.

Book of the “Watchtower”.org “Live forever” p. 58

Comment: Probably the God Father is mute!

2. Jesus Christ is a Businessman!

How Jesus comes to the rescue of Adam’s descendants can be compared to a wealthy benefactor who pays off a company’s debt (incurred by a dishonest manager) and reopens the factory, thus benefiting its many employees.—The Watchtower, February 15, 1991, page 13.

The “Watchtower”, September 1, 2002, p. 23

3. Assemblies in Heaven!

ASSEMBLIES OF SPIRIT PERSONS IN HEAVEN

¹³ Assemblies of those “sons of God” take place from time to time and the Most High God presides over them. He has revealed that fact to us in his written Word. The earliest reports that we find of such heavenly assemblies are recorded in the first two chapters of Job.

Book of the “Watchtower”.org “Holy Spirit”, p. 22

Comment: Maybe the sons of God prepared strike!...

4. The word is sexually perverted!

And the more tens of thousands there are who come into the Society from this sexually disturbed world year after year, the more the Society as a whole is subjected to an immoral pressure, because of the immoral leanings of a growing number of incomers.

The “Watchtower”, November 15, 1964, p. 690

5. Jehovah’s Witnesses should not speak too much because they waste energy!

Since your strength is limited, you want to be careful not to waste it by overindulgence in food or drink, in keeping late hours or by undue excitement. You can even waste a lot of nervous energy by talking too much, even though the muscles of the tongue may never tire!

The “Watchtower”, September 1, 1965, p. 524

Comment: Can they breathe?

6. The bionic grand mother!

THOUSANDS of Christians were flocking from all over England to attend the “Everlasting Good News” Assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses in London. This promised to be a grand spiritual feast that would help Christians mold their lives in harmony with God’s Word, and many were determined to be there. But a problem faced eighty-year-old Mrs. Halsey when she missed the bus that had been arranged to carry her congregation from Great Yarmouth 140 miles to the assembly. What would she do? With firm determination she set out to cycle those 140 miles, and actually covered eighty miles before a bus from another congregation stopped and gave her a ride! With this type of determination marvelous things can be accomplished.

The “Watchtower”, November 1, 1964, p. 643

Comment: Think you have Mrs. Halsey mother – in – law!

7. Virgin Mary of Tinos is superior from Virgin Mary of Soumela!

For example, a certain icon representing Mary at Tínos, Greece, has its own devout Orthodox following, as opposed to the equally faithful devotees of an icon representing Mary in Soumela, northern

Greece

. Both groups believe that their own icon is superior, performing more impressive miracles than the other one, even though both represent the same long-deceased individual.

The “Watchtower”, July 1, 2002, p. 8

Comment: I prepare a team for Virgin Mary of Prousos!

NOTE of Christos Pal, owner of watchtower-stop.blogspot.com: All that write the “Watchtower”.org about the icons of Virgin Mary at Tinos and Soumela are absolutely lies and fooleries. It does not happen such something in Greece.

8. Jesus Christ will destroy the Communism!

When World War II ended, the Communist bloc of nations, the “king of the north,” dominated 18 percent of earth’s land area, which had 7 percent of the world’s population. But what is the situation today? Thirty-five percent of the world’s population, occupying over a quarter of earth’s land area, has come under the control of the Communist “king of the north.”

How will this conflict finally end? Will the “king of the north” gain more and more control, finally taking over the domain of the “king of the south”? No. The prophecy shows that both the “king of the north” and the “king of the south” will come to their finish. Jehovah God, who foreknew the persistent struggle between these two kings, also decreed its end. This will come about, not through a disastrous world war to be fought by the nations, but through God’s chosen king, Prince Michael, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The “Watchtower”, February 1, 1976, pp. 94 – 95

Comment: One still “successful” prophecy of the “Watchtower”.org. The Communism indeed was destroyed by the Jesus Christ!

9. The god as chairman of big company, because pressure of work, assigns also in other his responsibilities!

The chief executive of a large corporation has many responsibilities. He decides which matters he will handle personally and which he will delegate to others. Similarly, the Sovereign Ruler of the universe has the option to determine which matters he will involve himself in and which he will delegate.

The “Watchtower”, December 15, 2002, p. 16

Comment: Only that it remains now is, it makes the God of stockbroker by “Watchtower”.org.

Whither Calvinism: or Will the Real Platonists Please Stand Up

2011-09-28T18:42:00.003+03:00

Arch. Grigorios Konstantinou

PhD in Theology

Plato and Calvin

The original impetus for this essay was the proposed defense of Orthodoxy against the rather naive and tendentious series of writings which appeared in the Journal Credenda Agenda (Volume 6, Issue 5). The author at the time proposed, along with the other topics being addressed, a kind of survey of the Calvinist agenda. At the time of the proposal there were only very vague notions about what such an article should try to cover — and that had mainly to do with the extreme factionalism of Protestantism. However, subsequent reflection, coupled with a re-reading of the Credenda articles, has suggested that there are some common themes to be addressed about Protestants in general and Calvinists in particular. Furthermore, as will be suggested, these themes have a common root in Platonic thought and philosophical methodology. This should be a matter of considerable interest inasmuch as it is precisely these people who claim to give the definitive answer to the question of Tertullian: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Nothing! They would answer. Indeed, one of the main thrusts of the Credenda articles was the perceived necessity of getting back to the more original and “Hebraic” Christianity of Jesus and St. Paul. Now since Calvinism and all of Protestantism form a system — actually a series of systems — of thought and theology far too rich and varied to be treated exhaustively in an article of this type, we will treat of a few basic issues which, so far as we can see, as outsiders looking in, are central to the protestant experience and Calvinist thought, and are at the same time the most problematical for both those ‘inside’ and those on the outside looking in. Thus, the following topics will be briefly examined: ....

1. Theological Methodology and doctrine of God — For this we will look primarily at the text ‘Reformed Dogmatics’ by Heinrich Heppe, long considered a kind of milestone of its type, and considered by many (I am told) to be the standard text of that Reformation Theology which issued from John Calvin and those who followed him.

2. The Calvinist TULIP -- Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the Saints. That Calvinism is a far richer and more interesting system of theology and religious thought than is suggested by these topics is readily granted. However, they not only stand at the center of traditional Calvinism, they are the source of most of the controversy which has wracked Protestantism from the beginning.

3. The incredible proliferation of sectarianism within Protestantism and especially including its Calvinistic variants — it would seem that there are nearly three times as many protestant sects as there are different words in the New Testament. This is a mind boggling situation unprecedented in any other form of religion, Christian or non-Christian, of which this writer is aware. There is nothing comparable to the flourishing proliferation of sects (most or all of which are presumably based on contrary biblical interpretations) in what for lack of a better term could be called the ‘catholic element’ of Christianity. If one throws in all of the various vagante bishops and their various groups together with what one can call ‘legitimate’ Orthodoxy and Catholicism, one cannot come up with hundreds much less tens of thousands of different “Catholic” or “Orthodox” Churches. (When one further reflects on the fact that most of these marginal vagante ‘groups’ are little more than clergy lists with few or no actual parishes and parishioners, the point is even more telling.) There is nothing even remotely like it in the other major monotheistic world religions of Judaism, and Islam. Furthermore this ‘fissionability’ is trans-historical and cross-cultural. In every country of the world, at every time since its inception, in dictatorships and in democracies, this propensity for division and further sectarian multiplication has been the rule amongst Protestants. This suggests that there is something structural in the protestant weltanschauung which is the cause of this. Further, these groups are aligned in a spectrum of opinions around various themes. This spectrum of theological opinion ranges from conservative fundamentalism to a liberalism so thorough-going that to many it stands outside of any traditional understanding of what it means to be a Christian. There is a spectrum of opinion which derives from the Calvinist/Lutheran/Zwinglian source which has no counterpart, generally speaking, in the more catholic versions of Christianity and no counterpart in other forms of monotheism save, perhaps, for reformed Judaism. Again, this is a tendency which is trans-historical and cross-cultural. To be sure, there are Conservative-liberal spectra in both Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but outside of pure theologoumena, these tend to be much narrower and devolve more around issues of pastoral economy than around dogma as such.

4. Gnosticism-Docetism — This heresy or group of heresies has re-emerged in the last two hundred years and dreams of a future unheard of since the days of St. Ireneos of Lyons. This author believes there to be a connection between this re-emergence and the re-definitions of European culture which have taken place as a result of the protestant experience.

Methodology and Doctrine

The East exalts John Chrysostom as its greatest teacher, but will scarcely admit his contemporary, Augustine, who [Benjamin B.]Warfield declares gave us the Reformation.

Frank Farrell

In much of what follows we are indebted, as any reader who knows the literature can tell, to our erstwhile friend Joseph Patrick Farrell (D.Phil.Oxon.). Following Karl Barth, Farrell has pointed out how problems which have been endemic to Western Theology, Protestant and Roman Catholic alike, largely have been the result of a faulty Ordo Theologica. That is, the order in which theological subjects have been addressed in treatises of doctrine have tended to follow a certain pattern which, when used as a basis for systematization, has led to various kinds of doctrinal dead ends. To this, Farrell points out the contribution of the philosophical - logical method, in combination with the Ordo, to most of the theological sturm und drang in the west since the fifth century. So what is the Ordo and what is the method?[1]

The Ordo, generally speaking goes as follows: A discussion of God (His existence, His essence, knowability, our knowledge of, etc.), this is followed by a discussion of the attributes of God (or his names, i.e. his goodness, love, mercy, and all of the things which may be said by creatures ‘about’ God); this is followed by a discussion about the Holy Trinity (the persons of the Trinity and their relationships), and, finally, there is the treatment of Christ and his saving acts. Now, there may be, and frequently are, other discussions which are inserted at various points in this Ordo, but the basic Ordo remains the same. It not only remains the same, but it remains the same across confessional boundaries. It is found in all of the major theological essays in the west since the fifth century.

Combined with this Ordo has been a philosophical logic which, deriving from the Socratic dialogues of Plato and refined by Aristotle, was brought to its ‘perfection’ by the Latin Scholastic theologians: the ‘logic of dialectical opposition’. The premise of this logical ontology is quite simple: the basis of any real distinction (as differentiated from a rational or mental distinction) is opposition. A is A and B is B, and the only way we can make a real distinction between them is to affirm A non est B— A is not B. To make any distinction between any two things there must be something which differentiates, that is opposes, them: one must be bigger or smaller, better or worse, good or bad, hot or cold....etc. Now this method of opposition works very well in many (created) situations. Where it begins to break down is when we talk about things which are not so amenable to sensory experience: values for example. What differentiates one good thing from another? What differentiates mercy from love? According to the dialectic of oppositions, if you cannot oppose them somehow, they must be the same thing. And so, for the successors of Plato, it was. If love and mercy cannot be opposed, then they must be the same thing that we are talking about with two different words -- i.e. making only a rational — i.e. a mental — distinction. Thus, [and here we leave out a lot of ‘demonstration’] when you want to talk about the ‘highest’, the ‘best’, the ‘being of being’ etc. you end up with the “One” of middle Platonism. (We can point out here the contribution of Plotinus to this was that he included “infinity” among the attributes — something which had never been previously done because infinity assumed, from the Aristotelian point of view, the aspect of imperfection because something infinite could not be described by the four -- i.e. the formal, efficient, material, and final -- causes.)

The main feature of the “One”, both pre- and post-Plotinus, was its simplicity. It was utterly simple by definition because, being entirely what it is and nothing else, there could be no opposition in it, there could be no scaling of value in it. You really could not ascribe created predicates to it, not because it was not those things and more but because they carry with them the implicit possibility of opposition. Thus the one is good but not good because not a particular good which may be better than one thing but worse than something else, etc. All created terminology thus, strains past the breaking point when applied to the “One”.

The One had other peculiarities as well: aside from its simplicity, it was creator (thus accounting for the creation). Because it was Creator, it had to create. Thus it followed that the creation was from infinity. As creator its first production was the mind or nous; together with the nous, the One created the World Soul. From that point new levels were created in a continuous hierarchy which linked the divine unknowable One to the created order of our senses. This creation thus stood in dialectical relationship of opposition — finite vs. infinite, knowable vs. unknowable, etc.

Enter the God of Christianity. In the first two centuries of Christianity, the Christians maintained an open mind toward truth wherever they could find it. In particular, this meant that common terms were sought out where it seemed that ‘the philosophers’ and the Christians were saying the same thing. Thus, for example, in contrast to the prevailing pantheon, the Christians, along with their Jewish forbears in the faith, said that there was only one true God. Thus, when the philosophers talked about “the One”, this was perceived as a ‘point of contact’ with which the Christians could articulate their faith to pagans. The absolute transcendence of God implied by passages like Isaiah 55:8 (“My thoughts are not your thoughts . . .”) have a point of contact in the concept of the unknowability of the One. In such cases as these, the Christians were able to say to the pagan philosophers, “You are onto something here – let us give you the fullness of the truth.”[2]. Hellenistic terminology was present in early Christianity because it was the vocabulary one used in order to make oneself understood, not because one necessarily embraced the philosophy. Just as people today frequently use such Freudian terminology as “ego” or “subconscious” without necessarily embracing the system of Freud.

The long and the short of the matter is that while there are examples of Hellenistic terminology being used by Christians from New Testament times, Hellenistic philosophical terminology was systematically introduced into Christian theology principally by two people: Origen in the East, and Augustine in the West. In the east Origin, who had up to that time been primarily involved in scriptural exegesis, responded to a rather nasty book by a man named Celsus. Celsus was a Platonist who had nothing and wanted nothing to do with Christianity. The Platonists regarded Christianity as an upstart faith with several counts against it. The Platonists had dedicated much effort to the process of allegorizing away the seamier aspects of paganism (particularly regarding the Olympic Pantheon) in order to get at what they perceived to be unchangeable truths. All the stories of gods consorting with their creatures had been quietly put to rest, now there appeared this new religion which proclaimed that a “virgin” gave birth to a “god-man” just as in their old stories, furthermore this new myth was emanating from a notorious group of barbarians in the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and they were buying none of it. Origen answered Celsus and wrote a treatise On First Principles in which he tried to synthesize Platonic philosophy with Christian revelation. The result was what has subsequently been called, in judicious terms, the ‘Origenist problematic’. Basically, because Origen saw the connection between the One God of Christianity and the One of Plotinus, he swallowed the middle-platonic notion of the One whole, and by so doing, he caused severe indigestion to theological undertaking of the east.

The problems were not long in showing up. First there was the issue of God as creator. According to the Origenist system, God had to create and therefore the world had to be eternal. This led to further difficulties in Christology (if the “logos” was not the One, was he created? If He was created then how could he be differentiated from the fallen-ness of the world and how could he save said world from its fallen-ness?) and Triadology (all of the issues ranging between modalism, on one hand, and tri-theism on other.). Finally, there was his universalism which said that everything would be saved. It has been rightly said that the whole movement of Orthodox theology from the third to the eighth century was the process of disgorging the “Origenist” problematic. Thus, in the east the vocabulary of Hellenism was completely redirected to new ends in order to fit the use of Christian theology. The result is that while one finds platonic and plotinian terminology, it is no longer in the service of middle and neo-platonism, and is used in a way which, in the last analysis does fatal damage to those systems.

The first major controversy which manifested itself was that of Arianism. The teaching of Arius, simply put, was that according to Origen, everything apart from the unknowable One (God, in Origen’s system) was created, or had some kind of origin. Indeed, God had to create out of a natural necessity. Thus the Son of God was simply the first (and therefore, presumably special) of the things made from (and therefore somehow ‘other’ than) God. The Spirit was the work of the Father and the Son. In other words the Holy Spirit is a function of the relationship between the Father and the Son, and this follows from the fact that the Father and the Son are relationships in the essence. The rest of creation was the work of all three in successive stages. Furthermore, according to this system, the further down the scale a being was the more “fallen” it was. That is, the fall was a matter of ontology — to be created as we understand it was, by definition, to be fallen. The problem was to disentangle the ontological relationships of the Logos with the One (on one hand) and the rest of the “created” order on the other. This brought into play the second aspect of the Origenist problematic, namely that if God had to create by nature then the created order was also eternal. This, however, contradicted the biblical teaching that the creation was from nothing — i.e. that there was a time when the creation was not. To resolve this dilemma, one had to deny the eternity of creation (and therefore of the Logos) to be true to the biblical revelation, or affirm the eternity of creation in order to affirm the eternity of the Logos. Arius chose to deny the eternity of the Logos and therefore of creation. Thus, he proclaimed that there was a time “when the Logos was not”.

In course of the Arian controversy the decisive contribution was made by St. Athanasius of Alexandria. It was that he made a real distinction between the essence and the will of God. By so doing he could distinguish between that personal generation which was of the essence of God (the Father begets the Son and sends the Spirit) and the creation which was by the will of God. Thus rationally establishing the eternity of the Son (who was thus acknowledged as homoousios with the Father) and placing the created order outside of eternity. This in turn effectively abolished the notion that simplicity was the defining characteristic of God’s essence.[3]

Because the Origenist problematic began to show itself most acutely in the Christological controversies, the tendency in the east was for Theology to proceed from personal and triadological considerations to essential considerations. In other words it tended to follow the record of revelation rather than the logic of an imposed rationalist system. Thus, in the works of that ‘great Platonizer’ St. Gregory of Nyssa, the persons of the Holy Trinity are not derived from the essence, but the single simple essence is inferred from the three divine persons -- being wholly present in each of them.[4] By the sixth century we have the complaint of the Platonists, as recorded by (Pseudo) Dionysios the Areopagite, “...Apollophanes reviles me, that he is calling me a parricide, that he charges me with making unholy use of things Greek [i.e. Greek philosophy] to attack the Greeks.”[5] That is, the Platonists complained that their own vocabulary was effectively used against them. The man who so many latter day scholars would like to blame as an arch-Platonizer is blamed by the platonists themselves for the destruction of their system. By the time of Maximus the Confessor, not only was neo-platonic vocabulary used toward entirely different ends, the dialectic of oppositions was overthrown as well.

In the west things went differently. As is well known, St. Augustine, when he converted to Christianity, also turned to Plato — or more specifically to middle-platonism — to structure his intellectual and theological edifice. The reason he did so was that he too found, in the notion of the “One” of middle Platonism, a point of contact with monotheism. St. Augustine, like his Greek forbears, proceeded on the assumption that if there could be a point of contact between philosophy then there could be common definitions. This he found in the Neo-platonic simplicity of the One. He appropriated this definition as an understanding of the divine essence of the Christian Trinity of the unity of the Christian God and made it the ultimate basis of his attempted synthesis. Thus, like Origen, he appropriated the notion that the being, (essence), activities, attributes, knowledge and will of God were ultimately indistinguishable. To be was to know was to will was to act. To be good, was to be merciful, was to be everything which we attribute to God. Ontologically, all of these attributes were but rational rather than real distinctions. Going further, he described God the Father as the uncaused, the Son as the one who was caused by the father and the Holy Spirit as the one who was the result of the love between the Father and the Son. The similarity between this scheme and the Plotinian (and Origenist) schemes which depict the One generating the Nous who together with the One causes the World Soul are obvious. The parallels are exact. When you add to this that this “Trinity” is derived after the attributes of the essence are described, the result is that there is no really satisfactory understanding of person (person and nature are constantly being confused) and the persons end up being functions of the attributes which are one with the essence. The persons are effectually subsumed under and into the essence and distinguished as relationships of the essence. “Even the Augustinian doctrine of predestination must be referred to this identity of attributes amongst themselves, for ‘to predestine is the same as to foreknow’.”[6] Real distinction is subsumed under a fundamentally binary system of “same” or “opposed”.

Here again, problems began to appear early, but unlike the east where Hellenistic philosophies were far better understood, the problems were not ultimately dealt with in a comprehensive manner -- i.e. in a manner which called into question the basic presuppositions of the ontology. The first problem which occurred was that of the “filioque”. This “theological fix” had its origin in the Arian and in the Spanish adoptionist controversies, and later in the Pelagian controversy.

The problem of Arianism came to the west with the Gothic invasions. The Goths had been converted to Arianism and were trying to spread it as they themselves spread over western Europe. As we have seen, the solution which was affirmed by the first Ecumenical Council went to the heart of the matter ontologically and reinterpreted the ontological basis of the divine simplicity by introducing a real distinction between the nature or essence of God and the will of God. Thus, the Council affirmed that the Logos was begotten of the nature of God whereas the world was created by the will of God. This distinction also served to draw the proper distinction between the personal characteristic of being a ‘father’ and the natural attribute of being a ‘creator’ or ‘cause’. Thus the first step was taken to redirect the vocabulary of Platonism towards Christian reality. In the West, where the cultural situation was daily going from bad to worse, the only readily available theological writer was St. Augustine. In Augustine’s system the Plotinian system, as we have seen, was totally in place. To this was added the structural subordination of the persons to the attributes of God. This gave rise to a confusion of personal characteristics with natural attributes. That is, because God was Father, He was cause, being cause He was the cause of the Son, who together with Him was the cause of the Spirit. Therefore, in order to argue for the divinity of the Son, against the Arian Goths the Spanish simply replied to Arian assertions that Jesus was God because He was a cause of another Divine Person; the Holy Spirit. Thus the Augustinian ‘solution’ left the entire neo-platonic ontology in place. However, the ‘solution’ was to cause far more problems than it solved. How it did so we will discuss with the “TULIP”.

But we now need to look at the Calvinist method and its implied ontology to see to what degree it follows this system. For this we turn to the Reformed Dogmatics: Set out and Illustrated from the Sources, by Heinrich Heppe. As an apology, it should be stated that we do understand that it can be dangerous to look at ‘only one’ source to draw conclusions about an entire system. However, we are assured by former students who were once Calvinists that this is a ‘standard’ text. Moreover the Foreword by no less than Karl Barth assures us that this book, which he himself used as a teacher, “...in form and content pretty adequately correspond[s] to what I, like so many others, had described to myself decades ago, as the ‘Old Orthodoxy’.” The book is, as the title implies, a source-book. It is a compendium of quotations from over 57 major different Calvinist theologians from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, arranged with commentary. Thus we are not merely getting the Heppe interpretation, we are getting the story straight from the principal authors including Calvin himself. This is what makes this volume so useful.

Thus, when we look at the method, what do we find? First a discussion of Natural and Revealed Theology followed by a discussion (in two chapters) of Holy Scripture, its authority, interpretation, doctrine and source. Then, in the next 3 chapters we have in order 1. The Existence and Notion of God — i.e. a discussion of what God is essentially. 2. The Attributes of. 3. The Holy Trinity — i.e. the persons of God. We have the Augustinian Ordo whole, intact and presented without interruption or confusion.

The Existence and Notion of God. After a few opening paragraphs in which the arguments for the existence are acknowledged with (rightful) reservations about their necessity or efficacy, We learn that: 1. “God is...an absolute necessity and. . . God alone is a necessary being.”(page 50) 2. “...the unity or singleness of God. . .There cannot exist but one of that, the perfection of which is supreme. Therefore divine essence is single....He is undivided in Himself and divided from everything else....God is called one neither generically nor specifically, but essentially and numerically [emphasis added], or by reason of nature, because there is only one, an individual essence of God..; etc.” (p.51). 3. “God is incomprehensible” (p. 52). 4. “...in the absolute essence essentiality is completely identical with personality, existence and substance... actus purissimus et simplicissimus” (p. 53). That is, the being, the will, and the knowledge of God are the same by definition.

What we have here, then, is what amounts to a succinct statement of the Augustinian doctrine of the essence of God. Which is to say that while God is simple by definition by virtue of that simplicity His essence is undefinable or unknowable — just like the Plotinian One. The essence, the will, the activity and knowledge of God are essentially one — just like the Plotinian One.

The Attributes of God. We are told that: 1. “God’s essential attributes are really His very essence; and they do not actually differ from God’s essence or from each other.”(p.57) 2. “Thus the attributes are not distinguished from the essence of God nor in turn from each other either realiter or by a real distinction . . .[because] . . .such a distinction posits composition between thing and mode, as well as variation; for every mode is changeable [i.e. by virtue of the dialectic of oppositions where a thing can only be distinguished by its opposite, in this case change and not-change] (p.59) 3 “...Thus God’s attributes are distinguished from His essence and from each other distinctione rationis, since it is by thought alone that we abstract attribute from essence and one attribute from another.” (P59) 4. “The most notable distinction of God’s attributes is that by which they distinguished into communicable and incommunicable. Strictly speaking none are communicable, since they are proprietates (God’s very own)”. 5. ‘God’s foreknowledge is that knowledge by which God is signified as foreseeing and foreknowing from eternity everything that is said to be future as far as we are concerned. . . nothing will come to be, unless God wills it to be; otherwise He would hinder it.” 6. “Prescience is to be distinguished from permission; for prescience is an act of knowing, permission is an act of the will — the former has its object in itself, the latter has it outside itself.” By this statement they imagine that “freewill” can be attributed to humans. However, since this distinction is only, as noted above, distinctione rationis only; free will can only mean the freedom not to choose — just as electricity doesn’t have to choose when you turn the switch. When all is said and done the distinction between will and foreknowledge is thus rational not real. 7.“. . .His will also is actually a single actuosity eternally identical with itself...the divine willing is the divine nature itself.” 8. “God wills somethings necessarily, some freely. Himself He wills necessarily...He cannot not will His own glory...All other things He wills freely...” This comes tantalizingly close to the real distinction between nature and will, however, since the system as stated does not allow for such a real distinction by virtue of 3 above, it remains a rational distinction which asks the question “what if?”. What is of interest to us, thus far, is that every one of these statements of the attributes are logically and ontologically consonant with the Enneads of Plotinus. The attributes are all ontologically one, are ontologically one with the essence, and all are essentially incommunicable. It should be pointed out here that while we have noted only the “highlights” of the chapter, virtually every statement could be brought in as another example of our thesis.

The Holy Trinity. 1. “This most perfect production of an image in the divine essence is rightly called conception and generation...(p.106) 2. Since God is most perfect life, and since His entire life is knowledge, He needs must have a conception most akin to knowledge...and this conception...will be a generation, positing a mode of existence in God or a second person which rightly called both the image of God and the Son...(p. 106-7) 3. Since then in God being known and existing are the same thing and since moreover the being known is actually the esse of the Son, it is necessary for the essence and existence of God and of the Son to be constituted the same, — Since also God’s knowing is active from eternity, He Himself is eternal actus. But since then knowing is not without an image, it follows that this image or the Son which He has conceived is just as eternal...In God’s essence two modes of existence or persons are inferred, Father and Son...so that God is not God, if he have not the co-eternal Son...Since knowing is comprised in the divine essence, so also will be volition. — The more knowing there is in things, the more will there will be — So there must needs be the most perfect will in God...Thus in its activity God’s will returns upon itself, and rests in God Himself as the infinite good — Since God’s infinite will embraces and always achieves its object entire, there must therefore be produced from it supreme pleasure and love — So whereas the Father conceives and with most perfect will desires the image of Himself, His Son: it follows that the most perfect love and the fullest pleasure proceed from the Father to the Son and from Son to Father, as from image to archetype; and that so by the conjunction of the knowledge and will of both a third mode of existence or person is posited in the divine essence, called the Holy Spirit...(107) In this they are not simply different names or functions of the same person. 4. The Godhead is thus manifested over against the world as a single nature; in its inward being it exists as a threeness of persons. (P. 110) 5. Trinity is that relation in God, whereby in His divine and single essence three persons subsist, truly and actually distinguishable from each other by their own attributes or by a distinct mode of existence.(p. 110) In other words the Holy Spirit is a function of the relationship between the Father and the Son, and this follows from the fact that the Father and the Son are subsistent relationships in the essence and, furthermore, they are distinguished by their attributes i.e. they are functions of the attributes. 5. “The origin of the divine personae is the procession of one person from another...Order of persons means that one person is prior by nature or by cause...The distinction of persons resting upon this according to operation is a twofold one, namely according to order and the mode of action in essential operations and according to personal operation ... As therefore the Son has His existence from the Father and the Holy Spirit His from the Father and from the Son, so too in divine action the Fathers will takes precedence....”(p. 115). Thus the filioque is derived exactly in the same way as the Augustine derived it — which by extension is the same way the “Trinity” of the One, the Nous and the World Soul are derived by Plotinus. There is the same subordination of attributes to the essence and the persons to the attributes. While the mystery of this “threeness in oneness” is admitted to be a mystery not entirely understood, while the reformers really do struggle with the problem of the friction between their method and the data of revelation, and while they — taking Heppe’s volume as an example — come tantalizingly close to the necessary ontological distinctions which would set them on the road to true Orthodoxy, in the end it is the data which are subordinated to the rational system. Thus, for example, we read “there is an order, as of substance so the Father is a nemine, the Son from the Father alone by generation, the Holy Spirit by procession from the Father and Son. . .The most important NT passages of Scripture on which the doctrine is based, are:; MT 3. 16-17; 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:13; I Jn 5:7f Rev. 1:4,5.” (P 110) While it is interesting that St. John 14:16-17; 15:26; or 16:5-15 are not included in this list, what is even more interesting is that the position articulated above would require us to interpret the Mt. 3:16-17 in such a way that Jesus is sending the Holy Spirit upon Himself at His baptism. It is clear -- painfully clear -- that the entire neo-platonic system as adopted by Augustine is present whole, entire, and ontologically intact.

T. U. L. I. P.

“The problem with John Calvin is that he took all the fun out of religion.”

Unknown Jesuit at the University of Michigan c. 1960

This acronym is a convenient way delineating the central doctrines of “high Calvinism” as it was defined at the synod at Dort which affirmed the principles mentioned and condemned the Arminians for departing from them. In a sense, these principles are not merely the property of the Calvinists but of Protestants in general, though most non-Calvinists try to mitigate them in some fashion. Additionally, it must be pointed out that they are not simply the property of Protestantism in general but of Roman Catholicism as well. This may sound strange to many, but the only real contribution of John Calvin and his followers to the enunciation of these principles is that he followed the logic of his principles to its conclusion, whereas most of the others tended to try and mitigate those conclusions either theologically or philosophically. None the less they are a permanent part of Latin Christianity since the time St. Augustine and derive from his theology and theological anthropology. As a preliminary note to what follows, let us for now simply note the following: the peculiar notions of original (or ancestral) sin and its effect on human nature, the peculiar notions of the simplicity of divine nature (with its incumbent notions of will, foreknowledge and activity in God) which gave rise to certain of Augustine’s teachings were either unknown or repudiated in the Greek east — i.e. the people who spoke the language of the New Testament had little regard for the philosophical notions which form the bases for these teachings. It was only after the translation of the Bible into Latin — a language, which was up to that time singularly unsuited to theology — that many of the notions we will discuss took root. Thus the controversies about freewill and predestination which arose and continue to arise from these principles are peculiarly western Latin problems — problems which have never affected those who continued to speak and to use the language of the New Testament in prayer and liturgy, and for whom Plato and Aristotle and their intellectual progeny were as common as day old bread rather than something to be newly discovered over time.

Total Depravity

The doctrine of total depravity is very simple to state. It is that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil their humanity suffered totally. They went from a total state of grace and communion with God to a state of total depravity and separation from God. According to Calvinist thinking — following Augustine — the goodness of human nature at the creation was not essential but accidental. Thus when Adam sinned, that goodness was lost and human nature became totally depraved. No longer servants of God, our first parents were now slaves of the devil. What had been the possibility to sin or not to sin was turned into the impossibility of not sinning. The result then and now is death, the wages of sin. Though there are many scriptural proof texts for this position, the main one, or at least one of the main ones is Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” (Dia touto osper di enos anthropou e amartia eis ton kosmon eiselthen kai dia tes amartias ho thanatos, kai outos eis pantas anthropous ho thanatos dielthen, eph ho pantes emarton.)This verse sets the tone for the rest of this chapter in which St. Paul contrasts the Old Adam with the New Adam — how through the old Adam sin and death came into the world and in the new Adam (Jesus Christ) we receive the gift of righteousness and resurrection to eternal life. That the new gift is far greater than the old offense, and it is free — we only have to receive it in faith. The question which hangs fire though, is what exactly has been transmitted to us through Adam’s sin, and this brings us back to verse 12. Augustine, following what is universally acknowledged to be a defective translation into Latin, read “in whom [i.e. Adam] all have sinned.” Thus his exegesis of the verse was that because Adam sinned, and because of his sin became subject to death, because we have all sinned in Adam, we are all subject to death, because the wages of sin is death (6:23). In other words everyone born into the world is guilty of Adam’s sin. Following the same reasoning we read “‘...Adam in the covenant of works sustained a public character and represented the entire human race. Hence it is perfectly manifest that by sinning he sinned not for himself only, but for all likewise whom he represented; that indeed there sinned with him whose whom he represented. One who is represented as doing or being acted upon may also be regarded as himself doing or being acted upon. To represent is with a certain force of law to exhibit the presence of that which is not present.’ ‘At first person infected nature, but afterwards nature infected person. Adam’s sin was the sin of the actual nature: the sins of the lave are personal. Therefore his sin was transferred with nature, but not that of the rest. But why Adam by sinning destroyed not the person only but the nature, while other men injure their persons but do not worsen the nature, no other cause can be assigned than God’s most righteous will.’”(Heppe p. 313). If we may draw a modern analogy: suppose a woman who is a heroin addict during her addiction conceives and gives birth to a child. Chances are virtually certain that the child will be an addict. The horrible effects newly born infants undergoing withdrawal is well documented. The child’s entire nature is adversely affected. He will probably live a shorter life, he will be far more likely given, his physical makeup and his likely social setting, to continue in the addiction he was born with than someone born in more propitious circumstances. Indeed, he probably will not be able to stop feeding his addiction without outside intervention. Given all these facts can we say that he is guilty of his mother’s sin? According to the reasoning we have just examined, the answer is yes. And here we begin to confront the Augustinian problematic. To contrast this with the proper understanding we must go to the Greek text as it was understood by those who knew Greek and did not bring an outside philosophical agendae to the text. Accordingly the first part of the verse is straightforward: because Adam sinned death came into the world. For the remaining part of the verse one has to deal with a grammatical ambiguity — the phrase eph hoThis can be translated as “because” but depending on whether you regard it as neuter or masculine (and it can be either) the phrase will mean either because all men sin (like Adam) they die (like Adam), or it can mean: ‘...because of death all men have sinned...’ In either case there is no possibility of interpreting this to mean that all human beings are guilty of the sin of Adam. Neither is the case for original guilt strengthened by the rest of the chapter. We sin because we die (our inheritance from Adam) and we are given the gift of life from the new Adam. — Christ. The glue which binds the parts of the doctrine of original guilt together is the “oneness” in Adam as understood in terms of the Platonism of the Plotinian One; the One in which act, knowledge, being, and will are one. Because we will recall, that according to this doctrine we are not only guilty of Adam’s sin, we (as, indeed, is Adam himself) are guilty by the righteous will of God. In other words God willed that Adam would sin, and God wills that we are guilty of this sin! The inescapable conclusion of this is that God Himself introduces evil into the world by His righteous will. The Calvinists try to argue their way out of this by statements like: “This fall of Adam’s was of course already foreseen by God in eternity and was ordained with a view to a more perfect and richer manifestation of the divine glory and grace, as well as to a richer blessing and a higher elevation of man by electing and redeeming grace. The Fall was therefore indeed introduced by God Ex necessitate consequentiae sive eventus, not however so far as Adam’s act was sin, but so far as God willed to use Adam’s sinful action as a means to the revelation of His glory.”(Heppe p303), and the attempt to distinguish “will as permission” which we have seen above. In other words Adam turned the apple into a lemon and God is simply making lemonade. The argument is also made that Adam chose freely – even though his choice was willed by God. Such an understanding of choice, or freedom of choice, is essentially the binary condition imposed by the dialectic of oppositions. It is analogous to the freedom of an electrical current to flow when someone turns a switch to the ‘on’ position. If God willed, and foreknew, this would happen, and if His foreknowledge, His will, and His being (as we have seen above -- actus purissimus simplicissimus) are identical, then the conclusion that God has introduced evil into the world is inescapable. There can be no “mediate” causes in the sense that God is not responsible or for them or ‘merely’ permits them, but simply makes use of them. Such ‘mediation’ or ‘permission’ can at best be only a “formal distinction” as has already been described above. The essential Platonism of the system has introduced pagan fatalism into the heart of its doctrine of God and its doctrine of salvation — a fact recognized immediately by the Greek fathers. The understanding of the Greek fathers, briefly, was that the perfection of Adam was at best potential (something which Calvinists come close to recognizing) and that this potential became, by the introduction of death, misdirected causing a gradual corruption of human nature as sin and death spread. Thus, for example, it is in the next generation that the crime of murder is added to disobedience, and subsequently the lifetimes of our earliest ancestors gradually decrease with the increase of corruption. Thus the Pauline doctrine that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God is a function of our personal transgression (with its subsequent lack of perfection) not to some inherited guilt which disables us from acting righteously under any circumstance. A further consequence of introducing this platonic distortion into the doctrine of the fall are some embarrassing logical impasses.

St. John Cassian, a perennial thorn in the side of the Augustinians notes: “...We must take care not to refer all the merits of the saints to the Lord in such a way as to ascribe nothing but what is evil and perverse to human nature: in doing which we are confuted by the evidence of the most wise Solomon, or rather of the Lord Himself, Whose words these are; for when the building of the Temple was finished and he was praying, he spoke as follows: ‘And David my father would have built a house to the name of the Lord God of Israel: and the Lord said to David my father: Whereas thou has thought in thine heart to build a house to My name, thou hast well done in having same things in thy mind. Nevertheless thou shalt not build a house to My Name.’(III Kg [I Kg] 8:17-19) This thought then and this purpose of king David, are we to call it good and from God or bad and from man? For if that thought was good and from God, why did He by whom it was inspired refuse that it should be carried into effect? But if it is bad and from man, why is it praised by the Lord?...” According to the Augustinian/Calvinist position one must say either that all good works come from God and not from man, in this case David, as the Scripture clearly implies, or else you have to say that a fallen human and therefore evil work found favour with God.”[7] This cannot merely be viewed as a plea for “works righteousness”, rather its purpose is to point to where the logical ontology of the Augustinian/Calvinist position inevitably leads.

Unconditional Election

This doctrine states that because we are sinners by virtue of both our guilt as descendants of Adam, and because of our actual sins, God, being righteous, is justifiably angry. In His righteous anger he has condemned the human race to eternal damnation because there is nothing that we as creatures can do pay the price of that infraction. However, by virtue of the incarnation of the second person of the Holy Trinity as the man Jesus Christ, pays the price of redemption for some of us by substituting Himself for those he has chosen on Calvary. Now stating the matter in this way raises many interesting questions such as “To whom is the price being paid?” If God is paying it to Himself, this is certainly an interesting (not to mention painful) way of doing it. If to the devil, then since when does anyone owe anything to him? However, for our purposes these questions, while interesting are less compelling than the notion that Christ died only for those (who are chosen from the entire massa damnata) whom God has decreed shall be saved. In other words the sacrifice on Calvary is not for everyone, but only for the pre-chosen. And those who have been chosen, by the eternal decree of God, have been chosen unconditionally. In other words, of all the men and women born throughout all the history of the world, some will be saved and others will be damned, and there is nothing that anyone can do about it. Again, the argument is put forward that everybody goes on their way to salvation or damnation freely, but the understanding of freedom here is precisely freedom from choice.

One of the principle proof texts here is Acts 13:48: “And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of God; and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” That is, it is understood that “some” therefore not everyone were “ordained”, and because they were “ordained” they believe, passing by their free will (i.e. their freedom from choice) to those virtues which lead to eternal life. The main problem with this is that the word for “ordained” “tategmenos” is the middle form of the verb ‘tasso’. Old Greek, unlike English or most modern languages, has a grammatical construction called the middle voice which is used to describe what one does to or for oneself. The second problem is that to the Greek speakers of the day the term carried the connotation of ‘enlistment’ as in the military. Therefore “ordained” here is properly understood as applying to those who presented themselves for enlistment into and their subsequent recruitment or appointment to eternal life.[8] Thus it is one of the best possible proof texts for the doctrine of synergy as traditionally held by the Orthodox.

Limited Atonement

Limited Atonement or particular redemption is the teaching that Christ did not die for everyone but rather only for those who from eternity and by the eternal decree and righteous will of God had been predestined for salvation. This means that such passages as St. John 6:39: “...and this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day.” and I Timothy 2:4 “...who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Must be so interpreted as to point to some who are saved and others who are not by the eternal decree of God. In the minds of Augustine and those who follow him, The “all men” of the letter to Timothy and the “all” of the gospel verse could only refer to all those who had been predestined. In the case of the verse from Timothy, it contradicts the ‘plain sense’ of the sentence. There is no limit implied here or by the context. In the case of the gospel verse, the matter becomes more critical in that the “all” referred to here cannot, grammatically speaking, refer to a number of persons. The “pan” of the Greek and the “omnes” of the Latin are both in the neuter which means that they must refer not to the entirety of a numerical group (which would have required the masculine form of the adjective), but to the entirety of a given single entity. Thus, the Greek fathers, culminating with St. Maximus the Confessor understand it to refer to the entirety of human nature — precisely the human nature of Jesus Christ. So, in the example under discussion: “In Christ’s human nature which is consubstantial with all men, God humanly wills, decrees and perfectly fulfills the salvation of all men, for no human being is untouched by His Incarnation, and nothing is detracted from His sovereignty as God if individual persons choose not to accept salvation. Nothing is lost to His sovereignty as God Incarnate precisely because nothing is lost to the perfection of His human nature; it retains its full integrity as human nature despite the fact that individual persons [may] reject Him.”[9]

Irresistable Grace

This is the teaching that once the grace of God comes to someone to save him, by the eternal decree of God, this grace cannot be refused. It is as impossible for the elect to refuse grace as it is for an electrical current to flow through a system when the proper switches have been turned on. It leaves no room for temptation, nor for the possibility that someone can struggle to live a godly life only to throw it off in the end. Again, this position is tenable only if the being, the will, the activities and the knowledge of God are essentially the same, and flows necessarily from that understanding of God. Thus this leads us to the final teaching.

Perseverance of the Saints.

Relatively little needs to be said about this by way of description as it follows necessarily from the teachings described above. It is basically the technical vocabulary for the popular evangelical phrase: “Once saved, always saved.” There is a truth to this in that human nature is saved by the redeeming acts of Christ. What, however, is not guaranteed is personal participation in that natural transfiguration. Which brings us to the last bit of Platonism to be discussed. Namely, the teaching that “nature compels”. We must do what we do by virtue of natural necessity. This notion has no meaning outside the bounds of Hellenistic metaphysics, both Platonic and Aristotelian. It is the Orthodox teaching that ultimately ‘person’ transcends ‘nature’. The proper distinction of person and nature which — by virtue of its essential platonism — is impossible to Augustinianism and those theologies which flow from it, is essential for any proper biblical exegesis on the question of predestination and free will.

III

Reformation Sectarianism

According to the United Nations census in 1989, there were 23,000 Christian denominations. If you subtract the Orthodox/Catholic groups (including all of the various vagante and non-canonical groups - i.e. about 150 or so)you have about 22,850 protestant denominations. The vocabulary of the New Testament is 5432 different words. This means, in round figures, that the number of protestant denominations is over 4.2 times the number of different words in the New Testament. Indeed it prompts the question about whether something Hegelian is going on here. If one were a Hegelian (and let the gentle reader be assured that the writer of this article is not) one could rather easily make a case for saying that the conservative (fundamentalist) protestant divides in opposition to its liberal antithesis which combines in a new synthesis (say Barthianism) which in turn divides and so on. As mentioned above, this splintering is a condition which is unprecedented not only in Christianity, but in all of the major monotheistic religions. Further, as stated, each of these groups represents not simply a theology, but rather a theological trend. Thus, for example, Calvinism is represented by a range of theologies ranging from the relatively conservative Reformed and Orthodox Presbyterian Churches on one end, to extremely liberal Presbyterian, Congregational and UCC Churches on the other end, all claiming to drink from and be faithful to the same source. To a person on the Conservative end, the discussion in the earlier part of this essay would make a certain amount of sense even if he violently disagreed. On the liberal end if people know what is being discussed at all, they would probably regard it as irrelevant. An analogous shift has occurred even among the more conservative. Whereas in the time of the Great Awakenings in North America the principal questions being asked were “Am I saved?”; “How do I know if I’m saved?” (During this same period the entire population of a town could be found in Church on Sunday morning, whereas only about 10 to 15% of them were actually members of the Church because they were the ones who could somehow prove that they were indeed among the elect). Where as present day revivals ask the question “Are you saved?” — i.e. they expect that the person so questioned to be able to answer for himself without further investigation. Today the “

Romans Road

”[10] is routinely traveled by would be evangelists who just as routinely extend the ‘right hand of fellowship’ to people who tend to end up being saved for an average of 36 to 60 months. Then, commonly, they either lose interest or frequently go found another Church based on some contradictory point of doctrine. Different groups teach a range of opinions regarding the “TULIP” and may hold to all or some of the points. Historically, however, the more conservative have generally begotten the more liberal groups the way that thunderstorms beget flash floods.

In the section on Total Depravity above we saw how St. John Cassian demonstrated one way in which the Augustinian position led to a logical impasse. We have also seen how it leads to the affirmation that God introduced evil into the world. It could also be shown how it leads to the theological conundrum: “If God is omniscient and human beings are ignorant, then how can Jesus be both God and man if He must be Omniscient and ignorant at the same time?” And these are just three such instances.

It has been suggested that this theological fission is largely the result of the dialectic of oppositions in combination with the double subordination of attributes to essence and persons to attributes which is such an integral part of this way of theologizing. It has been pointed out that most of these divisions are “based on logical contradiction rather than upon Biblical Exegesis.”[11] Indeed, it would seem that Biblical exegesis, if anything simply added — and continues to add — grist to the mill by providing more possibilities for contradiction. It would not be easy to do all of the investigation to verify this hypothesis, and it is not certain that it would really be worth the effort. It does, however, provide a cogent reason for denominational proliferation and covers the main facts such as we know them. It would seem that the one palatable thing that Orthodoxy can offer even the most die-hard Calvinist is a way out of Platonist dialectic and that without resorting to the monarchical pretensions of a Roman-style pontiff.

Gnosticism

The first book we ever read by C.G. Jung, was in the summer of 1961, the year he died. As far as we can remember, the early 1960's were not especially kind to the ideas of a man who considered himself to be one the seminal geniuses of human intellectual history. He had been thoroughly battered by a Jewish theologian and philosopher named Martin Buber in a series of essays which still make capital reading. In addition, clinical psychotherapy was still very much in the doldrums after the onslaught of such as B.F. Skinner and those of like mind who sought to put psychology on a ‘truly scientific basis’ with their brand of experimentalism. With time, however, Behaviorism over-reached itself, and clinical approaches were claiming a new kind of validity with the result that Jung’s approach and ideas have climbed back to an almost cultic status in some quarters. We would suggest that this is no accident. We would suggest that the intellectual climate was ripe for such an event. Why? For one thing. Jung always claimed that “religion was important” in his scheme of things. However, while religion was important for him he never lost the opportunity to assail “orthodox” religion particularly of the Judeo-Christian variety. Why? Because they refused to own up to what he liked to call the ‘fact’ that God was responsible for both good and evil! And this is one of the central tenets of Gnosticism, the main heresy of the first and second century. We call it a heresy advisedly, because there is reason to doubt that it was of Christian origin even though there were elements of Christian teaching in the doctrines of some of the Gnostic teachers. Christian or not, however, the early Church fathers had to battle it tooth and nail. Finally, we note that the resurgence seems, temporally at least, connected to the such systems of ‘spirituality’ as the New Age Movement.

We have seen how Reformed systematics comes to the conclusion (that God introduced evil into the world) in spite of all the ways in which their theologians try to get around it. The conclusion is built into the system and there is no way out of it without denying their doctrine of double predestination as well. It is a problematic which is throughly platonist in origin — as was Gnosticism. It is worth noting that from the first century to the present this question has never even been raised within the Church in the Orthodox east. When it was raised in the east it was by people well outside of the Church. Even in the west, save for a brief flirtation by Augustine it was thoroughly quashed until the Reformation. Again, it would be difficult to reconstruct the case for any direct causality between the theology of the Protestant Reformation and the Gnosticism which has raised its ugly head in our time — particularly in the case of C. G. Jung and, more recently, the New Age movement. But it is not too speculative to observe that an intellectual climate which has been conditioned by the possibility — even if that possibility was officially denied — that God is responsible for introducing evil into the world (as it has been for 500 years), is a climate which is ripe for the spread of classical Gnosticism.

In conclusion, we would say that our observations speak for themselves. Those people who accuse the Orthodox of being neo-Platonists would do better to look closer to home. They no doubt will be horrified to see what has been growing rank in their theological gardens — or would they? We would also reiterate that Classical Protestant thought — particularly in its Calvinist, Lutheran, and Anglican varieties — is far richer and varied than we have been able to portray it here. When one paints with broad strokes, as we have had to do from necessity, one risks falling into mere caricature. However, even caricature, when it is sufficient to the salient points, is preferable to mere tendentiousness, and it at least has the merit of refinability.

NOTES

[1] As has been noted in many places, but chiefly in Fr. Georges Florovsky’s monumental work, Ways of Russian Theology, Orthodox theologizing underwent a pseudo-morphosis beginning (in the Russian Church) with the publication, by Metropolitan Peter (Mogila), of his Catechism based largely on the catechetical works of Peter Canisius, SJ. This has been called a pseudo morphosis precisely because the dogmatic teachings of Orthodoxy have never precisely fit into this mold causing consternation both inside and outside of Orthodoxy.

[2] In this regard it is useful to point out that II Peter along with 2 & 3 John, Jude, Hebrews and Revelation were rejected from the New Testament Canon by John Calvin and his immediate followers as apocryphal Allegedly this was because they were not supposed to have been written by the stated authors. (Heppe, p. 13ff) However, the lack of agreement between the Epistle of James and certain a priori doctrinal assumptions is well known, as is the charge of Hellenism leveled at such as 2 Peter. It was only in the next generation that they were recognized, and that as having less authority (Musculus Loci p. 175 quoted in Heppe). presumably only historical ambiguity is sufficient to throw question on doctrines of both essential and integral unity. It is worthwhile to further remind him that despite all the efforts to prove the contrary, there is simply no basis for the notion that 1^st Century Judaism was hermetically sealed off from the Hellenism of the period as is well witnessed by much of the phraseology of St. Paul. The attempt to do so is just as ridiculous as the attempts to turn St. Paul into a stoic philosopher because of various of his expressions combined with the fact that he was from Tarsus. Thus, for example, it is not possible, as some try to maintain, that Peter’s utterance can be approached exclusively in ‘Jewish’ terms. Neither is it the case, as some attempt to assume, that the participation in the divine nature which is promised in II Peter, is participation in the essence — to maintain this is to misunderstand the essence-energies distinction.

[3] Here we must comment on what can only be described as the astonishing lack of comprehension demonstrated by Douglas Jones in his statement (among others): “To return to The One, the human soul must devote itself not only to a process of ascetic intellectual practices but ultimately to direct union with The One through ecstatic contact, which only the most disciplined attain. Eastern Orthodox thinkers at times insist that they have purged neo‑Platonism from their thinking by slight changes in Plotinus's system. For example, they reject simplicity as a basis for God's unknowability and Plotinus's exclusive concern with the intellect. By claiming that such trifling adjustments remove Hellenism from their theology, these thinkers show how deeply ingrained their neo‑Platonism truly is.” which appears in his article “Non Est” (Credenda Agenda Volume 6 issue 5). First, the whole point of apophaticism as described by Lossky and others is precisely that one does not attain union with the essence of God (which in terms of the Originist problematic would have been the Plotinian ‘One’). Secondly, it is difficult to understand how anyone who has studied the Enneads and the secondary literature could possibly say that “...reject[ion of] simplicity as a basis for God's unknowability and Plotinus's exclusive concern with the intellect... are “trifling adjustments”. The rejection of simplicity as the defining characteristic of the One strikes at the heart of the Plotinian system in such a way that as an ontology it falls apart. Furthermore, the ontological status of the things ‘around’ (i.e. the energies of) God is completely changed in a way that is impossible within any Platonic ontology -- i.e. the energies are divine and uncreated; with Plotinus they cannot be divine and in must be created, indeed, they are the highest created beings -- and must exist precisely apart from the One in a relationship of dialectical opposition. Just because the vocabulary remains largely the same does not alter the fact that it is used to describe an entirely different reality.

[4] Cf. On “Not Three Gods” to Ablabius

[5] Dionysios the Areopagite, Letter Seven, to Polycarp, a Hierarch., PG 3 1080B. Translation by Colm Luibheid

[6] Joseph Farrell, St. Photios, Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, an Introduction and translation, p. 27. This paragraph is little more than a summary of the arguments in the introduction of this book.

[7] Farrell, Joseph P. Free Choice in Maximus the Confessor, pp. 196-97

[8] cf St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans

[9] Farrell. Maximus, p. 224.

[10] Romans 3:10, 3:23, 5:12, 6:23, 5:8.

[11]Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, Foundations of Weslayan-Arminian Theology, Kansas City, p. 32 Quoted in J.P. Farrell, Maximus p. 197

THE INCURABLE “LOVE” OF A JEHOVA’S WITNESS FOR ORTHODOXY

2011-06-09T22:37:00.005+03:00

Translated from the original by Chris Tsilikas

The monastery of Agia Lavra

When I was born my parents converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses. So I was brought up with the beliefs of the Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses. However, I had always had a gap inside me, a doubt, that’s why I used to read everything I found apart from the writings of the Society.

When I was 17 we immigrated to the USA. But my parents didn’t live there for long; they moved back to Greece 3 years later, leaving me alone there. After a while I got married to a girl who was a Jehovah’s Witness as well. Nevertheless, the gap and the doubt still remained and I couldn’t explain it. They told me that I had to study more and progress in the Society so that my faith could be stronger. I did it all, I studied day and night...

In a while I started getting various ranks in the Society, and so I became “a ministerial servant” and soon after that “an elder”. I even delivered speeches in the congregations in the USA. I was only 30, but the gap kept growing and growing till it became chaos.

We had always been taught that the Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses is the only true one and the spirit of God Jehovah is on it. When the body of elders takes a decision they pray and the spirit of God Jehovah guides them. For instance, when they deal with legal cases, if the sinner has truly repented, then he/she is not disfellowshipped (a word Jehovah’s Witnesses use to mean ‘expell’) but forgiven, just as repented David was forgiven. However, if the repentance is not true, then he/she is disfellowshipped. Who is responsible for taking this decision? We, of course, the body of the elders are in charge of such decisions. The spirit of God Jehovah will guide us accordingly. Yet, I never saw that. It was the chairman’s decision which dominated, or the decision of the ones who had the strongest character. The rest of us just said our opinion but nobody really took our opinion into account. So, when I had seen everything from within the myth started to collapse.

And time had it that I would ascertain this personally as well. My wife and I fell into a serious error. I really repented for that error. I was brought to a judicial committee to be judged by my co-elders. I was in tears and kept telling them that I had repented for my mistake. I had never committed another offence in the past. I referred to the example of David whom God forgave although he had committed horrible sins, an example that they used to call upon. They told me that I had not really repented and I had to be disfellowshipped. Didn’t the Holy Spirit tell them that they were wrong??

I appealed against that decision as I had the right to. I thought it might have been the committee who was against the holy spirit and the next committee might correct that mistake. The next committee came from another church to judge me and it was supposed to be independent. However, as it turned out they were all hand in glove, as we say. When you appeal, the first committee can be present but they cannot interfere. Yet, they didn’t let me speak. Of course, the decision was the same, disfellowshipping. And I really wonder: Didn’t the Holy Spirit tell the second committee that I had deeply repented?

I was disfellowshipped. I was sure by then that they had no connection to God. I decided to play their game until the end, until I managed to throw away all doubts. My behavior was exemplary for a year. I did everything a disfellowshipped has to do in order to be reinstated. I went to all the congregations with my books and paid attention. Nobody talked to me for a year. My friends avoided me, everybody fled away. The disfellowshipped are treated as if they have some sort of virus.

Six months later I applied for reinstatement, but they told me that although I was doing very well, I had to try a little harder. Perfect! Upon the year I applied again, and the elders answered that by then I had repented indeed and I had proved that with my actions throughout the year. Didn’t the holy spirit tell them that I was pulling their leg??????

They announced my reinstatement in the next congregation. Everybody came to hug and kiss me in the end and tell me how much they had missed me. But where had they been for a year? I don’t want friends like those. It was the last congregation I attended. I told them that I didn’t want to know them any longer, and asked them not to bother me anymore. A huge load departed from me. Unfortunately, I broke up with my wife, too. It was time for the great change. I had searched all the religions in the USA; I had even studied dodecatheism because I loved Greece, the country that could build Parthenons.

However, nothing could fulfill the gap inside me. I had always had seeds of Orthodoxy sowed inside me; I was charmed by the mystery, by the devoutness, by the monasteries. Whenever I went to Greece, I would visit monasteries; I felt serene there, I watched history live.

So, I took the great leap. Around 4 years ago, after 18 years in the USA I came back to Greece. I took the first chance to visit the monastery of Agia Lavra, which was a dream-to-come-true for me. I told to the monk at the door… “I want to be baptized an Orthodox”… and from that moment onwards what began was the most engrossing journey in my whole life, with those holy men I met who hugged me as though they had been knowing me for ages. I was baptized in a barrel where they put the must; we filled it carrying buckets of water. It was an exquisite night on 12-12-2009. I was born two weeks before Christ’s birth. The emotion was deep, the devoutness great. The monks were chanting and I could not stop the tears falling from my eyes. I stayed in the monastery that night and received Holy Communion the next morning. Finally, the gap I had been feelling inside me for my whole life was bridged. The wound was healed. Maybe God allowed all this time to pass by and all these experiences I had gone through so that I could really appreciate the best.

Last May I got married to a wonderful girl, the marriage took place in Agia Lavra of course. Six and a half months ago we had our first child, a gorgeous girl, who was baptized in Agia Lavra of course. Every Sunday we go to the Service. Every Sunday during the Service I start crying. I close my eyes, I listen to the monks chanting and I feel as if I’m flying. I travel in time… I think I’m in Byzantium and it’s magical… I don’t look for the Holy Spirit any more. I see it!!! When my friends see me they say that my eyes are shining and they’ve never seen me like this before. My wife says that when we leave the monastery, the moment we step out of the door that shining goes away. “Can’t you be like that at home as well?” she asks. No, because there I’m in heaven I don’t step on the ground. I had never felt those feelings before. I really wish to everybody to feel the way I feel; it’s majestic.

…In one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church…

Writer Alexander Monastic

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT HERESIES

2011-03-27T14:45:00.002+03:00

Translated from the original by Chris Tsilikas

Assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses

We have been dealing with religious matters for some years now and we have encountered hundreds of questions regarding what heresies are and what they believe in. Due to the fact that these questions are more or less identical and they have been asked over and over again, we thought it would be better to answer them in the form of an article. In order to make this article more conceivable we gave it the following question-answer form.

Question: What is a heresy?

Answer: The word heresy derives from the ancient Greek word αιρέω –ώ (pronounced /haereo/) which in Greek means select or prefer. Therefore, some Christians αίρεσαν (the past tense of the word αιρέω), meaning, they selected to leave the proper teaching of our Church and create their own teaching. They believed that the Church had gone far away from the right teaching of Christ and the Apostles, so they had to say the teaching which according to them was the right one. They were also called heretics because they selected extracts from the Bible – the extracts that were in favor of them of course – to prove that they were the ones who were right and not the Church....

Question: A lot of people claim that heresies are a general phenomenon of our era which shows atheism and unfaithfulness. Is that right?

Answer: Of course not. Heresies are as old as Christianity. In fact, they co-exist with Christianity. Even the books of the New Testament refer to them. For example, the 1^st Epistle to Timothy, chapter 1, verses 3-4 “As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, (That is Paul) that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine, Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies”, the Epistle to Titus, chapter 1, verse 14 “Wherefore rebuke them sharply (meaning Titus), that they may be sound in the faith; Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth”, and chapter 3, verse 9 “But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain” and elsewhere as well. These are the so called Jewish or Gnostic heresies.

Question: Why is the Church against heresies?
Answer: First and foremost the Church is trying to defend itself because heresies attack its foundations. Sometimes this attack becomes cowardly since it uses insults against the Church. For instance Jehovah’s Witnesses and Millenarians call our Temples brothels, and our priests, drunkards, dissolute, whoremongers and so on so forth. Secondly, the Church cannot forget its mission which is the corporal and spiritual salvation of mankind. This salvation is in danger from the well-known “destructive heresies or worships” which drive their members directly into either insanity or suicide. And the seriousness of this issue can also be proven by the fact that it has even bothered the European Union, which condemned the heresies in question through various committees. It even issued the “Recommendation” 1178/1992 in which it is mentioned that these heresies constitute danger against Democracy.
Question: Who resorts to heresies and why?
Answer: Most of the times it is people who have problems that resort to heresies because they hope and believe that they will find a solution to their problems. In other cases it is people with flimsy religious beliefs that resort to heresies because they get furious with some priests who are heard to have caused existent or non-existent problems, which problems in most cases are inflated by the press or the TV. However, by general consent of psychologists who have dealt with ex-heretics, the reason why most of them resort to various heresies is their fear of freedom. The greatest gift given to us by God is the freedom to think of anything we want, the freedom to say anything we want, the freedom to do anything we want; and these people have considered this gift to be a curse because they are afraid of doing one thing or another for fear of remorse; so they’ve found the solution. They have delivered their thoughts, their wishes, and their whole selves to some religious Organisation or to the leader of this Organisation and they think they have sorted everything out once and for all. Now it’s the Organisation or its leader who thinks for them and desires for them. They just perform their duties. And they are overly satisfied with this because they have been convinced that they do all these for some divine purpose.
Question: Is everything in heresies negative?
Answer: No, of course not. Due to the fact that heresies usually consist of very few people, the person who joins them feels the family warmth he might have been deprived of in his/her family or in the society. Moreover, almost without exception all these heresies claim that within their borders one can find moral cleanness and perfection – something hard to find outside them since the world is rife with sin and corruption – therefore the person who enrolls on them feels justified and saved. Apart from that a lot of people who suffer an inferiority complex feel upgraded through heresies because they are given the chance to preach and save the sinful world.

Assembly of Pentecostals who “babble” while “in trance”

Question: Why do we say that the heretics tell lies since they use the Bible which we know it’s true?
Answer: This is a case of HOW you use the Bible and not of using it. Unfortunately the heretics use it erroneously and in the way it suits them.
More specifically: 1. They either add or remove something from it so that its meaning is totally altered. For instance, in the 52^nd psalm of David in the book of Psalms we read, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God”. If we remove – just as the heretics do – the first part of the sentence “The fool hath said in his heart”, what remains is the second part “There is no God”. In this way we can claim that the Bible teaches that there is no God!!! 2. They combine extracts from the Bible which are not connected to each other. For example they take an extract from the Apocalypse, one from the Epistles to the Jews and a third from Luke’s Gospel, they join the three extracts together and they draw the conclusion that only 144,000 distinguished people will get into Heaven. Let’s do something similar to see where we will be led to. We take the 5^th verse of chapter 27 of Matthew’s gospel which says (talking about Judas) “And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself” and we connect it to verse 37 of chapter 19 of Luke’s gospel which says, “Go and do the same”, then we can draw the amazing conclusion that the Bible teaches us to hung ourselves! 3. And some other times when they give the meaning of an extract from the Bible they give an allegorical meaning to part of it – in other words what is written is not what is meant exactly – and they take the rest of the extract literally. For instance in the extract from the Apocalypse that refers to the “144,000 sealed of all tribes of the children of Israel” they take the number 144,000 literally but they take the rest of the sentence allegorically and they save the ones they wish to save!
Question: How come we are the ones who are right? Why is it impossible for the heretics to be right?
Answer: We are right because we have something that the heretics do not have; the so-called Apostolic Teaching and Succession. The Apostles delivered everything they heard from Christ to their pupils, who were ordained Bishops to various Churches (Ignatius the God bringing, Polycarpus of Smyrna, etc.) These Apostles’ pupils delivered what they had heard to their pupils and so on so forth. This way everything believed and taught 2000 ago are believed and taught nowadays as well. And as proof to what we have been saying we give the following information. In every Orthodox Bishopric around the world “Diptychs” are kept, which are lists with all the names of the Bishops from the very first to the very last one. Due to the weakness of the heresies to present anything similar to that – needless to say, the oldest heresy can only span 200 years of existence – they claim that their founder was inspired by the Holy Spirit. However this argument is too feeble to pertain because anyone – deranged or not – can claim for himself that he was inspired by the Holy Spirit and in this case, please tell me…. How can you prove otherwise?

Writer Christos Pal

DO JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES STAMP ON IMAGES? NO, BUT THEY BURN THEM!

2011-01-29T22:10:00.003+02:00

Translated from the original by Chris Tsilikas

As it is known proverbs are the quintessence of the wisdom of peoples. In a simple sentence the wise nation manages to tell you everything, all the essential things that otherwise would probably need whole pages to be expressed.

Well one of the most famous wise proverbs of our nation is the one saying “There’s no smoke without fire”, which denotes that rumors heard about something or someone might probably have some standing in reality.

It is true that we have heard various rumours about the bad behavior Jehovah’s Witnesses have on our images due to their hatred against them. But, to be honest, we didn’t want to adopt and believe these rumours even though they came right from the mouth of close friends who would never have lied. And we didn’t want to believe them because we thought that although Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in the honour of the images and actually hate them, it would be far-fetched to believe that they maltreat an object of worship for another person, moreover a religious symbol.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are familiar with the rumours that have been spread about their bad conduct on images, so they have had their chances to try to be transformed from victimizers to victims, as they know that it is impossible for us to prove anything on that, since the accusations are based on personal witnesses and we have no proof whatsoever.

So, we were not surprised when a lady who lives in Germany related her personal experience, when a Jehovah’s Witness acquaintance of hers invited her to their congregation place and ironically asked her, “Can you see any images around here to stamp on them?”

Of course they have no images to stamp on, BECAUSE THEY HAVE SIMPLY BURNT THEM ALL!!!!

We are fully aware of the significance of this statement and we still make it. And it is the Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses “Watchtower” who gave us the right to make that statement; we don’t make up stories to accuse them. It was just beyond our comprehension when we read in the Society’s leaflet that Jehovah’s Witnesses burnt religious images!!!

But as the proverb says “The ass that brays most eats least”. So, we don’t want to waste time with words and we go on with the proof for our claims.

In the official magazine of the Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses “Watchtower” of July 1^st 1974, pages 395 – 396 we find an article entitled “How the use of images can affect you”. We all understand that the article deals with the honours and reverence we pay to icons and images, which to the eyes of the “Watchtower” is considered to be idolatry. We suggest you read our earlier post on the issue of images “Worship of images – is it idolatry or not?”

On page 396 the “Watchtower” becomes more specific and claims that the honours we pay to images is offered to demons and not to God! And it also claims that if we keep religious images in our houses, it is possible that demons visit us and disturb us!!!

It also refers to an incident with a lady in North America. That lady was sick during summer without any obvious cause for her disease. Indeed, one night a demon visited her in the form of a young child who wandered around her room and even sat by her side on the bed!!!

She narrated all these to her daughter and her son-in-law who searched the whole house to find the cause for these things. And….My! What did they find? Two religious images that her mother had kept!! They immediately decided TO BURN THE IMAGES!!!! And they did indeed, they burnt them, and not only the demons stopped coming but also their mother was up and about again.

We quote this terrible document of the burning of the images right away not only for the Orthodox Christians to read, but for Jehovah’s Witnesses as well, who might say that we are slanders:

How the Use of Images Can Affect You

The apostle Paul pointed to another harmful effect of image worship. He said that the relative worship offered to images actually goes “to demons and not to God.” (1 Cor. 10:20, NAB) At times, possessing religious pictures, images or fetishes can even invite harassment from the invisible realm. A woman in North America reports concerning her mother: “She had been ill almost all summer. When my husband and I visited her home she told me that on the previous night she had seen a soft light floating around her room. Then the bed covers were pulled off of her and it felt as if a child had crawled into bed next to her. She was a nervous wreck.” What caused these unusual circumstances?

Her daughter searched the house and found two religious pictures. Could these have something to do with her mother’s difficulties? Realizing that the Bible associates image worship with demonism, they decided to burn the pictures to see what would happen. The daughter continues: “How happy we were to see my mother out of bed the very next day, and feeling better than she had all summer!” Many have had similar experiences.

Magazine of Jehovah’s Witnesses “Watchtower” of July 1^st 1974, page 396: Jehovah’s Witnesses burn images to stop demons from coming!!!!

The Orthodox faithful should also take into consideration the following conclusion: the fact that the text does not talk of images in general but of RELIGIOUS IMAGES. And we point this out because we know that Jehovah’s Witnesses may start their typical tactics of refutation and try to convince us that although the “Watchtower” talks about images it doesn’t mean the ones we use and so on, so forth. And anyway the whole article deals with image reverence.

It’s also worth pointing out that the burning of the images by the couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, which is praised by the “Watchtower” as the action that threw demons away, is not an isolated incident since at the end it notes that many Jehovah’s Witnesses have had similar experiences.

So, how can Jehovah’s Witnesses find images to stamp on since they have burnt them all to throw demons away!

Well, what about you dear faithful? Why do you sit around without doing anything? Why don’t you burn the images you have? Do you like the acquaintance of demons?

But to get serious now, religious images convey a lot of concepts, but demons. And we don’t need to make any profound theological analysis to prove this, just because it is more than obvious that the incident which caused the burning of the images is contrived, and it only offers them an excuse for burning them all. And this is due to the fact that this text has a lot of contradictions. Do you wonder how we know it? From our dearest “Watchtower”, of course. Has it ever left us complaining?

In the “Watchtower” of March 1^st 1961, on page 160 there is a question a reader asks, “In what form did Satan come to tempt Jesus? Did he appear in the form of a man, or was it only a voice that Jesus heard?”

And the ‘Watchtower answers that Satan and demons cannot materialise into flesh any more, after the Flood. Here’s the relevant document:

Questions From Readers

In what form or manner did Satan come to tempt Jesus? Did he appear in the form of a man, or was it only a voice that Jesus heard? Also, how is it that Jesus would allow Satan to take him along out of the wilderness and, in fact, right through the city to and on top of the temple? Was Jesus taken bodily to the top of the temple?—D. A.,

Sierra Leone

At Jude 6 we read regarding the angels that “forsook their own proper dwelling-place” that God “has reserved [them] with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day.” The Watchtower, October 1, 1955, pages 594, 595, after showing that this darkness is a spiritual and not a literal one, goes on to say: “Their being ‘reserved with eternal bonds’ evidently means also that they are no more permitted to materialize in the flesh as before the Flood. This power of materialization was exercised by God’s faithful angels, including Jesus Christ, for thousands of years after the Flood, down into the day of Christ’s faithful apostles, according to God’s will and to serve his holy purposes. But the sinner angels were not allowed to use this power longer, for they would misuse it.” In view of this we must conclude that Satan the Devil also was prohibited from materializing in order to tempt Jesus.

Magazine of Jehovah’s Witnesses “Watchtower” of March 1^st 1961, page 160: Satan and the demons cannot materialise in flesh any more, after the Flood!!!

Consequently, how could the lady in the incident described above realise that the demon who crawled on her bed was a child? Did she visit a medium to find out?

Apparently, as we said, all these are contrived by the “Watchtower” so that Jehovah’s Witnesses can burn the images, since their Society has given them its approval and the green light to do it.

As for the ones who serve the demons we would like to remind Jehovah’s Witnesses of another proverb, and we also advise them to “let sleeping dogs lie”. Does it believe we have forgotten that it had knowingly been using the demonic translation of the Bible by Johannes Greber for years?

So, the Watchtower had better try to throw the demons out of its own ‘house’ and then deal with other houses.

Well, now you know what Society the people who knock on your door or stop you in the street to sell you their leaflets and publications belong to.

Writer Christos Pal

INFANT BAPTISM AND JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES

2010-12-26T23:28:00.002+02:00

Translated from the original by Chris Tsilikas

One of the topics that Jehovah’s Witnesses love to talk about with Orthodox Christians is infant baptism, because they think that they will bring Christians into disposition with this issue. “Why do you baptize your children when they are infants or too young, and thus unable to understand the reason why they are baptized? Don’t you coerce them into becoming Christians this way? Don’t you deprive them of free will? Why don’t you give them the right to decide on their own, the right to choose whether THEY WANT TO BE BAPTIZED ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS or not, when they have grown up and they have FREELY got to know the teachings of Christianity?”

But before we go on, we would like to explain what baptism means for an Orthodox Christian and what it means for a Jehovah’s Witness because they seem to be two different things. For the Orthodox Christian baptism is taken in order to wipe out the Fall of Man and in order to take the grace of the Holy Spirit through the unction.

For Jehovah’s Witnesses on the other hand, baptism means that you have decided to devote yourself to Jehovah and then do his will. In other words baptism is a simple ceremony for Jehovah’s Witnesses, they don’t take it seriously as it is proven, SINCE JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES CAN BE BAPTISED AGAIN IF THEY WANT TO!!!! Yes, that’s right! We’ll see ‘when’ and ‘how’ later on.

We would also like to draw your attention to all the documents we quote from the ‘Watchtower’ – and they are quite a few. As you will find out by the end of this post, they are full of contradictions. Let us now remind you how the right baptism should be done according to Jehovah’s Witnesses:

Firstly: Every person should learn the teaching of Christianity FREELY and then consciously decide to follow the one that he/she believes that serves and expresses the truth of Christianity.

Secondly: As we all understand a young child is incapable of doing this, because, due to his/her age, he/she cannot conceive the highest concepts of Christianity. CONSEQUENTLY THE BAPTISM OF YOUNG CHILDREN IS OUT OF THE QUESTION. And this is due to the fact that a pesron according to the Watchtower should reach THE AGE OF RESPONSIBLE THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS. And A YOUNG CHILD IS IRRESPONSIBLE. Taking all the above into consideration we assume that a prospective Jehovah’s Witness whose parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses grows up in an environment where he/she learns about the teachings of Christianity, so that he/she FREELY takes his/her decision to devote to Jehovah when he/she grows up, that is to be baptized, after he/she has been convinced that his/her parents’ religion is the true one. We also assume that there are no baptisms of young children among Jehovah’s Witnesses.

But, we’d better let the Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses “Watchtower” tell us all about baptism through its leaflets and publications, so that no one can accuse us of being biased or of distorting things about Jehovah’s Witnesses. Let’s start then with the “Watchtower” of March 15^th 1998, page 14. We quote the document below and we’ll comment on it later on.

Wisely Exercising God-Given Freedom

¹² In full recognition of this requirement, Jehovah’s Witnesses advocate the dedicating of oneself to God, but they never coerce anyone into making such a dedication, not even their own children. In contrast with many churches, the Witnesses do not baptize their offspring as infants, as if it were possible to force them into dedication without the benefit of personal choice.

“Watchtower” of March 15^th 1998, page 14: Jehovah’s Witnesses neither coerce anyone into baptizing nor baptize infants

Well, according to the “Watchtower” of March 15^th 1998, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not coerce anyone into making a dedication, that means into being baptized, not even their own children. And they do not baptize them when they are infants – in contrast to other churches – because if they did this, they would deprive them of the benefit of personal choice, that is of free will.

Additionally, the “Watchtower” of 1970, pp 329-330 is more detailed and thus more enlightening about the issue of infant baptism. Let’s read first and we comment on the extract later on:

Why Be Baptized?

³ It is thought by some that baptism is a ceremony that brings certain direct spiritual dispensations from God. A careful study of the instructions given by Jesus and his disciples on baptism proves otherwise. Being a symbol of something else, it obviously is not as important as what it symbolizes, namely dedication. The step of dedication must be taken only after one has sufficient knowledge to decide unequivocally that he wishes to do Jehovah’s will and not his own; otherwise the act of baptism is meaningless. It follows, therefore, that it would be improper for infants to be baptized. One must know why he is baptized. Very young children would be lacking in understanding. It is true that Christ Jesus said: “Let the young children come to me.” But there is no record that he baptized any young children or commanded that they be baptized. Rather, they should be instructed by their parents in the “discipline and authoritative advice of Jehovah,” so as to be prepared for dedication and baptism when they have grown in understanding to the point where they can make an intelligent dedication.—Mark 10:14; Eph. 6:4.

“Watchtower” of 1970, pp329-330: Jehovah’s Witnesses do not baptize infants or children

So from the “Watchtower” of 1962 we draw the following elucidating conclusions. In order for baptism to have a significance the person who is baptized must have sufficient knowledge, in other words he/she must be fully aware and conscious that he desires to do Jehovah’s will and not his own. Consequently, it is improper for infants to be baptized exactly because they lack in such knowledge. Pay attention to the word “why” in the extract above which is printed in italics because the Watchtower wants to stress that the person to be baptized should know the reason why this is happening. As the Watchtower goes on in the extract above we notice that after infants, it considers it improper for young children to be baptized as well, because due to the young of their age they lack in understanding the reason why they should be baptized. And in order to justify this stance it quotes the Holy Scriptures pointing out that Christ neither baptized a child nor commanded anyone – obviously from his disciples – to baptize a child. What children should do – always according to the Watchtower – is to learn from their parents and when they grow up and have also grown in understanding they can make the intelligent dedication, that is they can be baptized.

And the last document from the “Watchtower” of March 15^th 1998, page 14, refers to the age when someone should be baptized and to the reason why someone should be baptized:

Wisely Exercising God-Given Freedom

¹³ It is noteworthy that Timothy knew the holy writings because he had been taught them from infancy. He had been persuaded—not forced—to believe Christian teachings by his mother and grandmother. (2 Timothy 1:5) As a result, Timothy saw the wisdom of becoming a follower of Christ and thus made the personal choice of Christian dedication. In modern times, tens of thousands of young men and women whose parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses have followed this example. (Psalm 110:3) Others have not. It is a matter of personal choice.

“Watchtower” of March 15^th, 1998, page 14: Tens of thousands of young men and women whose parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses are baptized

In the document above from the “Watchtower” of March 15^th 1998, we can make the following deductions. The child whose parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses has been taught the Christian teachings from infancy, he/she is persuaded that these teachings are the true ones and he/she FREELY selects to make a dedication, that is to become a Jehovah’s Witness. It’s worth pointing out that once again this dedication which is baptism excludes infants and young children since the Watchtower is definite on this issue, and even writes “tens of thousands of youn men and women whose parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses have followed this example”, meaning they have been baptized.

Consequently, what we can infer from the three documents we quoted is that, in contrast to our practices – we baptize our children in infancy or in childhood – Jehovah’s Witnesses educate their children from infancy on Christian teachings and when their children become mature men and women they realize that their parents’ religion is the true one – since they have FREELY compared it to other religions – they decide to move on making the dedication, that is to be baptized Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now let’s have a look at the FREE EDUCATIONAL METHODS Jehovah’s Witnesses use on their children in order to convince them that their parents’ religion is the only true one. And be sure we don’t need to make up any stories on that since once again we have the Watchtower to tell us all we need.

Well, the FREE EDUCATION of the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses starts with

SLANDERING ALL OTHERS

1. “²Eventually, to human eyes, the pure Christian congregation founded by Jesus seemed to have been corrupted when Satan brought forth the apostate religious travesty today known as Christendom. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-8) ” “Watchtower” 1^st July 1995 p. 14

2. “Taking in teachings infected by dangerous demonic ideas can poison us just as easily as can eating physical food that has been tainted with germs or toxins…. ” So we do well to examine the source of our figurative food, bearing in mind that some literature, such as apostate writings, may be infected by the introduction of unscriptural teachings and philosophies.” “Watchtower” 15^th April 1997 p. 30

3. “¹⁵ Like Jesus’ first-century disciples, we declare the good news—a heartwarming message of hope—to those “skinned and thrown about like sheep without a shepherd” and to those blinded and confused by ”teachings of demons.”” “Watchtower” 1^st August 2003 p. 17

4. “From infancy their children are told the truth about things such as Santa Claus, Easter and false religion. ” “Watchtower” 1970 p. 249

So this is the ... FREE EDUCATION that children of Jehovah’s Witnesses get from infancy!!!!

Apart from the Watchtower we all belong to the false, apostate religion created by Satan and we bring about and teach demonic ideas!!!

But don’t think that this FREE EDUCATION for the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses ends here. It goes on with

COERCING CHILDREN INTO TAKING PART IN THE ACTIVITIES OF THE SOCIETY

1. “Many children buck against the routine of a family study. Should this stop parents from conducting the study when planned? No, certainly not. “Foolishness is tied up with the heart of a boy [or, girl],” acknowledges Proverbs 22:15.” “Watchtower” 1^st June 1998 p. 22

2. “It is proper that a Christian parent require children to attend Christian meetings.” “Watchtower” 1975 p. 319

3. “⁷ Is it not reasonable, then, for school-age children to pay attention to the instruction provided at congregation meetings rather than be allowed to fall asleep as soon as the meeting begins? ….. ⁸Hence, some parents arrange for their children to take a nap before the meetings so that they will arrive at the Kingdom Hall refreshed and ready to learn. Certain parents may strictly limit or even wisely rule out television viewing for their children on meeting nights.” “Watchtower” 15^th March 2000 p. 17

Children are foolish!!!, the Watchtower says, so parents should not be afraid to subject them to the standard ‘brainwash’ that all Jehovah’s Witnesses are subjected to, which of course is widely known as family study. Also pay attention to what the Watchtower says on the extracts we have quoted, “A parent Jehovah’s Witness should REQUIRE children to attend Christian meetings and not fall asleep as soon as the congregation begins. That’s why parents should arrange for their children to take a nap before the meetings and they should also strictly rule out television. Please! Take a break! No more such freedom! We’ve had enough!

Of course some other Jehovah’s Witnesses are even more inventive. They give their children a lot of water to drink so that they can go to the loo before the meeting in order to avoid constant interruptions of the meeting for the loo!! “Watchtower” p. 341

But what happens when all these fail and children still resist doing their Bible instruction? No problem whatsoever. The Watchtower quotes the example of a mother who “FREELY” and “DEMOCRATICALLY” educated her children. Enjoy reading it:

“When it was stressed that it was the parents’ responsibility to see that children had daily Bible instruction, I decided to set aside time for daily Bible reading,” she said. “This raised a howl of protest from my boys, ages seven, five and three, as it always seemed to come at their most enjoyable time. After the account of creation they lost interest, and the howls grew louder as I turned off the television every night and announced it was time for Bible reading. Many times I sat with the Bible in one hand and the rod of correction in the other. ” “Watchtower” 1964 p. 644

Well, now it is clear how FREELY the children did their Bible study; by the threat of being beaten up!

And when we say Bible study of course, we mean the education the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses get, so that when they grow up they can become the unpaid ‘door-to-door salesmen’ of the books of the Society of the Watchtower. And how is it possible for them to avoid becoming this since they have been experiencing it since their infancy? As instead of playing typical child games they play games such as how we can trap the prospective victim in order to fob the leaflets of the Society on him. And don’t hurry you Jehovah’s Witnesses to tell us we are slanders because what follows is the proof for our sayings:

“One morning, after breakfast, my youngest daughter walked into the kitchen with a magazine bag and two of the children’s personal Bibles and announced: ‘Momma, I’m going out to preach from house to house.’ My children are always pretending to be conducting Bible studies, attending meetings at the Kingdom Hall or giving each other magazine presentations as done in the house-to-house preaching work. My wife agreed that that was good and told her not to leave the yard. ” “Watchtower” 1968 p. 414

And here’s evidence from the Watchtower of February 1^st 2001, page 28 which describs how children play hide-and-seek, the one pretending to be the housekeeper and the other pretending to be the Jehovah’s Witness who is trying to trap the unsuspected victim!!!:

“We always tried to have a weekly family Bible study program and to make it interesting for all the children. When Daryl, Leslie, and Everett were still young, we gave them questions each week to research and answer the following week. They also acted out preaching from house to house. One went in the closet and pretended to be a householder. The other stood outside and knocked. They used comical lines to intimidate each other, but this helped them to develop a love for the preaching work. We also preached with them regularly. ”

Watchtower of February 1^st 2001, page 28: Young children of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ playing ‘hide-and-seek’ educated on how to trap innocent victims

So after all these we think you have realized that when a Jehovah’s Witness says he/she is giving Bible education to his/her children, he/she really means the teachings of his/her Society. And once again in order to avoid any objections we quote the Watchtower of 1965, page 276 where an article entitled “Trained from infancy” talks about a four-year-old girl who refused to eat sausage because it had blood:

Trained from Infancy

“One day my husband took one of our daughters to the open market in the town of Cabo. At lunch time he decided to eat a delicacy, the well-known haggis, which is made of blood. The little girl who was with him is very bright and knows what haggis is, that it is made of blood. Do you know what happened? When her father gave her a plateful of haggis, the little girl said: ‘Daddy, this food contains blood. I can’t eat it, because Jehovah doesn’t like people to eat blood.’ The child is only four years old.” Truly, such a mother trains her children ‘according to the way for them.’ ” “Watchtower” 1965 p. 276

Well, this is the sort of ‘freedom’ in which the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses grow up and with which they are educated.

And this .... freedom goes on with the:

PSYCHOLOGICAL VIOLENCE USED ON CHILDREN BY THE SOCIETY OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES

We saved the best part for the end about this ... freedom the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses grow up in. Because the document we quote below describes what will happen to the child whose parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses but he/she refuses to be baptized. HE/SHE WILL BE EXECUTED BY JEHOVAH AS A CURSED PERSON!!!!!:

⁷ “Contrariwise, the “goats” who are to be executed as “cursed” persons will include the religionists who stay inside Babylon the Great till she is destroyed forever; …. ⁸ The “goats” would also include those husbands and wives who have believing marriage partners but who, in spite of the good example of their believing marriage mates, are found to be still unbelievers … also, the children of a believing parent or the children of believing parents (fathers and mothers), which children were once “holy” as minors, as unresponsible children, but who have grown up to responsible years and have refused to become dedicated, baptized believers by the time that divine execution upon the “goats” begins. ” “Watchtower” 1965 pp. 175-176

Still, after so much ... ‘freedom’ and after the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses have reached a responsible age in order to be dedicated, meaning to be baptized, they still have to learn a wide range of questions which will prove that they have understood and appreciated God’s word. There used to be a special issue which was entitled “Your Word Is a Lamp to My Foot” and included 80 questions. Here is the relevant extract:

“In fact, as a person contemplates becoming a disciple and reaches the point of making a dedication to Jehovah he, in conjunction with the ministerial servants in the congregation organization, will be able to review the publication “Your Word Is a Lamp to My Foot.” This informative Watch Tower publication includes eighty basic teachings of the Bible. These are to be gone over, one at a time, so that it will be known to all, the prospective immersion candidate and his associates in the Christian congregation, that the one desiring to symbolize his dedication does have an understanding and appreciation of these basic teachings of God’s Word. ” “Watchtower” 1970 p. 306

Nowadays this book has been replaced by another one, and anyone who wants to become a Jehovah’s Witness should understand and appreciate 120 basic teachings of the Bible which can be found in the appendix of the book of the Society “Organized to accomplish our ministry”.

This is an additional reason why Jehovah’s Witnesses do not baptize children. Because IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR A CHILD DUE TO HIS/HER AGE TO BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND 120 BASIC TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE.

Consequently, Jehovah’s Witnesses EXCLUDE – we say it again they EXCLUDE – young children from being baptized.

Yet, is this really true?

IS IT TRUE THAT JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES DO NOT BAPTIZE YOUNG CHILDREN?

And now it’s time for us to watch the Watchtower making the greatest “tumble” ever. Because up to now in all the extracts we have quoted above we see that the Watchtower is totally averse to the idea of baptizing young children. But let us first see what ages the Watchtower refers to when it uses the word ‘child’, so that we know which ages are automatically ruled out of baptism. So, let the Watchtower speak:

“The Greek word for “young child” is pai·di′on. It can be used of a twelve-year-old, as at Mark 5:40-42, which refers to a girl resurrected by Jesus; but it can also apply to a newborn baby, as when used of the child Jesus at the time he was visited by the shepherds.—Luke 2:17. ” “Watchtower” 1970 p. 112

Well, according to the Watchtower the word ‘child’ is used for ages ranging from infancy to 12 years. Consequently, again according to what the Watchtower has claimed up to now, IT IS FORBIDDEN TO BAPTIZE children that are within that range of age.

Reinforcing this the “Watchtower” of 1971 p. 473, writes that when a boy aged 10 wanted to be baptized his parents didn’t let him do so because they said that he had to grow up. So he was baptized when he was 15.

And now let’s watch all the “tumbles” the Watchtower makes one by one – through its publications of course – when it accepts Jehovah’s Witnesses HAVING BEEN BAPTIZED WHILE BEING IN CHILDHOOD!!!!!!!!!!!

Baptism of an eleven-year-old girl! “Watchtower” 1968 p. 107

Do you think that’s the only one? No, of course not. More is coming.

Baptism of an eleven-year-old girl! “Watchtower” 1^st March 2000 p. 21

Do you think that’s the end? No, of course not. More is coming.

Baptism of an eleven-year-old boy! “Watchtower” 1^st March 2004 p. 25

Do you think that’s the end? No, of course not. Those were quite old. What do you think? Can we find younger ones or not?

Baptism of a ten-year-old boy! “Watchtower” 1967 p. 644

Do you think that’s the end? No, of course not. More is coming.

Baptism of a nine-year-old boy! “Watchtower” 1975 p. 182

Do you think that’s the end? No, of course not. More is coming.

Baptism of an eight-year-old boy! “Watchtower” 1^st October 2000 p.28

Do you think that’s the end? No, of course not. More is coming.

Baptism of a seven-year-old boy! “Watchtower” 1^st October 2006 p.12

We quote the baptism of the seven-year-old boy as it is described right away so that Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot accuse us for ... slandering!

“In September 1938, my parents were baptized. My siblings and I were baptized in December 1941 at a national convention held at Hargreave Park in Sydney, New South Wales. I was seven years old. Thereafter, I regularly shared in the field ministry with my parents. In those days, the Witnesses took portable phonographs from door to door and played recorded Bible discourses to the householders.”

“Watchtower” 1^st October 2006 p.12: baptism of a Jehovah’s Witness at the age of seven!

REBAPTISM OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES!

The last fact worth mentioning is that of the rebaptism of the members of the Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses!

Due to the fact that a lot of Jehovah’s Witnesses believed that they did not make a right dedication when they were first baptized, the Watchtower gives them the right to ... re-dedicate to Jehovah, meaning to be rebaptized! We let the Watchtower explain how this is possible:

REBAPTISM NECESSARY?

¹¹“ Due to certain circumstances at the time when they got baptized or due to subsequent developments, some have doubts about the validity of their past dedication and baptism, and they wonder if they should be rebaptized. They may have been baptized at an early age or while they were very immature in the truth, or after baptism they became inactive in the ministry for a time. At the baptism ceremony a talk on baptism is given to make clear what is involved in the matter of dedication and baptism….But if one submitted to baptism mainly because of emotional factors and without proper understanding, or in order to please one’s parents or others, and if this baptism did not symbolize a prior dedication to do Jehovah’s will, it would be proper to be baptized again.” “Watchtower” 1962 p. 332

No need to make a comment! Once again the Watchtower has left us speechless!

Writer Christ Pal

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS AND THEIR MEANING

2010-12-25T08:49:00.002+02:00

Translated from the original by Chris Tsilikas

Orpheus – Christ

The human need for divine communication, the need to feel the divine nature close to him/her and thank it, existed right from the beginning of human existence and was expressed not only through worship and prayer, but through art as well.

Therefore, in all eras and in all religions man created works of art deserving admiration, such as the enormous Ziggurat (a kind of pyramid) in ancient Mesopotamia, the Temple of Solomon in Israel, the Parthenon in ancient Greece, the Taj Mahal in

India

and so on so forth in an endless list of any kind of art.

Even when some kinds of art are considered forbidden in his/her religious beliefs, man contrives means to overcome this prohibition or creates new kinds of art to stay loyal to this prohibition. For instance, when a Muslim artist wants to portray the prophet of Mohammend – something forbidden for Islam – he thinks up the following solution: he paints the whole body of prophet Mohammend but leaves the face blank. Similarly the ban on divine illustration does not stand in the way of his artistic expression and he creates the famous ‘arabesque’ which adorn his mosques and temples.

In the same way, early Christianity for fear of drifting into idolatry – since as we all know the majority of its faithful derived from idolatry – avoids portraying God. However, the faithful of that era had the dire need to be expressed through Art, and that need was so big that it could not be supressed in any way. So, the early Christian resorts to symbols through which he/she tries to express the most profound thoughts of his/her faith. Besides, that’s the reason why they neglect naturalness and three-dimensional reality when they draw these symbols and acquire painting of slight moves in order to show off the concept of the supernatural world. In addition, resorting to symbols has one extra reason, the fact that with symbols and allegory early Christians try to cover up the concepts of their faith which was persecuted by idolatry at the time.

These early-christian symbols were usually found in three places: the individual graves of the faithful, the christian sarcophagus – rectangular reliquary for dead people – or most importantly in the well-known catacombs where the richness of their art was displayed.

The agenda of the symbols used are trilateral taken from the Hellenistic and the idololatric world, the Old Testament and the New Testament.

TOPICS FROM THE HELLENISTIC AND THE IDOLOLATRIC WORLD

The myth of love and soul. The soul is depicted as a butterfly and love as a winged child. It symbolizes the passion of the union in the blessedness of Paradise. Many times young people in love are illustrated collecting grapes or flowers. The symbolization is the same.

The four seasons. This is one of the most popular topics. The four seasons are depicted as four women who carry the following on their heads: Spring carries roses, Summer carries ears of corn, Autumn vines and Winter carries olive branches. Their age varies according to the season they represent. They symbolize life that stems from death.

The Dove. This is one of the top-ranking symbols. Sometimes it carries an olive branch or a branch of bay laurel in its beak to symbolize the peace of the soul in Heaven. When it stands on a vessel or flies over a paradise-like place it represents the innocence of the souls of those who died for Christ. Sometimes two or three doves are depicted together to sit on an ancient pot and drink water which symbolizes the water of life.

The dove on an ancient pot

The peacock. Another familiar issue. It symbolizes immortality of the soul.

The deer. It symbolizes the soul that desires Lord.

Idyllic places. They are illustrated with plants and flowers and symbolize Paradise.

The phoenix. It symbolizes Paradise. When we have brances of the phoenix, they represent victory of life over death. The phoenix is pre-eminently considered to be the tree of life and many times the Apostles are depicted standing around it in the form of sheep.

The vineyard and the vines. One of the most known topics. It symbolizes Christ and the Church according to Christ’s words, “I’m the vineyard and you are the vines”.

The sheep. Sometimes Christ is the captain and some other times the captain is the bishop, and it symbolizes the Church which is guided towards the safe port of faith.

The anchor. A symbol of hope. Upside down it denotes the Lord’s Cross.

Pisces (The fish). Probably the most widely known Christian symbol after the Cross. It symbolizes Christ, and the acronym of the word (Ichtys) in Greek denotes the salvation that Christ offers. (The acronym in Greek means: Jesus Christ The Son of God the Saviour). It also symbolized the divine Service and the sense of Baptism. A lot of fish together symbolize the faithful.

The symbol of Pisces (Icthys)

The Cross. According to Clemes of Alexandria this is the ‘Sunday segment’ and is the most admirable symbol among Christians. It is pre-eminently the symbol that denotes and defines Christianity. With the letter R on its top, it’s the monogram of Christ. Since the 4^th century the monogram of Christ has been combined with the revealing letters A-Ω. We also find the cross in the catacombs in a T-form in the middle of names. Eg. AGATPE.

Orpheus. The mythical hero Orpheus who tamed the wild animals when he played his lyre symbolizes Christ who attracts with his teahing, and tames the beasts of our passions.

Apart from the illustrations mentioned above we also find heavenly dinners in the catacombs– in relation to national dinners – in which we can see people eating and drinking. These heavenly dinners should be taken symbolically and not literally because they represent the blessedness of the people who have died who enjoy the bread and the pisces (Christ). Such illustrations we can find in the catacombs of Priscilla, Callistus etc.

TOPICS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT

A lot of the scenes of the narration of the Old Testament and a lot of the people of it have been used since the first christian Art. But pay attention. These scenes and these historical people should not be taken historically but symbolically.

Adam and Eve’s fall. This is one of the most ancient topics of Christian painting. It symbolizes sin and the departure of man from his relation to God (Paradise).

Noah’s Arc. It has the meaning of the prayed soul.

Abraham’s sacrifice. It symbolizes the soul that has been saved through sacrifice.

A beardless Moses striking the rock to find water. This is a symbol of the liberating power the water has during Baptism.

The Ascension of Prophet Elijah. It symbolises the course of the soul to Heaven. Later on it will denote the Ascension of Christ.

The three Young men in the Fiery Furnace and Prophet Daniel among the lions. They are both symbols of the liberation of the soul.

Prophet Jonah. A popular topic. His life is narrated in three or four scenes. He symbolizes the resurrection of the dead. Later on he will denote Christ’s resurrection.

Prophet Jonah thrown into the sea

TOPICS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT

The good Shepherd. It symbolizes Christ, “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John, 10:11), who is looking for the lost (sinful) sheep in order to save it. A favourite topic especially for Christian sculpture in cemeteries. It also inspired the burial service where the chant “I’m the lost sheep” is heard.

Christ as the “Good Shepherd”

Christ as a lamb. When one lamb is illustrated it symbolizes Christ but when two lambs are illustrated they represent the great Apostles Peter and Paul. A lot of lambs denote the faithful. The 12 sheep around the lamb stand for the 12 Apostles. The Quinisext Ecumenical Synod of 692 forbids the illustration of Christ as a lamb with its 82^nd canon. After that, He is represented as human. However, the mosaic of St Vitalius in Ravenna which illustrates Christ as a lamb is marvellous.

The Baptism of Christ. It has the symbolic meaning of the liberating power the water has during baprtism.

Christ healing the blind man. It stands for salvation through Jesus, who opened the eyes of our souls.

Christ healing the paralytic. He is illustrated in two phases. As a sick man and after his healing by Christ while he is getting up from his bed and leaving. The whole scene represents deliverance from sin.

Christ healing the bleeding woman. It similarly symbolizes liberation from sin.

Christ feeding five thousand people. The five loaves symbolize bliss in Paradise.

Jesus and the Samaritan woman. The Samaritan woman is illustrated either while carrying the vessel with water or above the well taking out water. She represents eternal life through Jesus.

The resurrection of Lazarus. As we all know Lazarus’ resurrection symbolizes the resurrection of the dead.

Christ and His Apostles. Christ is illustrated on the throne relaying the Gospel either to all the Apostles or to the leading ones Peter and Paul. The scene symbolizes the diffusion of His words through the Apostles.

Bibliography

Kalokiris Constandine: “Introduction to Christian and Byzantine Archaeology (The Art of the East and of the West)

Writer Christ Pal

DO JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES REFUSE TO TAKE THE ARMS AND TAKE PART IN WARS INDEED?

2010-09-26T23:06:00.008+03:00

Translated from the original by Chris Tsilikas

The heresy that is known today as Jehovah’s Witnesses, issues two magazines which mostly contain the doctrine of the heresy. These are the fortnightly “Watchtower” and the monthly “Awake”. Well, in the “Watchtower” of November 1st, 1964, pages 652-653, the Society claims that Jehovah’s Witnesses (the Kingdom ambassadors as they are mentioned in the text) in contrast to the rest of the world refused to take the arms in World War I and for this neutrality they became objects of hatred and persecution:

THE JERUSALEM OF THE FULFILLMENT

26 At that time the religious clergymen of Christendom actively joined in supporting both sides in World War I in the enormous spilling of blood. However, the Kingdom ambassadors conscientiously refused to be combatants in the international war over political world domination. For this they became objects of hatred among all the nations, as Matthew 24:9 had foretold.
The “Watchtower” of November 1st, 1964, p.p. 652 – 653: Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to combat in World War I

You may wonder what the need is for quoting the above document since it is well-known to everybody that Jehovah’s Witnesses love peace and are thus neutral to wars, a fact that they are very proud of. And the price they have paid for this neutrality is imprisonment and persecution, and in some cases they have paid with their own lives when they refused to do their military service and take the arms.

All the above mentioned facts raise some questions which need to be answered immediately, and these answers will certainly justify the reason for the current article:
Is the Society “Watchtower” and by extension are Jehovah’s Witnesses in favour of peace and against war?
Is it in favour of or against the existence of weapons?
Why is the Society in favour of neutrality in war times?
Is it true that Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t take part in World War I as the "Watchtower" of November the 1st, 1964 claims?

In order to avoid being accused for empathy against Jehovah’s Witnesses we are going to use the following method, while we’re giving convincing answers to the questions posted above: Instead of answering the questions ourselves we’ll let the Society itself answer them through the texts of its publications.

So, in the leaflet of the Society “Awake!” of May 8th, 1997, page 23, all the doubts we might have about what is in favour of peace and what is against war are dispelled by Society itself, since it overtly claims that Jehovah’s Witnesses are not pacifists; on the contrary they happily await God’s war.

Totally Opposed to War?

Were ‘the ancient Christian doctrine and the whole spirit of the Gospel’ really pacifist, however? Could early Christians truly be described as pacifists, as defined previously? No! Why not? For one thing, they recognized God’s right to wage war. (Exodus 14:13, 14; 15:1-4; Joshua 10:14; Isaiah 30:30-32) Besides that, they never disputed God’s right to authorize ancient Israel to fight for him when that nation served as his sole instrument on earth.—Psalm 144:1; Acts 7:45; Hebrews 11:32-34.

“Awake” 8th May, 1997 p. 23: God fights trough ancient Israel!

For those of you who haven’t realized the threat hidden behind the words of the above document we’re here to make it clear: the heresy of Jehovah’s Witnesses has been entitled to the right to order the masses to start a war whenever it is ‘notified’, that is whenever it decides, and the means and the methods of this war are up to the Society to decide upon.

And don’t think that it will be difficult for the Society to convince them. Its followers blindly obey it and they will not hesitate at the least, since they will believe that this way they will serve Jehovah’s plans for eliminating evil and for the prevalence of good, with the annihiliation of all evil people, meaning of course those who do not belong to the Society! The first messages for the blind submission of its followers have already been sent, since as we know, they are not allowed to transfuse blood whenever it is cosidered necessary by the doctors, and as a result a lot of them have lost their life while they could be alive today if they had accepted blood transfusion, especially victims of car accidents.
There might be an objection to all the above for the contradiction emerging, which leads directly to the second question we have posed. How will Jehovah’s Witnesses fight in a war since as we have claimed they consciously refuse to take the arms and as a result they have suffered quite a few times?

The answer is simple and it comes from the “Watchtower” of December 15th, 1973, page 127. There we find out that the heresy is not against the arms, since it claims that in the Holy Scriptures there is no objection to carrying weapons (thus, neither in using them) for people who defend property/people or try to impose the law. So, if it is legitimate for policemen etc. to carry arms as a defence means, it is rather sure that it will be legitimate for Jehovah’s Witnesses to carry and use weapons – whenever of course this is ordered by the Society – for the defence of the greatest goal for them, meaning Jehovah’s interest:

Jehovah God himself allowed human governments to exercise authority for law enforcement, by means of arms if necessary. Regarding such governmental authority we read: “It is not without purpose that it bears the sword; for it is God’s minister, an avenger to express wrath upon the one practicing what is bad.” (Rom. 13:4) Hence no Scriptural objection can be raised against the existence of armed law-enforcement agencies nor against a government’s authorizing certain men to carry weapons when protecting property and/or people.
The “Watchtower” of December 15th, 1973, p. 127: Jehovahs’ Witnesses are not against arms!

Besides, it is obvious in the leaflets of the Society that the heresy is not against the use of arms, since it allows Jehovah’s Witnesses to decide on their own if they will become policemen, guards or night watchmen, and therefore both carry a gun and use it if it is needed.
So if this is how things are, how it occurs that Jehovah’s Witnesses are neutral during war time, a question we have posed in our third question?

Well, the issue of neutrality came up while Joseph Rutherford was the second president of the Society. His book “Enemies” written in 1937 split the world in two. On the one hand there are the people and the armies that belong to the organisation of Devil, and on the other hand there is “the holy Society of Jehovah”. So every Jehovah’s Witness is called to decide which side he wants to take; either devil’s by accepting to do military service or God’s by refusing to do military service, or else find a neutral position in between. So, Jehovah’s Witnesses stay neutral not because they are pacifists and against the arms but because they believe that if they do military service they actually serve the devil. Then if Armageddon happens (it’s a place in Israel where the symbolic battle between good and evil will occur before the Second Coming, which battle Jehovah’s Witnesses take literally, though) they will come before God with the result of their own annihiltion and their non-resurrection.

THE MENACING “TRAP” OF THE “BIRDCATCHER”

20 Notably from the year 1922 onward it was pointed out from the inspired Scriptures that Jehovah God has an organization, including his organized “remnant” on earth, and that there is an enemy organization, Satan’s organization, with an invisible demonic part and a visible earthly part. It was pointed out that, if one does not belong to Jehovah’s visible organization, then one belongs to the Adversary’s organization.

The “Watchtower” of December 1st, 1974, p.p. 732 – 733: If one is not a Jehovah’s Witness he is with Satan!

Let’s deal now with the fourth and last question we have posed, whether Jehovah’s Witnesses took part in World War I or not. While we are exposing the documents regarding this issue, we would like you to pay attention to the mastery with which the Society tries to draw back, as this is one of its ‘trues’, the ones we have been used to. And its mastery reminds us of the way a cat tries to cover up its mess by opening a pit to bury its dung and covers it with soil so that nobody can see it. Unfortunately for the heresy of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the others can actually see their ‘dung’ – besides, it’s the Society who has published it and made it known – and they really hold it up to ridicule, that’s why it is forced to draw back and not because it wants to put things right and restore the truth.
So, on page 119 of a leaflet of the Society entitled ‘Book of the Year’ and refers to the year 1975, resembling a young boy who has been caught telling lies for some mischief, the Society starts telling some truths, but only half of these truths as it has been used to, about the participation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in World War I. While in the magazine ‘Watchtower’ of November 1st we saw above the Society supported that no Jehovah’s Witness ever took part or took weapon in World War I, now it veers a little and claims that there were some Jehovah’s Witnesses (Bible Students in the text) who took part in that war but they didn’t take any arms because they accepted noncombatant service:

A NEW OUTLOOK

During World War I questions arose among the Bible Students as to the position they should take regarding military service. Some refused to participate in any way, whereas others accepted noncombatant service. Related questions arose about whether to buy war bonds and stamps. Failure to do so sometimes resulted in persecution, even brutal treatment.
Book of the Year 1975, p. 119: Jehovah’s Witnesses accept noncombatant service in World War I

Will we forgive the Society of the “Watchtower” for this white lie, since anyway its followers did not take arms? We’d love to do so if we weren’t bowled over by another leaflet of the Society entitled “The Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”. As it is obvious the Society hasn’t taken the Latin wise words “Scripta manent” into consideration, which means: words fly away, while writings remain. These ‘tricky’ written words which force the ‘Watchtower” to make a new statement (not even a government spokesman makes so many statements) about the issue of whether Jehovah’s Witnesses took the arms in World War I or not, since the mockery and the irony from its opponents seem to be endless.

Therefore, in the “Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom” on page 119 it is forced to make a complete volte-face and admit that not only its followers took the arms but they also went to the front line and fought. However, in order to ‘sugar the pill’ and not sound totally inconsistent with what it had claimed so far, it does not hesitate to blurt another stupid remark: that although Jehovah’s Witnesses (Bible Students in the text) went to the front line and fought, they didn’t really kill anyone because – get ready – they either fired into the air or they fired....the opponent’s weapon to knock it from their hands!!!

When the World Went to War

During the war years, the circumstances into which individual Bible Students were thrust varied. The way they dealt with these situations also varied. Feeling obligated to obey “the powers that be,” as they referred to the secular rulers, some went into the trenches at the front with guns and bayonets. But having in mind the scripture, “Thou shalt not kill,” they would fire their weapons into the air or try simply to knock the weapon from the hands of an opponent. (Ex. 20:13, KJ)
Book "Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom" p 191: Jehovah’s Witnesses fire their opponent’s gun to knock it from their hands!!

So, after all these we think that we should award Jehovah’s Witnesses the first prize for commiting the most blunders of first order ever. We think that you will agree they really deserve this prize.

Writer Christos Pal

Totally Opposed to War?

True Christians love peace. They stay completely neutral in the world’s military, political, and ethnic conflicts. But, strictly speaking, they are not pacifists. Why? Because they welcome God’s war that will finally enforce his will on earth—a war that will settle the great issue of universal sovereignty and rid the earth of all enemies of peace once and for all.—Jeremiah 25:31-33; Daniel 2:44; Matthew 6:9, 10.
“Awake” 8th May, 1997 p. 23: Jehovah’s Witnesses are not pacifists!

In the same article we read something that is highly worrying. What is that? The fact that the heresy of Jehovah’s Witnesses recognizes God’s right to wage war. And as He did in the past by authorizing Israel to fight for Him, who was his sole instrument on earth, he can also do the same today authorizing someone else. And who can really be that someone who could actually take the place of ancient Israel and wage God’s war? Who else but “the sole conductor of Jehovah”, the “faithful and decent servant of God” (note: these are the characteristics that the heresy of Jehovah’s Witnesses attributes to itself), meaning of course the Society “Watchtower”.

THE DISTORTED IMAGES OF GOD IN CHRISTIANITY

2010-06-20T21:13:00.007+03:00

Translated from the original by Chris Tsilikas

The impression that atheism and unfaithfulness are increasing in our society is widespread among faithful and unfaithful. Of course this is a fact we cannot deny and is partly true.

However, it is time we wonder whether we Christians can actually decline all responsibility or we are partly responsible for that. And perhaps all these atheists and unfaithful may neither be atheists nor unfaithful in essence, but they may actually be looking for a genuine religion and a genuine God! Because as Jean Paul Sartre – the great French philosopher – said “an atheist has an obsession with God and sees his absence everywhere; he can’t even utter a word without pronouncing His name. In short he’s a person with religious beliefs.”

So what do most of us really offer to those ‘atheists’ and ‘unfaithful’ other than a formal and, generally speaking, hypocritical religion; and most importantly, other than a fake, distorted image of God and not the One who Christ and His disciples acknowledged us?

OUR GODSo we’ll grab the opportunity to let you know of our God, the God you have never acknowledged and have never imagined that exists.

So our God is Father God who is LOVE and FREELY and generously spreads His love to everybody, righteous and non-righteous.
Our God is Divine Speech (Christ) who is LOVE and is FREELY humiliated and crucified for His creature.
Our God is the Holy Spirit that is LOVE and it FREELY comes and dwells inside us through baptism and unction generously giving us its gifts.
And since our God is LOVE He’s not afraid of strangers; nor is He a racist. On the contrary, He, as a Father, loves everybody without discrimination, beyond religion, race and social status. He loves all his children, especially the ‘naughty’ ones, hoping they will repent and return back to him so that they can taste of His love.

Since our God is LOVE and compassion he is not avenging to torture evil people in the eternal fire of hell. Because even hell is an expression of God’s love. God is so liberated that accepts and respects free will, the choice man might make to leave away from His love even after death. However, man tortures himself (hell) since he feels God’s love but he cannot taste of it. On the contrary the one who has freely selected to live with God while still in life, after death he will be able to enjoy this love (heaven) which will be complete after Lord’s Second Coming.

Our God has not assigned His representation on Earth to any self-appointed praetorians, either in the clergy or not, who, with great audacity indeed, take advantage of the naivety and faith of people so that they can amass wealth and live in luxury. Instead of that, He has His visible body in Church, in which EVERYBODY TAKES PART EQUALLY, clergy or not.

Our God ALLOWS evil to enter the world – for which evil the only one held responsible is man – because He is LOVE. And in order for love to be love indeed there is one prerequisite which man does not like; FREEDOM. That’s why God allows it; because if He didn’t allow it, He wouldn’t be God and people wouldn’t be free.

THE DISTORTED IMAGES OF GOD
On the other hand, the distorted God is a weak, ferocious, sadist and tyrant God.

So, this ‘miserable God’ sows seeds of fright among his weak people, terrorising them with the fear of disaster and annihilation.

This distorted God sends his Son on earth to be crucified so that divine justice is brutally satisfied; and he does that because he held a grudge on his creature since they broke his laws (Adam and Eve), and he doesn’t understand that he doesn’t act as a God, since while he calls man to forgive, HE IS UNABLE TO GIVE FORGIVENESS.

He is ready to declare war on earth and flood it with blood in order to exterminate the ‘evil people’ and justify the ‘decent ones’ (the decent Christians, that is, the hypocrites); and these ‘decent Christians’ will get great joy from the extermination of the ‘evil people’ and from their own justification.

He is obsessed with sexual intercourse. While He blessed it in Genesis 1:28, he considers it to be the greatest of all sins! So, He ‘produces’ neurotic humans who either suppress any sign of tenderness they have or appear to be socially acceptable in the surface and in their personal life they are filthy with every kind of sexual abnormality.

He spies on the slightest move and action and notes down everything in his black books so that after death He can send the sinner into the eternal fire of hell and the righteous into the prairies of Heaven.

Well, Mr and Mrs ‘pious’ and ‘righteous’ all over the world, I leave this God to you to take pride in. I’d rather be ‘AN ATHEIST’ than believe in a God, who is the creation of the most deranged and perverted imagination of humans.

CROSS – THE MOST ADORABLE SYMBOL OF CHRISTIANITY

2010-05-31T21:55:00.009+03:00

Translated from the original by Chris Tsilikas

The early Christians used various symbols either to honor Christ and the Saints or to denote their Christian Faith or even to decorate the catacombs where they gathered to celebrate the Mass, since the Church and their faith were persecuted back then. Thus, they used to draw a fish (ΙΧΘΥΣ in Greek means fish), the acronym of which denotes Jesus Christ, a mythical bird, the Phoenix, which symbolizes the eternity of the soul, hope, etc. However, among the symbols used the Cross held a special position. So, wherever we may look inside or outside the Church, we’ll come across the Cross. It exists in the liturgical books, in the place of the Mass; it accompanies the holy service and every individual prayer of the faithful people. Last but not least, it’s a honor for quite a few of us to carry it with us, not because it is in vogue, but for the invigorating power it has with which it beats the dark powers and death...

The fact that the Cross is a symbol of victory is obvious in the Lord’s words. It is marked with glory and erection, which aims at our own erection. We read in John’s Gospel, chapter 12, verses 23-33: “And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified...... And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die”.
Lord on the Cross is presented as if he were on a triumphal chariot. Victoriously, He draws the demons on this triumphal chariot to hold them up to public ridicule and overtly disgrace them in the eyes of the spiritual world: “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it”. Apostle Paul in his epistle to Colossians, chapter 2, verses 14-15.
This is why the Lord’s Cross does not look like the thieves’ crosses, because His Cross is not a weakness but a strength, it’s not a shame but a pride: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”. Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Galatians, chapter 6, verse 14.

Well, the Cross that we take pride in is a symbol of stupidity for the unfaithful, the irreverent, the heretics and a symbol against which they turn. Those miserable people do not understand that this way they play their father’s game who is no other than devil, and this game will lead them to their destruction: “For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.” Once again Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Philippians, chapter 3, verses 18-19.
Jehovah’s Witnesses vehemently turn against the Cross and blame Christians for being idolaters because they claim that the honors we pay to the Cross equal idolatry and the Holy Scriptures forbid reverence and worship of objects which exist on Earth in the sky or in the water. But before we examine whether what Jehovah’s Witnesses say is true or not, let us point out something that most faithful ignore, a truth that the above mentioned heretics deliberately withhold; the fact that for over 60 years, and more specifically from 1870 up to 1931, Jehovah’s Witnesses revered the Cross and held the Cross in high esteem. It decorated their buildings and the front cover of their first-rate magazine, the “Watchtower”, and they also wore it as a badge on their lapels. And before they hurry to blame us for being liars and slanders, we quote the following document from their book “The Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom” which includes all the history of Jehovah’s Witnesses. On page 200 you can read everything we said above:

Book "Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom" p 200: Jehovah’s Witnesses revered the Cross

And to make them stop once and for all we’ll bring a rare document into light a document most of Jehovah’s Witnesses ignore the existence of. This rare document comes from another publication of the Society entitled “Book of the Year 1975”. What we read on page 38 can be described unique and shocking; that Charles Russell, their founder, had the brilliant idea to publish a magazine IN ORDER TO LIFT THE SYMBOL OF THE CROSS. And which do you think this magazine is? Of course their official magazine “Watchtower”, through the pages of which they believe that Jehovah Himself speaks! We won’t make any further comments:

‘A DAY OF SMALL THINGS’

Writes Russell: “I therefore understood it to be the Lord’s will that I should start another journal, in which the standard of the Cross should be lifted high, the doctrine of the Ransom defended and the Good Tidings of great Joy proclaimed as extensively as possible.”
C. T. Russell took it as the Lord’s leading that he give up traveling and begin publishing a journal. Thus in July 1879 the first issue of Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence made its appearance. Now known world wide as The Watchtower

Book of the Year 1975, p 38: Carl Russel brought out the journal “Watchower” to lift the symbol of the Cross!

Now, since we have resolved the accusations against the symbol of the Cross imposed on us by Jehovah’s Witnesses, it is time to deal with the accusation of idolatry. But first we’d like to clarify a couple of small points; what idolatry is and when an object is considered to be an idol. Well, idolatry exists when we believe that an object equals God or we think that the object represents God. As the book of “Exodus” informs us while Moses was ascending mount Sinah to take the 10 commandments from God, Israelites convinced his brother Aaron to make a golden calf which they worshiped as their God. It’s worth quoting Aaron’s words “These be thy gods, O Israel” Exodus, chapter 32, verse 2. And we can’t but wonder now; Which Orthodox Congress or Orthodox theologian has ever declared that the Cross is our God or that the Cross represents our God? Or even more specifically, has any Christian Orthodox ever thought “This is my God” when standing either in front of the Cross or in front of an icon?

On the contrary, we venerate and honor the Cross not in isolation but in conjunction with Jesus Christ because the Wood of the Cross became holy the moment it came into contact with the Holy Body of the Lord. In the Synodicon of Orthodoxy which is recited on the Sunday of Orthodoxy we read: “We worship Christ on the one hand as our God and Master, and on the other hand we honor the saints, the icons, the cross and all the other consecrated symbols apportioning relative worship to them – relative and not absolute.”
But it still makes one wonder whether the Holy Scriptures do forbid us to bow before the holy objects indeed. Of course, this is not true. Actually, the book of “Genesis”, chapter 47, verse 31 informs us that Patriarch Jacobs bowed before Joseph’s cane: “And he said, Swear unto me. And he swore unto him. And Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head.” Does this mean that Jacob was an idolater? Of course not, his bow was a token of admiration and honor and not of worship.

In a nutshell, a symbol such as the Cross becomes idolatrous when we honor it in isolation from the source of the miraculous power, that is God, and when we believe that the symbol on its own has some sort of magical or miraculous power. Something like that happened with the bronze snake that Moses had made to save Israelites from snake bites, whenever they looked at it. So, King Hezekiah did not hesitate to smash the snake when he realized that the Israeli people took it as God due to its miraculous power.

In addition, the fact that in any era God is able to work wonders with material objects should not escape our notice. Like He did with Moses’ cane with which He opened the Red Sea and with a splinter of wood that prophet Elisaie (Elisha) dropped into Jordan River and made an iron axe float or with the bronze snake we have already mentioned. Also in The Acts of the Apostles, chapter 19, verses 11-13 we read that people were taking handkerchiefs or aprons from the neck and the waist of Apostle Paul and by using them they were able to heal their relatives from diseases and evil spirits.

Everything we have said so far works as an answer to all those who fight against the Cross and our Orthodox Faith. We have never feared them and we will not fear them now. As far as our Lord’s Cross is concerned we need to tell them that there is only one place It deserves to be kept. And this is in OUR HEARTS.

Writer Christos Pal

JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES: ‘NAUGHTY GUYS!’ WATCH OUT! THE BIG SISTER (THE WATCHTOWER) IS WATCHING OVER YOU!

2010-05-06T18:15:00.010+03:00

Translated from the original by Chris Tsilikas

INTERFERENCE OF THE WATCHTOWER WITH THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ITS FOLLOWERS
As it is well-known, it is a rule that when dark, secretive societies or dictatorships want to achieve their goal and keep their power, they use far-fetched illegal methods. Such methods may include mechanisms of terrorism and spying, violation of private life and of individual scope and generally mechanisms that deplete human value as well as internationally accepted and identified individual rights.

Unfortunately, the Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses, “The Watchtower”, is not exempted from this rule. With a view to achieving its goal, as a new coming Orwell-like ‘Big Brother’, it does not hesitate to resort to spying and prying even on the most private moments of the individual life of its followers. And when we say private moments we certainly mean sexual intercourse! Although it sounds extraordinary and hard to believe, “The Watchtower” wishes to keep track of the sexual stances!! its followers take! And even more “The Watchtower” declares whether it approves of them or not!
On the other hand, it’s really sad on the part of its followers, because we realise that once they join the Society they lose their dignity, their critical thought and ethics, and just expect guidance from the Society as to what is ethical and what is not during their intercourse with the people they mostly love; instead of taking their own decisions on sexual ethics based on the norm of showing respect and of avoiding the humiliation of their lover who is in resemblance to God.
THE PROBLEM OF “SEXUAL DIVERSITY” IN ‘THE HEAVEN’ OF THE WATCHTOWER
So, the Society on the occasion of sodomy on which it lectures in its official leaflet ‘Watchtower’ of December 1st, 1972 p.p. 734-736, it reveals that it had entered the bedrooms of its married couples and discovered that a lot of its members were having oral and anal sex. Also, pay attention to the hypocrisy of the Society in the document we quote below. While it states that it’s forbidden to investigate private lives of married couples, yet, it takes measures when it discovers that there still exists the previously mentioned sexual abnormality:

"It is certainly not the responsibility of elders or any others in a Christian congregation to search into the private lives of married couples. Nevertheless, if future cases of gross unnatural conduct, such as the practice of oral or anal copulation, are brought to their attention, the elders should act to try to correct the situation before further harm results, as they would do with any other serious wrong. Their concern is, of course, to try to help those who go astray and are ‘caught in the snare of the Devil.’ (2 Tim. 2:26) But if persons willfully show disrespect for Jehovah God’s marital arrangements, then it becomes necessary to remove them from the congregation as dangerous “leaven” that could contaminate others.—1 Cor. 5:6, 11-13. "

Watchtower December 1st, 1972 p.p. 734 - 736: Jehovah’s Witnesses take to oral and anal sex

However, how is it possible for “The Watchtower” to find out what happens in the couple’s bedroom? Unfortunately, Jehovah’s Witnesses have sunk so low! The ‘brainstorming’ they have been submitted to is so much that the spouses peach against each other!!! And their ‘sinking’ has no ending since young spouses are literally humiliated when they are brought before the elders who constitute the judicial committee (yes that’s right, there are courts in the Society which deal with various offences of ethical purity and ethical preaching) to give a detailed description of what is happening in their marital bedroom.

Marriages have entered times of turbulence and couples have been in danger of breaking up their marriage when one of the spouses isn’t a Jehovah’s Witness and regards all these – as they are indeed – as objectionable and as vulgar interference with personal life and especially with private affectionate loving moments.

However, despite the spying of “The Watchtower” and the indiscreet intervention in the bedrooms of its followers, sodomy and sexual abnormality of any kind is flourishing in the ‘Paradise’ of the Society, since the elders are the ones who urged married Jehovah’s Witnesses couples to take to such abnormal ‘sports’. Therefore, the Society was compelled to send a letter, by the code name W, to the congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in California, U.S.A., to ‘reprimand’ those elders who had advised married couples that oral sex is not immoral:

The Body of Elders urges Jehovah’s Witnesses to take to oral sex

This document is from the book “A Crisis of Conscience” by Raymond Franz, p 45, English edition. R. Franz has been able to have hold of the above document, since he used to be a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, that is, of those who were in Brooklyn – the headquarters of the Society of the Watchtower – and govern Jehovah’s Witnesses all over the world.

AND THE ‘SEXUAL DIVERSITY’ OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES IS GOING STRONG
It’s worth pointing out how accommodating the conscience of the Society is as far as ethics is concerned and how easily it manipulates ethics on condition. In the letter they sent to the W congregation in California, they do not reprimand – as one would have expected – the offenders who had been having oral sex, but they turn against the body of elders who dared to pass their own beliefs and not those of the Society.

Coming now to the end of this interesting – as we see it – issue we would like to mention that in spite of the willing or unwilling efforts of “The Watchtower”, a lot of its followers still take to sexual abnormality, a fact that urges the Society to recur to this issue in its publications quite often. Out of the abundance of incidents of sexual misconduct we have ‘fished’ in the publications of the Society, we quote the most recent, so that it could also function as proof for those Jehovah’s Witnesses who will argue that all these used to happen in the past and it is not an issue any more as today there is no such sexual misconduct and everything in the Society is pure and holy. The extract below is from “The Watchtower” of April 1st, 1999, p 31, and it refers to Jehovah’s Witnesses, both male and female, who follow the disgusting Canaanite practices:

Holding Fast to Our Integrity
No doubt about it, today a battle is being waged for the heart. Will we stay loyal to Jehovah or become sidetracked by the loose living of this world? Sad to say, just as the Israelites gravitated to disgusting Canaanite practices, some Christian men and women today have been enticed to commit shameful acts.—Compare Proverbs 7:7, 21-23.

“The Watchtower” of April 1st, 1999, p 31: Jehovah’s Witnesses follow the Canaanite practices, bestiality, sodomy, etc.

Canaanites were a Semitic race from Canaan, the fourth son of Ham (son of Noah) who lived in Palestine. Apart from anything else their name denotes sexual perversions, such as sodomy, bestiality, homosexuality and especially incestuousness (in other words having intercourse with family members). The Prophets of Israel turn furiously against them and warn Israelites not to follow their perverted practices because they will be faced with God’s Wrath.

Writer Christos Pal

A PROPHET BUT… WHAT “PROPHET”

2010-03-16T20:22:00.007+02:00

Translated from the original by Chris Tsilikas

As we all know when Lord was talking to His disciples about His glorious Second Coming, he warned them that false prophets will appear throughout the centuries, who will define the day and the time of His Second Coming. We also know that the Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses “The Watchtower” has proved to be one of the GREATEST FALSE PROPHETS OF ALL ERAS and has additionally turned out to be hilarious with its continuous predictions and contradictions.

So, the Society of “The Watchtower” has said: “Christ will come in…1878, oops… sorry in… 1914 we meant… hm!….. no you didn’t get that right, we said in….. 1925 and of course when we say 1925 we definitely mean in… 1975.”

But let’s put everything in order. While Christ – in Mathew’s Gospel, chapter 13, verse 32 – certifies that nobody knows the day He will come back, not even the Angels in Heaven, not even He himself (as human of course), but only His Father, the Society “Watchtower” as another prophet has been defining dates of the impeding end of the world and of the Second Coming of Christ since 1874 – the year it was founded – and up to the current years.

So it first defined the year 1878 as the year of The Second Coming. According to the book of the Society “Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”, p 632, they expected Christ to come back on Earth in the spring of the year 1878 and reign as Heavenly King. They also believed that the contemporary Jehovah’s Witnesses will go to Heaven to live with Christ!

Were Their Expectations Correct?
«Based on the premise that events of the first century might find parallels in related events later, they also concluded that if Jesus’ baptism and anointing in the autumn of 29 C .E. paralleled the beginning of an invisible presence in 1874, then his riding into Jerusalem as King in the spring of 33 C .E. would point to the spring of 1878 as the time when he would assume his power as heavenly King. They also thought they would be given their heavenly reward at that time.»
“Jehovah’s Witnesses – Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”, page 632: Christ will take over as Heavenly Kingdom in 1878!
When the year 1878 passed by, without any comings of course, they weren’t daunted at all! On the contrary, they defined a new year for the end of the world. So, in the book of the Society “The Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”, on page 62, we can read really comical things. In October, 1914 they expected to acquire spiritual bodies! And, moreover, one of the greatest founders of the Society, Macmillan, believed that the speech he delivered on 30th September was his last one because soon they would all flee to Heaven!!! And on the same page the same Jehovah’s Witness admits that he wouldn’t be surprised if an announcement made by the current president and founder of the Society Carol Russell, became the signal for their heavenly ascension!!! How naive! What nonsense!

“Some of Us Had Been a Bit Too Hasty”

As October 1914 approached, some of the Bible Students expected that at the end of the Gentile Times they, as spirit-anointed Christians, would receive their heavenly reward. Illustrating this is an incident that took place at a convention of the Bible Students in Saratoga Springs, New York, September 27-30, 1914. A. H. Macmillan, who had been baptized 14 years earlier, gave a discourse on Wednesday, September 30. In it he stated: “This is probably the last public address I shall ever deliver because we shall be going home [to heaven] soon.”
“Jehovah’s Witnesses – Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”, page 62: Jehovah’s Witnesses believed that they will get spiritual bodies in 1914!
And on the same page:

In fact, recalling the morning that Russell announced the end of the Gentile Times, Macmillan admitted: “We were highly excited and I would not have been surprised if at that moment we had just started up, that becoming the signal to begin ascending heavenward—but of course there was nothing like that.”

“Jehovah’s Witnesses – Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”, page 62: Russell’s announcement was the signal for Jehovah’s Witnesses to begin ascending heavenward!
It’s also worth noticing everything that is written on page 63 in “The Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”, which overtly shows what these people are and how they cope with The Scriptures and with God. They imagined!, it says, that the Bible Students (an older name for Jehovah’s Witneses, they acquired their current name in 1931) would go to dwell in heaven, although the Scriptures according to their own statement didn’t mention anything like that! If it was due to naivity it would be acceptable and comprehensible. But since the Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses has continuously done that, it can’t show anything but opportunism of the worst kind, since they don’t mind playing with the lives of their followers who naivly have followed them. They should have known better, of course! They are the ones who claim to be students of the Bible! If they were studying the Bible indeed, they would have read Christ’s words about the false prophets and would have willy-nilly left the ‘false-conductor of Jehovah’. Please enjoy the opportunism of the leaders of the Society “The Watchtower” in the following document:

“Some of Us Had Been a Bit Too Hasty”
« As The Watch Tower of September 1, 1916, put it: “We imagined that the Harvest work of gathering the Church [of anointed ones] would be accomplished before the end of the Gentile Times; but nothing in the Bible so said. . . .»
“Jehovah’s Witnesses – Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”, page 63: Jehovah’s Witnesses imagined that they would go to Heaven!
After Russell’s death (1916) the second president of the Society, J.F. Rutherford takes on the responsibility of continuing the ‘tall story’ of the Watchtower about defining Lord’s Second Coming. Rutherford was an unscrupulous, authoritarian person with lots of passions, one of which was alcohol. He goes far beyond his predecessor, Russell, in inventiveness because he not only defines the 1st April 1925 as the day Lord will come back, but he also claims that the righteous people of the Old Testament (Abraham, Isaac, Noah, Jonah, etc) will resurrect and reign with Christ! So he sends the masses of Jehovah’s Witnesses out to sell the leaflets of the Society in order for a house to be built to shelter...God’s government! Indeed, the house is built in San Diego, California, the well-known Beth–Sarim, a small palace with multiple rooms and gardens whose opulence was beyond any imagination and of which even today’s ‘Croesus’ of wealth would be jealous. Well, even if that luxurious palace became the house of J.F. Rutherford instead of the righteous of the Old Testament, it doesn’t matter. In all eras there will always be some naive people, some...suckers, who will be taken advantage of by some dexterous people who know how to manipulate people’s faith. And before you haste to blame us for slandering the Watchtower, we quote the corresponding extract from page 632 from the known by now book of the Society “The Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”, to see for yourself:

Were Their Expectations Correct?
«In the lecture “Millions Now Living Will Never Die,” delivered by J. F. Rutherford on March 21, 1920, at the Hippodrome in New York City, attention was directed to the year 1925…
On the basis of what was said there, many hoped that perhaps the remaining ones of the little flock would receive their heavenly reward by 1925. This year also was associated with expectations for resurrection of faithful pre-Christian servants of God with a view to their serving on earth as princely representatives of the heavenly Kingdom….
Though mistaken, they eagerly shared it with others.»

“Jehovah’s Witnesses – Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”, page 632: The Return of Christ in 1925 and the formation of a Government!
The 1st of April passed by but unfortunately for “The Watchtower” neither the righteous of the Old Testament resurrected nor Christ returned. After all, it was April’s Fool Day, wasn’t it? And then, once again we would like our reader to pay heed of the opportunism of the Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Did Jehovah’s Witnesses come to apologise for their mistake as they should have done? No, of course not. On the contrary, as it is obvious in the document we quoted above, they EAGERLY – as it is stated in their text – continued to share their mistake! IN OTHER WORDS THEY DELIBERATELY CONTINUED LYING!! So are these people unscrupulous and opportunistic or not?

But to be honest, there was a good outcome from this story. A satisfactory number of Jehovah’s Witnesses disgusted and indignant with that new disappointment of their expectations about Lord’s Second Coming, leaves the Society, a fact that even the Society admits in its leaflets.

After a grave silence of 50 years on the issue, we reach 1975, a year which is defined afresh by “The Watchtower” as the new world’s end and the beginning of the Millennium (that’s why they are also called Millenarians) of God’s Reign. Of course anyone who decides to read the leaflets of the Society thoroughly, he will find out that, at least unofficially, various incidents of the World’s History – as for example the beginning of World War II – are taken by Jehovah’s Witnesses as the beginning of the war of Armageddon and of Lord’s Second Coming. As for defining 1975 as the year of Lord’s return the book of the Society “The Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”, page 633, will help us once again:

Were Their Expectations Correct?
«This later led to the idea—sometimes stated as a possibility, sometimes more firmly—that since the seventh millennium of human history would begin in 1975, events associated with the beginning of Christ’s Millennial Reign might start to take place then.»

“Jehovah’s Witnesses – Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom”, page 633: 1975 is defined by Jehovah’s Witnesses as the year of Lord’s return.
Delirium and excitement for the impending Second Coming reach their peak among Jehovah’s Witnesses during that period and in some cases exceeds the limits of logic with tragic for some people results. Because, showing total trust to the false prophet “The Watchtower”, THEY DO NOT HESITATE TO SELL THEIR HOUSES AND ALL THEIR PROPERTY, since they believe that these will not be of any use any more.

And the rulers of the Society not only happily accept all these, but they also praise those people for their deeds and in the leaflet of the Society entitled “Our Kingdom Ministry”, which constitutes a kind of encyclical within the Society, indirectly urge more Jehovah’s Witnesses to imitate such actions. This leaflet of “Our Kingdom Ministry” is of May, 1984, pages 3-6 and the extract we are talking about is included in the text entitled “God’s Will for Us”. Read it below to clear all doubts:

God’s Will for Us

«Yes, since the summer of 1973 there have been new peaks in pioneers every month. Now there are 20,394 regular and special pioneers in the United States, an all-time peak. That is 5,190 more than there were in February 1973! A 34-percent increase! Does that not warm our hearts? Reports are heard of brothers selling their homes and property and planning to finish out the rest of their days in this old system in the pioneer service. Certainly this is a fine way to spend the short time remaining before the wicked world’s end.—1 John 2:17.»

«Our Kingdom Ministry», 5/1974, p.p. 3 – 6: Jehovah’s Witnesses sell their houses and their property in 1974 awaiting Christ’s Millennial Reign!
The disappointment of their expectations for this year too, was a severe blow to the reputation of “The Watchtower” and it took it a while to come over again. Despite the ridicule that it met with and still meets whenever someone refers to that year, it was abandoned by thousands of its followers, even by people who were in the Governing Body (the supreme governing and guiding body of Jehovah’s Witnesses which has its headquarters in Brooklyn, New York. Jehovah’s Witnesses all over the world must obey its orders without having the right to argue. Otherwise they are thrown out of the Society) such as Raymond Franz (nephew of the current vice president and later president of the Society Frederick Franz). He became one of the worst enemies of the Society. He shed light to dark and secret sides of “The Watchtower” with interviews, articles, books – especially with the renowned “Crisis of Conscience”- and tours.

But “The Watchtower” doesn’t seem to be dejected. Only six years after its last false prophecy for the end of the world, we have a come-back with a new prophecy. In The Watchtower of 1/3/1981, p 30, we read that it is highly unlikely for the world to survive up to the end of the century, meaning the year 2000.

Not only the world survived, but it also proved what a false prophet “The Watchtower” is. And since the Society has the guts to quote the Scriptures in order to justify its false prophecies, let’s see what the Scriptures say about the false prophets and about the end that they deserve:

"But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken?
When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him." (Deuteronomy, 18/20-22)
To sum up we would like to show the audacity the Society is possessed with by quoting another document. In “The Watchtower” of 1/5/1997, page 8, we astonishingly see the Society turning against others without showing any sign of shame. They call other people false messengers and self-appointed prognosticators whose signs and messages have been falsified by God Himself! And here is the document:

Identifying the Right Kind of Messenger

«JEHOVAH GOD is the Grand Identifier of his true messengers. He identifies them by making the messages he delivers through them come true. Jehovah is also the Great Exposer of false messengers. How does he expose them? He frustrates their signs and predictions. In this way he shows that they are self-appointed prognosticators, whose messages really spring from their own false reasoning—yes, their foolish, fleshly thinking! »

“The Watchtower” of March 1st, 1997, p 8: Jehovah exposes others as false prophets and not “The Watchtower”!

Is there really a need to comment on the opportunism, insolence and audacity of the greatest false prophet ever, the Society of “The Watchtower”? We let you make your own judgements.

Writer Christos Pal

WORSHIP OF IMAGES – IS IT IDOLATRY OR NOT?

2010-02-16T22:52:00.007+02:00

Translated from the original by Chris Tsilikas

We were impelled to writing the following article by the fact that many faithful who happened to have a discussion with followers of several heresies (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecosts, Evangelists, etc) approached us and asked for our help and for clarifications on whether the honors we pay to images, to holy relics, etc. is idolatry or not.

WHAT IS IDOLATRY?Before we start dealing with the question of whether we are idolaters or not, we think it’s wise first to look into the definition and the connotation of the word idolatry. So, according to the dictionaries, idolatry is the worship of an object – either real or fictional – as a god. This is also made clear in the Holy Scriptures. As it is described in one of its books, when Moses was away on mount Sinah, his brother Aaron took all the jewels from the Israeli people and made a golden calf. On the moment that he was delivering the calf to them listen to the words that they said as they were accepting that calf: “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus, chapter 32, verses 2-4) In other words the golden calf as a substance was God for the Israeli.

And I have to ask all the heretics now, When an Orthodox Christian stands in front of an image, has he/she ever said that this image is his/her God? Or has any Orthodox Congress declared anything like that? Do the heretics ignore or pretend to ignore that St. John Damascene, that great theologian of our religion, who sparkled during the period of Iconomachy declared his well-known to all Orthodox people position on the issue in his writing “About Icons”, that by honoring an icon or image you honor the person being illustrated on it and not the material from which the icon is made.

DOES GOD FORBID THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDOLS?Yet, doesn’t God forbid the making of idols in the Ten Commandments? Of course He forbids it, but in the sense we said above, when this idol or image is worshiped as god. The fact that the making of idols and images has a relative meaning and not a literal one is also proved by the following facts. Wasn’t God Himself who ordered Moses to hammer two golden human-like cherubim on the cover of the Arc of the Testament? Exodus, chapter 25, verses 18-19. And yet again wasn’t God Himself who in the form of a cloud appraised the Temple of Solomon on the day it was inaugurated, a Temple which was full of representations of lions, oxen and cherubs? Kings 1, chapter 7, verse 29. But in the issue of the prohibition of making idols, images and representations we see that the heretics use their common tactic. We select what suits us from the Holy Scriptures and we deliberately ignore all the rest we don’t like.

INEXPLICABLE HATRED OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES AGAINST ICONSWe are astonished by the hatred Milennians and Jehovah’s Witnesses have against icons. They are the ones who shouldn’t say anything on that, because their publications support everything we have said so far. More specifically in their official issue “The watchtower” of November 1st, 1980, pp 28-29, there is an article entitled “Cherubs in Israel’s Worship—Why No Idolatry?” Referring to God’s prohibition of making idols and images they stress out the relativity of this prohibition by giving as an example the carvings in Solomon’s Temple.
«When this tabernacle was later replaced by Solomon’s temple, “all the walls of [the temple] round about he carved with engraved carvings of cherubs,” and “he made in the innermost room [the Most Holy] two cherubs of oil-tree wood, ten cubits being the height of each one.” Also, the doors of the temple and the sidewalls of the copper carriages for temple use were decorated with cherubs and other figures.—1 Ki. 6:29, 32, 23; 7:27-29.Did the making of cherubs and other carved images for the temple not constitute idolatry?And in the subtitle that follows this question they explain when an image or carving is an idol and when it isn’t:
Not All Images Are IdolsAn idol is an image, a representation of anything or a symbol that is an object of devotion, whether material or imagined. Idolatry with the use of images and symbols is widespread».
“THE WATCHTOWER” November 1st, 1980, p 28: Not all images are Idols
And it ends up stating that God’s law did not rule out the making of representations and statues.

«However, God’s law not to form images did not rule out the making of all representations and statues. As noted above, figures of cherubs were used to decorate the tabernacle in the wilderness and Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem».
“THE WATCHTOWER” November 1st, 1980, pp 28-29: God allows the making of represaentations
Then what does their hatred against icons stem from? It stems from the fact that in their most part Jehovah’s Witnesses are not educated people at all and do not have any proficiency either in writing or in reading; therefore, they don’t have the possibility to read the publications of the Society thoroughly. When one first joins the Society learns a chapter by heart, which chapter is against representation and then he keeps on repeating this chapter for the rest of his life.

HAS ANYBODY SEEN GOD?Let us deal now with another argument that heretics use as far as the representations are concerned. They wonder how we Orthodox people draw representations of God since as John the Evangelist says in his Gospel, chapter 1, verse 18 “No man hath seen God at any time” Well, once again we have the deliberate distortion of the truth, the well-known tactic of the heretics, because verse 18 does not stop there but it continues: “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”. This verse talks about the Devine nature of the Devine Father, which is sensibly invisible and inaccessible to humans. That’s why it is Christ – who is God Himself – the one who declares it to us. Now, God has certainly been seen by humans (not in His Devine nature, of course) and these sightings are quite a few throughout the pages of the Holy Scriptures. We have just selected two of them, the two we consider to be the most representative. The first is in the book of Isaiah, chapter 6, verse 1: “In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up”. And verse 5 in the same chapter is amazing for its clarity: “...for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts”. And in the book of prophet Daniel in chapter 7, verse 13 we read: “I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days”. Here Daniel sees both the Father and the Son. On the other hand in several pages of the Holy Scriptures there is the thought hovering in the air that the one who sees God dies. For example, in the book of Judges, chapter 13 Samson’s parents accommodate God – who has the form of an angel – without having realized it. And listen to the words of Samson’s father, in verse 22 of chapter 13, when he realizes that he had actually accommodated God: “We shall surely die, because we have seen God”. So dear heretics hasn’t anybody seen God? Maybe you should start wondering whether you’re all at sea!!!

To sum up we need to remind to all of you that anyone who rejects the representation of Jesus Christ, he/she’s actually rejecting His incarnation, since he/she only accepts His divine nature and not His human one.

HONOR TO RELICS
Coming now to the way we honor the relics of several saints we would like to note that many times we, Orthodox Christians, have become the target of multiple comments – ironic comments indeed – for this faith. Where is our faith and honor to holy relics based? Before we answer this question we would like to point out that our faith to holy relics is one of the most magnificent, beautiful and hopeful faiths we have. It’s actually a message of immortality, a message against waste and death. We believe that the ‘glorious’ person, meaning the person who has God’s glory, keeps on having this glory even after his death, that’s why this glory becomes visible in or through his holy relics with various actions, such as the emission of beautiful fragrances from them, the appearance of miraculous activities, usually healing ones, etc. “That’s nice” a heretic would say “but who can assure me that all these are not priests’ tricks to make money by taking advantage of the naivity of the faithful people? Do you want to make us believe those tales? Is it possible for bones to heal?” Yet, yes my dear Christians, whatever the heretics say, do not lose your courage. Our faith is based on such solid foundations that, as Christ said, not even the gates of Ades could beat it. Because the holy relics can do wonders indeed and even reincarnate dead people! And these words do not come out of a delirious school teacher of religious education but out of the Holy Scriptures. We’ll let the Holy Scriptures answer to the ironic judges. The extract we will use is from the book of Kings 2 and describes a miraculous incident which occurred with the bones of Prophet Elisha, a disciple of Prophet Elias: “And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men ; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he REVIVED, AND STOOD UP ON HIS FEET”. 1 Kings, chapter 13, verses 20-21.

Writer Christos Pal

FLYING TOWARDS FREEDOM

2010-02-07T10:26:00.006+02:00

Translated from the original by Evdokia Davitidou

This is a great day for the blogspot "Antiairetikos", because we are especially pleased to host a letter from a former Jehovah's Witness, Onisimos Eleftheriadis. In this letter, where he introduces himself, he testifies in a few lines his personal Calvary which he is forced to go through, since he decided to break off all relations with the ruthless - in terms of behaviour against former members - organization of Jehovah's Witnesses, 'Watchtower'. Of course, what dominates the letter of this man, is nothing but fear. That can be easily understood by reading it. Fear, even now.The Church of God, Orthodox Christianity.Welcome back, dear Onisimos. May God keep you safe and strong in this particularly difficult moment of your life, and hopeful in the dark tunnel of "evil" you have to escape from, once and forever.

The very first thing we feel right to do is to welcome him back to
Here follows the letter of the former Jehovah's Witness, Onisimos Eleftheriadis:

Good morning dear Christos, (the blogspot-holder "Antiairetikos") My name is Onisimos Eleftheriadis and I live in the Heraklion of Crete (Greece), but I would be grateful if you kept this secret, as well with other information you'll be given in the future.
You will realize from what I write in this letter that I and moreover my family are in danger from the organization "Watch Tower".
My story is very long and I don't' know how to narrate it, from where to begin and where to end. I am "new" in the technology matters, so I am not really aware of the danger I might be in.
I don't know what information will leak out and what risk I face since, I must tell you, that the organization has a powerful consulting barrister office and huge amounts of money, being thus able to destroy anyone who tries to testify the truth about them.
I don't know the legal consequences of all this, at all. I know them very well.
I am born and raised in this environment and because of this I know many things, which remain unknown to most people. It's the kind of information someone can never be aware of or understand , unless he is or used to be like me. When you don't see what happens "behind the curtain", you are not really able to tell the story. What takes place in the "family" of the organization, remains within the organization. There is one mighty feeling that rules in their "territory". It puts every free thought and voice "behind bars" and it is called FEAR.
FEAR has different meanings inside and outside "the bars" of "Watchtower".
A sick, queer form of the primeval and primordial emotion of human race.
That kind of FEAR. With God's help and guidance, I will do whatever is in my power for the truth, although I am very poor in material terms, the "Witnesses" have isolated me and deprived me even of my family's love. My parents exorcized me. They turned their back to me. I 've left the sect and now I'm left with nothing and no one (no one at all !!!).
I only have God's help and guidance. My will is to help other former "witnesses" who also managed to escape. I would also like to help people who still live in the fear of this jail, always with God's guidance and help. At this point I must make a general comment.
It is wrong to say "Jehovah's Witness". Instead it is right to use the term "Watchtower's Witness". Although I know that their official name is "Jehovah's Witness" and they are worldwide known by that, believe me the term I give you is the right one. So please let the people know and understand. I don't say that in a matter of respect or honour for the name (which is adulterated anyway), but it is a matter of order.
If you find mistakes in my narration or the way I approach the matter it is because I'm totally inexperienced to do so in the right way.

Thank you for your time and interest.

Writer Christos Pal