The High Horse

Thursday, October 20, 2005

The Holy Orthodox Christian Faith has been given to the world by The Father thru the incarnation of The Word that is The Son, and thru which The Holy Spirit has moved, is moving now, and will move thru on into infinity...

thru which the teachings of the Apostles themselves was handed down unaltered by their Successors...

confirmed thru The Holy Scriptures which was given to us by The Lord God thru His Holy Church...

cemented by Holy Tradition of The Holy Gospel Of Our Christian Faith...

defended by The Seven Holy Ecumenical Councils...

of which the Holy Fathers proclaimed the Only Truth which defeated anti-Christ herersies...

...The Faith, that thru the power of The Lord has endured the Enemy, May God Rebuke Him...

attacks, persecutions, and martyrdom of Believers from pagan worldly powers and governments in its early days,

heresies and false teachers in the early days and onwards thru today, the intrigue of Christian temporal rulers,

the onslaught of Islam and the wars between it and Christendom, from its birth in the mid-600's to the taking of the Holy Land soon afterwards, the invasion of Western Europe in the mid-700's, the wars with The Christian Byzantine Empire in the East to the wars with Western Christians during the Crusades, the invasion of the Christian nations of the Balkans after the Crusades to the saking of Christian Constastaninople in 1453 by the Turks, the wars with Christian Russia in the Caucaus and Black Sea Region, and on to the battles to control the Mediterranean between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Muslim Turks, the Turkish persecutions of the Christians in Asia Minor, Greece, Kosovo, Serbia, Ruomania, Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Armenia from Medievial times till the expulsion of the Ottoman Turks from the Balkans in the early 19th Century,

battles with the Western Christian World (a sadness that Christian would kill Christian),

the invasion of the Mongol Hordes from the east up through Caucaus Mountains into Armenia and Georgia, and out of the Siberian Steppes into and thru Holy Russia to the edges of Poland, Hungary, Austria, and down into the Balkans to the shores of the Adriatic Sea, it is said that all of Christendom asked of The Lord in the Litanies and Petitional Prayers..."from the fury of the Tartars (Mongols) deliver us Oh Lord"...for all Christians feared these "Horsemen from the East",

the continued struggle with temporal governments both in the East and from the West, in theological, political, economic, and sometimes military matters,

the contiued fierce wars, persecutions, and Martrydoms of recent history and today with Islam, primarily from the Turks in Greece and its Isles, Kosovo (the historical Heart of Christian Serbia) where Kosovar Muslim Albanians kill Serbs with pleasure and destroy ancient Churches (Houses of God) and Monastaries, in Cyprus (Christian since Apostolic times) where the desecration of ancient early Christian Churches and Monastaries in the northern half of the island which has been under Muslim control since the 1972 invasion by Turkish forces has been encouraged by the Ankara government, and the world MUST NEVER forget the genocide by the Turks from the late 1880's till the early 1920's when they slaughtered with much relish over 1.5 million Armenian, Greek, and Arab Christians...and this GENOCIDE was accomplished by firing squads, hangings, beheadings, mass rape of women, horrific tortures resulting in death, forced exoduses hundreds of miles across the arid Syrian Desert with neither water, food, nor shelter, the abduction of Christian children and their sufferings of beatings and torture in order to convert them to Islam...and this took place within the lifetime of our grandparents...all because they were Christians, and the ferocious and bloody battles in Soutern Russia, Georgia, and Armenia between these Christian Lands and their militant Muslim inhabitants...a frontline between Christendom and Islam...and it must be said that not all Muslims in these lands are militant and haters of Christians,

battles from within Our Lords Church by fellow Christians who had forsaken The Holy Truths that which was handed down to them with a great weight of responsibility (of which we all must handle),

the coming of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Mass Persecutions and Martyrdoms of The Faithful in Russia and Eastern Europe (30 million Christians killed from 1917 to 1991), and this militant-athiest persecutions took place thru means of firing squads, hangings, unspeakable tortures, imprisonment in psychiatric hospital and the expierments of mind-altering drugs, forced exile to the gulags-labor camps in Siberia where prisoners expierenced harsh bitter cold, starvation, forced hard labor, torture, beatings, and ultimately death, the organized raping of nuns at monastaries, the organized destruction of Churches and Monastaries, the torture and execution of Orthodox Christian Priests, Catholic Christian Priests, and Protestant Christian Ministers for proclaiming the Gospels, and for the Orthodox, performing the Holy and Life Giving Sacrements of The Holy Mysteries (a.k.a. Communion, a.k.a. The Lords Supper), Baptism in the name of the Holy Trinity, of hearing and witnessing the Confession of Sins to The Lord by Believers and offering them the prayers of absolution and assurance of The Forgiveness and Love and Mercy of Jesus Christ thru The Father and by the Power of The Holy Spirit, by performing the Sacrement of Holy Matrimony, by offering Holy Unction thru the annointing with Holy and Blessed Oil to the sick and dying, by continuing the Succession of the Apostles by the laying on of hands thru Holy Ordination, and the Chrismation (annointing with oil) of Christians from other traditions who have already been Baptized in the Name of The Holy Trinity who are coming into the Holy Orthodox Christian Faith...it was these Christian Duties that these Christian Shepherds were sought out, and the Communist made attempts to infiltrate the Church, and was somewhat successful, but failed to fully hurt and corrupt it...for Gods' Church is Victorious!...Rising as The Phoenix (an early Christian symbol) from the ashes of a Militant-Anti-Christ-System...now what will happen and be said of the Church in the West under the secular-humanist-materialist Democracies where anti-Christ thinking, anti-Christ political-correctness, and anti-Christ laws is now gaining momentum?

and the old and new struggles with Islam, atheism, political intrigue, the occult (old and new paganism and satanism), concocted isolationism from the West, secular humanism, materialism (capitalism gone astray and unbounded), the proteslyitizing from Protestant Christian Missionaries who are sincere and loving but poorly educated on historical Christian and cultural aspects of the Peoples they hope to convert (how do you turn a Believer into a Believer...can you turn water into water?), and The Roman Catholic Christian Church seeking to reastablish its influence and power in Eastern Europe, The Ukraine, and the Middle East, and just the plain hateful hate from the Enemy...May God Rebuke Him!

...this Endurance and Truth has been given by The Ruler Of All, The Author Of The Holy Christian Faith Thru The Gospel Of Jesus Christ, The Most Holy Trinity, The Three-In-One and The One-In-Three, As The Three-Leafed-Yet-One-Leaf-Shamrock That Saint Patrick Taught With To The Irish, Father-Son-Holy Spirit...Unto The Ages Of Ages...AMEN

posted by Gary 11:54 AM