Patriarch Kirill: Russia Helped to Protect Christians in Syria

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Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said in his Christmas interview with Rossiya-1 TV:

Operations of Russia’s Aerospace Forces in Syria helped to protect the Christian minority from persecution and killings. Besides solving some issues linked to stabilising the situation, preventing military threats, and preventing the takeover of power by terrorists, a very important part of Russia’s participation was to protect the Christian minority. Thanks to Russia’s participation, we thwarted genocide of Christians. If Islamist forces had maintained their influence and activity, the situation in Syria would’ve repeated the Iraqi scenario after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

During Hussein’s rule, I visited Iraq and its northern areas, and I was in Mosul. I visited ancient Christian monasteries. I saw this pietism of people and was glad that Christian churches peacefully existed in a Muslim environment. Now, almost nothing is left. The monasteries were destroyed, the churches were blown up, and 85 percent of Christians were either eliminated or expelled from Iraq. This could’ve happened in Syria. Both the Russian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church will continue efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to Syrians. We also have bilateral agreements with the Catholic Church to provide humanitarian assistance together. There are different areas in which we’re acting. I hope they’d make their contribution to providing real assistance to those who still suffer in Syria.

7 January 2018

TASS

http://tass.com/society/984135

Editor:

Note well that Iraqi Christians were safe until the USA imported “democracy” and empowered Islamists (whom the Anglos used to destabilise the situation). What does this tell you about Evangelical sectarians and their loud yelps of “Christianity?” I’d say that it proves that Born-Agains aren’t Christians at all… I do daresay that I’m not alone in thinking that way.

BMD

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1 October 2017. There IS a Difference…

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There’s a real difference between a longing for our real tradition and the efforts of ungrounded converts to “recapture the Tradition”. The two aren’t the same at all. One is a longing for what one once had, but lost due to “reformers”. The other is a prideful attempt to erect what one never had. There’s a world of difference between the two things. The first is a real effort to grasp the living and life-giving Tradition found in the Russian liturgy. The other is an attempt by untutored former Prods to erect a prideful and stultifying liturgical superstructure over their Evangelical Anti-Christian Weltanschauung. Any grounded Orthodox Christian can tell the difference.

May God see and judge…

BMD

1 October 2017. The Truth About Anti-Christian Evangelicals

Surrealism Society

André Dluhos

undated

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Evangelicals are heretics that peddle in fear mongering. They aren’t and never were Christians. The “Rapture” prediction is an invention meant to sell you books and products. Jesus even told us no one knows when the end will happen except God. So, live each day, not as the Evangelicals tell you how to live, but by how JESUS THE CHRIST tells you how to live.

24 September 2017

Janine Stock

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The Particular Judgement and the Toll Houses are NOT the Same Thing

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A Russian priest told me this:

The level of interest in the Toll Houses is proportional to one’s education in the faith. The ignorant love them. The educated are much more circumspect, and many reject the more popular manifestations.

There is a difference between the Particular Judgement, which is an important part of Sacred Tradition and IS doctrine, and the Toll Houses, which are (at best) only a theological opinion, and are mostly folk belief found amongst the ignorant. That is, one MUST believe that there’s a Particular Judgement. That’s doctrine. However, the Church is silent as to the details of it. Ergo, talk of the Toll Houses is sheer mummery, at best. No Council of the Church has EVER affirmed the Toll Houses in the form that one sees amongst ignorant konvertsy (the Serafim Rose crowd, in particular).

The Toll Houses weren’t a factor in Church Life prior to Rose’s untutored and rambling writings in the late 70s. Never forget that Rose lacked even a basic seminary formation, let alone any advanced study at a recognised Orthodox institution. That is, he lacked the credibility and education to have even posited his notion in the first place! The konvertsy swoon at a notion floated by a man who lacked the basic grounding that seminary and monastic formation give one. Too many of these toddlers take Platina’s hagiographic propaganda at face value. Rose was a simple hieromonk without the slightest hint of clerical formation, he wasn’t an archimandrite, and he certainly wasn’t a trained academic theologian. Furthermore, the St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood was a minor parvenu skete in the backwoods of Northern California, not a major influence in world Orthodoxy at all.

A priest told me that one must believe in the Particular Judgement, but that it wasn’t healthy to be speculating on the details:

You will face judgement, mark my words… but it does us no good to try to trick out the details.

I find this sage advice. Unfortunately, the Toll House nutters won’t stop squalling about their “Doctrine”… as for me, I’m tired of refuting their nonsense. Just because I’m stopping to reply to the Toll House trolls doesn’t mean that they’re right. I have things that are more important on my plate… like being a Christian and having a real life.

One last thing… no Church is considering Rose for canonisation. You can’t call him “Blessed”, as that’s the Orthodox title for a canonised Fool-in-Christ. Interesting that the konvertsy use a papist concept here (just as the Toll Houses are a corrupt form of the papist Purgatory, as St Mark of Ephesus pointed up)…

Keep it focused. There are demented toddlers afoot, screaming out this-or-that Patristic quotation. Pray for these idiots… we’re Christians; that’s what we do. Don’t feed the trolls…

BMD