SPYRIDON wrote: reguardless of what there childhood was like,they were called to serve God
Indeed, we need to acknowledge the truth of repentance and metanoia. We don't refer to various saints as the Ex-whore saint or the Ex-murderer saint (such as St. Mary of Egypt or St. Moses the Ethiopian), and there is absolutely no place for judging others for being Ex-nonOrthodox.
unfortunately we no longer have Spiritual Elders in The world to Guide us they are all gone,and the Books are all we have now,which I think is the Reason For the Splinting off into Jurisdictions. we are on earth now alone with no human guidance and connection to the Spirit world ,but we are still being helped and guided by God
Spyridon, this is not right. To say that there are no "spiritual elders" is to say that the power in Christianity of transform human beings has diminished. Do you really think that the last of the holy elders passed away, say, in 1994 (Elder Paisios), and that he was truly the last that this earth shall see until the coming of our Lord? That the last saints to ever walk the earth will have lived and reposed in the 20th century, and none thereafter? That the "golden chain" that St. Symeon the New Theologian spoke of, the "precious inheritance passed down from Christ", has it broken?
As for jurisdictionalism, this has been around since the time of the Apostles, but under another form. It is a very old phenomena; it is the work of the Devil to disrupt the Body of Christ. In earlier ages you would have been aware of schismatic groups, of heretics, and those with questionable canonicity. In the 20th century we have seen a wave of forces that have resulted in the situation that we now find ourselves in. There is the Godless enlightenment, the rise of individuality, democracy, nationalism, all of which contributed to the multiplicity of jurisdictional justifications in America. We have seen the work of the antichrist in the introduction of the new calendar, causing numerous divisions, and endless arguments within the Body of Christ. We have witnessed the chiliastic tendency of some who split away from the Church to create churches that are attempting earthly perfection--something that was never done by the Saints and Fathers of our Church, despite all the heresies and errors that rocked the Patriarchal sees. The righteous and right-believing Orthodox withdrew from communion from the bishops in error, but they never, ever created their own synods and "churches."
Even in ages that were resplendent with the lives of countless saints, the Orthodox Church endured problems, schisms, and conflicts galore. If we had more elders available today, we would still be have all the problems that the church has always faced, seeing as how it sojurns in a place that is not ruled by the Spirit of God, but by the Spirit of the World which is the enemy of God.
