The Saint Euphrosynos Cafe

This will be my last posting on this forum, I have too many good things happening right now to waste anymore time and effort here while this Hagarene is permitted to post her anti-Christ trash. I wish you all well, even you Bess.
Moderators, please delete my membership on this forum

Yes I second what Fr Mark said. Certainly, we must lament the external destruction visited on Christian society by various enemies of the faith, but we should not confuse that with the INTERNAL strength of the Church, which our Lord PROMISED would never fall to the devil. No matter what physical tortures may be visited upon us, ultimately we are responsible for the preservation of the faith.

For instance, when revolutionary ideas began to circulate among Greek patriots in the decades leading up to the revolt against the Turks, the Ecumenical Patriarch published an encyclical condemning these activities. Did he mean that Moslem rule was a good thing? Not in the sense that it is good for the state to be ruled by enemies of Christ, or that Turkish oppression of Christians did not result in many lamentable apostasies. But the Patriarch recognized that the revolutionaries were not motivated by love of Orthodoxy and Romanity, but by heretical, Western ideas of ethnic pride and independence. And he was right, since the newly independent Greek kingdom was founded by Masons, and it was through the new State Church of Greece (which uncanonically declared its own autonomy from Constantinople) that Masonry infiltrated the hierarchy, resulting in the disastrous schism of 1924.

What do we learn from the New Martyrs of the Turkish yoke? Not that we should be ashamed of how many Christians were killed for Christ, but that we should GLORY in them. If we should be ashamed, then let us be ashamed for those Christians who abandoned the Church and never repented. But those who persevered to death are our heroes whom we should strive to imitate, should new persecutions come upon us.

Father Mark,

 There are many scriptural and Patristic references to a general attenuation of the true faith over time, at least demographically.  As the Apostle to the Gentiles, himself, wrote in his epistle; "When the Lord returns, will he find true faith upon the earth?" 

  Many saints, even the Desert Fathers of the 4th century described a time in the future when there would be very little left of true faith and the ascetic praxis of their own day.  (And, as Catherine may not know, many of the great 4th century Orthodox monasteries of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria were eventually attacked and destroyed by Catherine's beloved Moslems.)

   However, your point about the withering of the fig tree is well taken.  It is a hard saying, in the grand, historical sense, is it not?  It is, indeed, difficult to imagine that the Lord approved of the desecration of His holy monasteries and temples in Byzantium and Holy Russia at the hands of the Mohammedans and Bolsheviks.  (Just as He gave Satan permission to persecute His servant, Job.) One shudders to read the accounts of Bolsheviks urinating on the altars of Russian churches, or turning Solovki into a concentration camp for Orthodox priests-- just as one cringes to see the icons of the Lord and His most Holy Mother plastered over at Hagia Sophia, and the altar moved by the Turks to face Mecca.

   The Lord, indeed, said that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church, but He never said that the gates of Hell would not prevail against [i][u]Christendom[/u][/i].  Unfortunately, some would misinterpret His teaching on this matter to infer that the Moslems and Bolsheviks who destroyed Orthodox [i][u]Christendom [/u][/i]were not the servants of Hell, eh?

Prav, are you ready, then, to take off on a mission like the one below?
It's a hint that some of these "Christians" who are so prejudiced against Muslims can be loony. We don't want to see you in the news next!

Why the story amused me is that the place where this strange character was found is one of the Valleys of the Kalash, the tribes I recklessly threw in mention of for fun in a recent discussion on an earlier thread. Then today this news was splashed all over the headlines and among the most read.

Note how the Pakistani police are good-humored. They are very kind to foreigners especially.
So let's see: are they persecuting a Christian visitor? Did they lunge at him threateningly as you depict in all your posts?

No, the officers give him all the benefit of the doubt and only take him into custody when it's clear he is bizarre and needs to be saved from --- himself.

By the way, due to the characteristic dress and language of the local Kalash tribes, the claim that Osama was or is there has always been preposterous, downright laughable.
As usual, American "experts" will put forward any lame idea to re-gain momentum for the stumbling war on terror.

Unfortunately, those who already believe the worst against Muslims will swallow any old thing the media puts out. This is why I caution against believing the party line that is pushed on a gullible public.
Notice that the Coloradan does not question that Osama was responsible for 911 as he has been programmed to accept without further probe. Roll those together with the pro-Jewish, hence anti-Muslim attitudes inculcated in America today, and you get this escapade:

DENVER – An American man has been detained in the mountains of Pakistan after local authorities found him carrying a SWORD [I think one account said it was a really long saber!], pistol and night-vision goggles on a Rambo-style solo mission to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden.

Friends and family say construction worker Gary Brooks Faulkner is a devout, good-humored Christian who often talked about building a porch or framing a house — not taking down the world's most-wanted terrorist. They had few clues to explain his 7,300-mile journey.

The 51-year-old Faulkner, who has a lengthy arrest record and served time in a Colorado prison, arrived in the town of Bumburate [Bumburet, it's really the whole valley unless the tiny village has grown since I was there] on June 3 and stayed in a hotel there... When he checked out without informing police, officers began looking for him.

[Police chief Khan] said Faulkner was found late Sunday in a forest.

"We initially laughed when he told us that he wanted to kill Osama bin Laden," Khan said. But when officers seized the weapons and night-vision equipment, "our suspicion grew." He said the American was trying to cross into the nearby Afghan region of Nuristan.

Chitral and Nuristan are among several rumored hiding places for bin Laden along the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Faulkner's sister, Deanna M. Faulkner of Grand Junction, Colo., said her brother's kidney disease has left him with only 9 percent kidney function. But she told The Associated Press that she did not think his illness was his motivation to go to Pakistan.

[The sister said] that her brother was "very religious" without elaborating.

...Faulkner served seven years in prison in the 1980s for burglary and theft. Since 1981, he has been arrested at least 10 times on charges ranging from traffic violations to felony larceny and domestic violence, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

The Laramer County sheriff released a mug shot from Faulkner's 2006 arrest on charges of failing to have car insurance. In the photo, he has shoulder-length gray hair parted in the middle with bangs that reach the sides of his wire-rim glasses.

He also has a shaggy, black beard with traces of gray hair in it, and he appears to be wearing a camouflage-patterned shirt.

"I think Osama is responsible for bloodshed in the world, and I want to kill him," Khan quoted him as saying.

When asked why he thought he had a chance of tracing bin Laden, Faulkner replied, "God is with me, and I am confident I will be successful in killing him," Khan said.

He said police confiscated a small amount of hashish, enough for a single joint, from Faulkner.

Faulkner allegedly told police...this was his third trip to Chitral, a mountainous region that attracts adventurous Western tourists and hikers."

The Turks didn't just move the altar. Their worship has no use for an altar. They removed it entirely, and built a 'mihrab' in the alcove which, of course, is oriented towards Mecca, not due east, so that it is somewhat off-center. But they did certainly cover the icons and hung the plaques with Koranic quotations around the nave.

Regarding the attenuation of the faith, while Islam and Bolshevism certainly share a large part of the responsibility for that, it is a big mistake to think that St Paul's prophecy refers ONLY to these external assaults on Christendom. Surely they also refer to the weakening of faith that results from internal schisms and heresies, which seem to bear just as much, if not more responsibility for the weakening of the Church in the world. Think of it: the entire Western half of the Catholic Church was lost because of Papism, while earlier almost the entire Christian populations of Egypt, Syria and Armenia were lost to Monophysitism, and the Church of Mesopotamia and Persia to Nestorianism. Now ecumenism and sergianism have claimed almost all the remaining Eastern Orthodox. Of course, sergianism is a creature of Bolshevism, but not through external persecutions, but through internal betrayal.

Pravoslavnik wrote:

There are many scriptural and Patristic references to a general attenuation of the true faith over time, at least demographically. As the Apostle to the Gentiles, himself, wrote in his epistle; "When the Lord returns, will he find true faith upon the earth?"

If the destruction, demise, attenuation of the Church is the same as this loss of faith or faith being difficult to find in the end, then I have to ask again; How is this blamed on demons, muslims and bolsheviks? Did they steal it out of the heart of the faithful? Is not each person responsible for keeping the faith? If then they lose it, they have no one to blame but themselves. Neither demons or muslims or bolsheviks have the power to steal the faith from the heart of a person.

PS. "Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" is from our Lord in St. Lukes' Gospel 18:8

Father Mark,

  If the church buildings and seminaries are destroyed, and the priests are murdered, who will carry on the true faith?  Who will lead and educate subsequent generations of Orthodox Christians?  Hence, the historic destruction of the Church by Moslems, Bolsheviks, and heretics does have a profound impact on the propagation of the true faith over time.  

  Do you know that the Turkish Orthodox Christian seminary on the Princess Islands of the Sea of Maramara-- where the current Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was educated in his youth-- has now been closed by the Turks?  The Holy Trinity Cathedral in Galata-- one of the few extant Orthodox Churches in Turkey-- was virtually empty when I attended a Sunday liturgy there in the summer of 2000.  The Phanar was fire-bombed by Moslems at least once during the past decade.  In truth, Orthodox Christianity is virtually defunct in Constantinople and Anatolia today.  The EP's 19th century proscription of the Orthodox Christian revolt against the Ottomans in the Balkans was an Islamic ruse-- somewhat analogous to the patriotic pronouncements of the Sergianist Church hierarchs who promoted Stalin's agendas in the Soviet Union.  (Which is not to say, either, that the 19th century nationalistic rebels in the Balkans were devoid of heretical tendencies.)

  Very few people in North America understand the true nature and history of Islam-- although some Western Europeans are beginning to understand, through direct experience.  This nascent western Islamophobia is not entirely based on right wing militarism.  As you may recall, I am one who never agreed with America's ill-fated, pre-emptive invasion of Iraq in 2003-- as part of Bush's putative war on "terror."  However, it is also entirely naive to imagine that the goal and mandate of Islam is anything other than subjection of humanity to the will of Allah and the rule of Islamic shari'a.

  I have a few references on this subject.  One is Bat Ye'or's scholarly text, [i][u]The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam [/u][/i](Farliegh Dickinson Press. 1996.)  Less scholarly is Joel Richardson's text [i][u]Antichrist; Islam's Awaited Messiah[/u][/i]-- worth reading, if only for the review and analysis of the jihadist doctrines described in the Sunna.

  Two websites which track and document the almost daily jihadist murders around the world are 1) thereligionofpeace.com and 2) jihadwatch.com.