PLEASE NOTE THAT NATHANAEL ON THIS SITE IS NOT THE SAME AS BROTHER NATHANIEL --
One has only to read the lives of the martyrs to see very clearly that the Faith they held was not the same Faith as that held today by the Modernists and Ecumenists who call themselves Orthodox.
In the account of the Holy Forty-Two Martyrs of Amorion, they were offered recognition and numerous blessings from the Caliph if they would convert to Islam. When they refused, they were told that they did not need to change their faith, only to “pray together with the ruler.” They were told they could pretend that all was ok and then go on with their lives with the blessings of the ruler. In response, the Holy Martyrs prayed that God would deliver those “who were foolishly deceived by the atheist Mohamed. They saw merely praying with the ruler to be a denial of God.
They rebuked their tempters saying, “You do not have the true knowledge of God; you only think you do. This deception results in your hating the God Who truly exists.” They continued, “…Mohamed made for himself another god, as the idolaters do, and gave it to you to worship, though it neither existed nor ever will exist. We know and confess the true God, Who was proclaimed by the Holy Prophets and Apostles of Christ, Who is the cause of good only, and we acknowledge no other god.”
When the Saracen further tempted them by offering to deliver their families from harm if they would just attend prayers with the Moslems, with one voice, the Saints exclaimed with all their souls, “Anathema to Mohamed and to all those who confess him as a Prophet.”
Only in our day of Apostasy could one sincerely ask, “What’s wrong with having prayers with other faiths on a National Holiday? Just ask the Saints and Martyrs who believed as did the Psalmist that all the gods of the heathen are demons.
