Saint John of Kronstadt, a Russian priest, confessor and zealous preacher of the Gospel, lived at the end of the 19th –beginning of the 20th century. He was a clairvoyant and wonder maker.
His occupation was to serve the suffering people daily. His great love for Christ obliged him to confess the truth about the saving Orthodoxy and about sects and heresies which cannot ensure salvation.
We must belong to Christ’s Church whose head is the Almighty king, the conqueror of hell Jesus Christ. His Kingdom is the Church, which is represented by the communion of the saints who moved to heaven and of the Orthodox Christians who struggle on earth against the principalities, powers and rulers of this age…
The unorthodox, even if they are a great community, cannot enroll themselves in this war. If they don’t have Christ as a head, they cannot do anything against these terrible schemers and enemies who are permanently awake and master perfectly the science of their war.
The Orthodox Christian has a powerful support in this fight: first of all from God and His saints who defeated the enemies with the power of Christ’s grace and then from the Orthodox Church from earth, from its pastors and teachers, from the Sacraments and from the common prayer.
Christ’s Church to whom with God’s mercy we belong as well is such an aid in the fight of the Christian against the visible and invisible enemies.
The Church is the only Body whose Head is our Lord Jesus Christ in person and whose soul is the Holy Spirit Who gives life, enlightens, purifies and strengthens all the limbs of this great body which struggles on earth.
The true Church remains united and is the only one which is redeeming. This is the Eastern Orthodox Church.
No other Christian confession apart from Orthodoxy can help the Christian reach perfection in his Christian life and fulfill his purification of sins, leading him to incorruptibility, since all the other religions sustain injustice as truth (Romans 1, 18). They mixed superstition and lie with the truth and they don’t have those means given by God for purification, for sanctification, for rebirth and renewal which belong to the Orthodox Church.
Each fall according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers begins by pride: the man disregards a command and then he sins in deed. This is what happened with the schism of the Westerners. Before that the pope and the Catholics became so proud and haughty that they dared to judge Christ in person, the Wisdom of God, the Heavenly Teacher. Their pride reached such a degree that they changed some of His words, commands and orders. Christ says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father while the Catholics, the Lutherans and Anglicans say that He proceeds from both the Father and the Son.
Separating themselves from the Tradition of the Holy Spirit, losing the inner criterion of truth and the synodal principle of the Church, the Catholics, because they needed a new kind of power, invented a new power to teach the Creed: the infallible pope of Rome, the representative of Christ on earth.
`And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.` (Matthew 28, 20). The Lord in person is permanently present in His Church. Then why would a pope representative be needed?
As a main heresy, Catholicism tries to include in its theological system texts from the Holy Scripture interpreting them outside the Holy Tradition which they don’t have.
The main point of pride of the papists and of their false dogmas in administration and moral teaching is the papal primacy, the false, incorrect interpretation of the word of the Savior:
And I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. (Matthew 16, 18).
We must understand that the foundation stone is Jesus Christ in person: `And the rock was Christ.` (I Corinthians 10,4)
The pope and the papists converting all Catholics to heresy made this be incorrigible, because the pope despite his mistakes is recognized as being without mistake by the Catholic Church and it is impossible to be corrected by someone who has divergent beliefs.
Is it possible for someone to unite something which cannot be united, the lie with the truth?
The Catholics by the fact that they recognize the pope as head of their Church lost the real Head of the Church – Christ – and they remained without Head. The whole history of papacy attests the fact that the Catholics have no Head. The Lutherans separated themselves and they remained without a Head as well, the Anglicans did the same. They don’t have the Church…and Belial fights them with his power and scheming and keeps them in delusion and perdition. A lot of men perish in atheism and vice.
We received from God the `mina` of Orthodoxy for God’s glory and for our salvation. How do we use and multiply this `mina` ? Do we thank to the Lord? What is the nature of our repentance? What good deeds do we do?
`All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good,
not even one.` (Psalm 13, 3).
(Excerpts from the article of A. Vladimirov published in the review `Cerkovnaia Zizn”` voi 1-2, 1994)
