Cleveland Prayer Group Website |
Why We Believe in Intercession?
I have been very interested in reading some of the comments about intercession. Before I go
into any of those I would like to point out that some of our
Orthodox brothers are misled by ideas foreign to Orthodoxy. I
don't blame them. Our Church and all of us have become so secularized, and so ingrown as "Orthodox Christians, we do not
study, or properly teach our members and our Children what is
orthodoxy and what we believe. and new Churches with
evangelistic fervor confront them with questions and "quoting
the Bible, scandalize our ignorant members and tell them that
they have to find everything in black and white in the
Holy Bible as the basis of our faith and belief.
It is true, the
Bible is inspired writing, it is true that it forms the basis
for our faith and worship and so on. But, it (bible) is not like Q'uran. We
don't believe that it is dictated by an angel , or that it came
down from heaven. It is written by human beings, in spirit
(inspired).
Now when some of the new sects talk about the Bible,
it would appear that they found the Bible at the foot of the
cross at the time of the crucifixion of our Lord. These gentle
men picked it up right from Calvary and their elders got it
straight from God Himself. These gentle men are slanderers; they
are not of God, but demonic. They bear false witness against
their brothers in spreading lies, blatant lies.
Mary
No Orthodox Christian, in his right mind, worships Mary, the
Mother of God, No one uses her as a mediator between God and
man. The Orthodox people, like any other human beings, respect
their Mother and all other mothers. They respect
their Lord's Mother more than any other woman in the world
because they know that she gave Him a body, she carried him in
her womb (for 9 months), she breast- fed Him, she taught Him the
rudiments of the Jewish faith, she took him to the 'Church' as a
baby and did not wait till He was old enough to discover for
himself and so on.
Just like any other human being , she
is requested to have a word put in to her son, whom she
intimately knew and loved, on our behalf. Like a pastor or a
"sister" asking another sister to remember her in her or his
prayers. What on earth is wrong with it? Why do any one condemn
Mary and those who respect her? It is Angel Gabriel, who
stands in the presence of God, that called her blessed and the
righteous; it was Elizabeth who called her, "the Mother of My Lord," not
any Orthodox member. What the Church added is "please pray for us ".
That is all. What is wrong in it?
Bible
Where did we get the Holy Bible? Let these gentle men and women
who mislead others go and study a little bit of history about
the Bible and the early church, instead of assuming satanic role
in misleading people. The Bible which Jesus used was the Old
Testament. The New testament was not discovered, as I said
earlier, at the foot of the Cross. The Story of Jesus
was spread in preaching and in Liturgy (worship, prayer and "the
breaking of the bread" and in story form).
The N.T. was produced in the latter part of the first century by THE CHURCH,
the Apostles and their disciples who witnessed the resurrection
and learned from those who have had first hand
information about the life , work and the passion, resurrection
of Our Lord. So it is the early Church which produced the Bible
and decided what are the true genuine books to be listed in its
"Canon". So naturally the Church which produced it is supposed
to interpret and decide what is right and what is wrong. Taking
passages from here and there out of context,
to establish ones own point of view is like the devil quoting
the scriptures and it should be given the same treatment as
given by Our Lord.
It is our own fault, and why should we blame
any one. We are not willing to take time to learn the Bible and
understand the faith which we hold dear to us.
Saints
We don't pray to
the saints. We don't worship them. We are taught and we know that
they are sinful men like us. They have lived an acceptable life
of piety, prayer and fasting and in communion with God. They
have been purified by God because of their repentance and tears
of remorse. They have access to God like any other believer and
like, we call upon or request our friends and brothers and
sisters to remember us in their prayers, we beseech and request
the saints who have been perfected by God and who have a better
standing than we have, we request them to join us in prayers
with us to the Only Mediator and our Lord. What is wrong with
that?
Death and Living
Intecessonary prayer is alright as long as it is to the living.
So this means that some of us do not know what is dying and
what is concept of Death and Life.
We believe that God is the
source of all life. He gives life and man becomes a living
person. This we see in Genesis in the creation story. God
created Adam from the dust of the earth, in the
image and likeness of God. He became a living being only after
God breathed the
breath of life into his nostrils. He became a living soul. So
there is an earthly element (the body) and a divine element
in Man (soul).
Even medical Doctors can not say with certainty whether a person is
dead and actually what time he/she dies. Is it when the heart stops? No. Is
it when the pulse stops? No! Or is it when he/she stops functioning? No. So what is
death from a medical point of view? We Christians believe that a man dies
when his body and his soul separate from one another, to "breathe last." The
earthly body remains down here, and becomes dust again. The
soul which is alive and goes to some place (let us say for
now) It can be in paradise like that of the thief, it can be in
sheol like that of the rich man and so on.
Let us go back to
Adam Story. God told him not to eat of the fruit of the tree
that was in the middle of the garden, and if he ate, he would
die. We know that Adam ate the fruit, and, as God said, he died.
The story continues. God comes down in the cool of the day for
an evening walk and Adam was not around as usual. So not finding
Adam He calls him and enquires, "where art thou?"
Surprisingly enough, Adam was not "dead" and he answers God!
Was Adam living or dead? Did God tell a lie? what was the
meaning of God saying that "You would die"? Was it a physical
death or a spiritual death?
In Jewish concept there are two
kinds of death. One is physical death, and they used to say "he
joined his fathers" for this death. The other death is
spiritual death, which happened to Adam after eating the fruit.
He said he was hiding behind the trees, he could not face up and
come in the presence of God and he had to hide, there was a wall
of partition between him and God. So the very same place
"paradise" became Hell for Adam after his fall. The only
difference is in his condition of whether he can have full
communion with God or not. There is God's presence even in Hell,
the only thing is that man cannot turn to God in hell, but in
paradise or heaven, man is in the presence of God enjoying the
bliss in full communion with God.
So
Now let us decide what is death ? When some one dies, it is
physical death and that he/she is not "dead" but entering into a new
life. This is why the Orthodox people uses the word 'departing'
for physical dying, so not to confuse. So our friend who
insisted that the saints or a faithful believer
is dead, he means that his physical body has separated from his
soul, which continues to live, as the soul of the thief went to
paradise with our Lord.
Read about the worship that goes on in heaven in the book
of Revelations (Chapter 4). Or as some one quoted the story of
the rich man and Lazarus. What sort of picture do we get about
the people who died and went to heaven (Abraham's bosom) Abraham
is a "dead man." He is speaking to the rich man who is also
'dead'! How does the rich man know about the condition of
his relatives 'living' on earth? Why should the rich man beg
Abraham to help his relatives. How does Abraham know what is
happening down on earth?
Was not the rich man interceding on behalf of his living
relatives? How does one explain this phenomenon? Abraham, while
living in Palestine, interceded on behalf of Sodom (his nephew
Lot) that is perfectly O.K. But after he has passed from this
life into a new life with the Lord, he should not
intercede for any one ?
According to the Orthodox belief (based
on scriptures) Those who eat the flesh and drink the blood of
the Son Of Man, will have eternal life. They never die. They
live for ever. So the Orthodox people have a prayer in their
Liturgy for the departed 'show mercy to the departed because Your Body and blood are in their organs" Those who have
participated in the Body and Blood of our Lord never 'die", they
abide in the Lord as a 'branch of the Vine' and the life of the
Lord flows through them and they live for ever.
So the departed
ones ARE NOT DEAD. THEY LIVE FOR EVER. THEY ARE NOT
silent. THEY WORSHIP GOD, THEY OFFER INCENSE, THEY SING LIKE
THE LIVING ONES DO ON THIS EARTH DURING THEIR WORSHIP. THEY CAN
PRAY AND NATURALLY THEY CAN INTERCEDE, THOUGH THEY ARE NOT
TAKING THE PLACE OF OUR LORD.
Our faith is truly Biblical, passed down to us from the
Apostles and we are the Church of the Apostles with a true
understanding of the faith of the Apostles and the fathers. We
are proud of our heritage and we are not apologetic about it at
all. Only those who have been misled by the new teachings should
go back and learn our faith and our practices and see how
majestic, wonderful and heavenly they are. Ours is the true
faith based on the teachings of the Apostles as instructed by
Christ and recorded in the Holy Bible: the O.T, the Bible of our
Lord and the N.T , the Bible about our Lord.
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