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THE MYSTERY of the CHURCH the Orthodox Church from Adam to the Second Coming of Christ

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THE MYSTERY of the CHURCH the Orthodox Church from Adam to the Second Coming of Christ THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH The Orthodox Church from Adam to the Second Coming of Christ Vladimir Moss © Vladimir Moss, 2014. All Rights Reserved. He who wishes personal salvation and who wishes to be a true son of the Orthodox Church, must seek in her deliverance from the flood as in the ark of Noah. He who fears the terrible thunder of anathema that overwhelms soul and body must take upon himself the most sweet yoke of Christ - the ecclesiastical dogmas. Let him tame the unruliness of his mind with the ecclesiastical laws and submit in all things to his Mother - the Church! St. John Chrysostom. Nothing is more abiding than the Church: she is your salvation; she is your refuge. She is more lofty than the heavens; she is more far-reaching than the earth. She never grows old; she always stays in bloom. And so Scripture indicates her permanence and stability by calling her a virgin; her magnificence by calling her a queen; her closeness to God by calling her a daughter; her barrenness turned to fecundity by calling her 'the mother of seven'. A thousand names try to spell out her nobility. Just as the Lord is called by many names - Father, Way, Life, Light, Arm, Propitiation, Foundation, Gate, Sinless One, Treasure, Lord, God, Son, Only-Begotten, Form of God, Image of God, - since one name could not hope to describe the Omnipotent, and many names give us some small insight into His nature, so the Church goes by many names. St. John Chrysostom. Christ the Lord called that Church the Catholic Church which maintains the true and saving confession of the faith. St. Maximus the Confessor. The Church is the gathering of the People, the Body of Christ, His Name, His Bride, which calls the peoples to penitence and prayer; purified by the water of Holy Baptism and washed by His precious Blood, adorned as a Bride and sealed with the anointing of the Holy Spirit... The Church is an earthly heaven wherein the heavenly God dwells and walks; it is an anti- type of the Crucifixion, Burial and Resurrection of Christ... The Church is a divine house where the mystical living Sacrifice is celebrated,... and its precious stones are the divine dogmas taught by the Lord to His disciples. St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople. The ark is the Church; only those who are in it will be saved. St. Nectarius of Optina. 2 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION. THE CHURCH: TRUE AND FALSE ...........................................5 1. THE FAMILY CHURCH: FROM ADAM TO JACOB ..............................................11 The Church in Paradise................................................................................................11 The Fall of Man .............................................................................................................13 The Ark of Noah ............................................................................................................15 The Faith of Abraham ..................................................................................................18 The Patriarchal Church................................................................................................22 2. THE PILGRIM CHURCH: THE LIFE OF MOSES ....................................................24 The Exodus .....................................................................................................................24 The Mosaic Law............................................................................................................26 The Journey through the Desert ..................................................................................30 Towards the Promised Land .......................................................................................32 3. THE STATE CHURCH: FROM JOSHUA TO JESUS...............................................34 The Temptations of the World....................................................................................34 The Israelite Theocracy................................................................................................36 Schism and Apostasy ...................................................................................................40 The Holy Virgin .............................................................................................................44 The Holy Remnant........................................................................................................47 4. THE ECUMENICAL CHURCH: THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE ....................57 Every Knee shall Bow...................................................................................................57 Neither Greek nor Jew ..................................................................................................58 The Unity of the Church...............................................................................................59 The Conversion of St. Constantine.............................................................................64 The Ecumenical Councils.............................................................................................66 The Spreading of the Faith...........................................................................................68 5. THE IMPERIAL CHURCH: EMPERORS, POPES AND PEOPLES ......................71 The Symphony of Powers ............................................................................................71 The Carolingian Empire...............................................................................................75 The Papist Heresy .........................................................................................................77 The Fall of Constantinople..........................................................................................83 6. THE NATIONAL CHURCH: THE THIRD ROME AND THE NATIONS..........86 The Turkish Yoke...........................................................................................................86 The Heresy of the Judaizers .........................................................................................90 The Moscow Patriarchate ...........................................................................................92 The Old Ritualist Schism ............................................................................................94 The Russian Synodal Church ......................................................................................96 The Roots of Socialism ................................................................................................99 The Rise of Balkan Nationalism ..............................................................................102 3 On the Eve of the Catastrophe..................................................................................107 7. THE CATACOMB CHURCH: THE AGE OF THE ANTICHRIST ......................109 The Moscow Council and the Civil War .................................................................115 The Living Church.......................................................................................................120 The New Calendar Schism.........................................................................................121 The Sovietization of the Moscow Patriarchate.....................................................124 The Rise of Ecumenism and the Fall of Communism ............................................129 Towards the Antichrist..............................................................................................133 CONCLUSION. THE CHURCH AS THE BODY AND BRIDE OF CHRIST........140 4 INTRODUCTION. THE CHURCH: TRUE AND FALSE They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him. John 20.13. There is no Christian dogma so fiercely under attack today, or subject to such many and varied interpretations, as the dogma of the Church. If the critical question dividing men is still the same that Christ asked the Apostles: "Whom do men say that I am?" (Matthew 16.13), then that question must now be understood to refer, not only to the single Person of Christ, but also to His many-personed complement, the Church. For many, very many are those who, while looking up to Christ as the Son of God and God, look down on His Church as "having no form or comeliness" (Isaiah 53.2), as a merely human and fallen institution with no part in His Divinity. And yet, as the Martyr-Bishop Cyprian of Carthage said in the third century: "Whoever breaks with the Church and enters on an adulterous union cuts himself off from the promises made to the Church; and he who turns his back on the Church of Christ will not come to the rewards of Christ: he is an alien, a worldling, an enemy. You cannot have God for your Father if you no longer have the Church for your mother. If there was any escape for one who was outside the ark of Noah, there will be as much for one who is found to be outside the Church. The Lord warns us when He says: 'He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me, scattereth'. Whoever breaks the peace and harmony of the Church acts against Christ; whoever gathers elsewhere than in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ."1 Nor can he have Christ as his Head who does not adhere to the Church as His Body; for, as St. Augustine of Hippo said in the fifth century, it is the Head and Body together which comprise "the whole Christ".2 Where, then, is the Church, and what are her marks? One of the greatest saints of the twentieth century, Father John of Kronstadt, defined the Church as "the community of those being saved
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