Woe unto you! An Article by Reader Timothy of “Newsletter From a True Orthodox”
At the risk of repeating myself, perhaps.
Here is a key distinction. My apologies. To me, this is completely self-evident, so much so that perhaps I have not made this point explicitly before, or it has gotten lost in my ranting. I feel I have said it before though. 🙂
The fact that a given Gospel contains clear predictions of an event that ended up happening e.g. the fall of Jerusalem, does not, as Western materialist secularism would have it, prove that the Gospel in question was written after the event predicted. Rather, it proves the prophetic nature of the material, particularly the prophetic nature of the Lord Christ’s utterances.
Since the whole point of the written Gospels is to elucidate, as comprehensively as possible, that which the Christian faith is based on: that the Lord Christ is the Living God incarnate, whose entire life on earth is to demonstrate, unerringly to all men for all time, who, exactly, is Lord of all, and how to be reconciled to Him in eternity, through a sinless life, filled with humility and good works, capped off with betrayal by hypocrites who claim to be experts on God and holiness (read reality and ethics today), to death, to resurrection and so on, the fact of the prophetic nature of the teachings is not really a big deal to Orthodox Christians. The whole account, the whole history of the Church to this day is wall to wall miracles, whose only explanation is the fact that it is all true.
God is real, and is glorious in His saints.
To those who wish to assume that the story is in fact ‘just’ about a man who ‘happened to get nailed to a tree for suggesting that people be nice to each other once in a while’, arguing about the veracity and order of the Gospels is ultimately completely pointless. These people have already killed the spirit of the whole thing. Who really gives a monkey’s what these people think or have to say about ‘textual analysis’ and ‘primary sources’ and other academic mots justes?
I’ll tell you. Other soulless academics.
They are the only people who might remotely care, and then only as part of their own ego madness that they will prove or know something that no one else has ever proven or known.
They don’t believe, they won’t believe. It’s a tragedy, but hey ho, there’s lots of those. I pray that people will see the light, and try to live in accordance with God’s will and His commandments. That’s task enough for anyone.
Personally, I’d be happier if they turned their attention to something that might do well to be picked to pieces by more people, like the Theory of Evolution. What a stinking pile of garbage that is!
The more they try to mess with the Word of God, the more they blind themselves.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. – Matthew 23:13
Glory to God for all things.
Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered!
Let them that hate Him flee from before His face!
As smoke vanisheth, so let them vanish; as wax melteth before the fire, so let the demons perish from the presence of them that love God and who sign themselves with the sign of the Cross and say in gladness; Rejoice most venerable and life-giving Cross of the Lord, for Thou drivest away the demons by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ Who was crucified on thee, Who went down to hades and trampled on the power of the devil, and gave us thee, His venerable Cross, for the driving away of every adversary. O most venerable and life-giving Cross of the Lord, help me together with the Holy Lady Virgin Theotokos, and with all the saints unto the ages. Amen!
