Undated SJKP Leaflet publication. By the content we know it was published after 1988 and before 2001.
WHO ARE WE?
THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
OUTSIDE OF RUSSIA
Who
are we? What exactly is this Orthodox Church to which we belong? To
answer these important questions we must go back to the very begininng.
Man
was created by God to live in full communion with his Creator and share
in His Divine Glory. But Adam's rejection of life with God because of
personal pride plunged all mankind into
sin and separation from God. Because of his sinfulness, man cannot save
himself or discover Truth through the efforts of his own reason or
experience. God alone can save man, and God alone reveals Truth to
sinful mankind. The Old Testament is the history
of God's preparing mankind to receive the Truth, the Resurrection and
the the Life –– God in the flesh, Christ Jesus. The Lord Jesus Christ,
by His earthly life, sufferings, and Resurrection, opened the way for
men once again to come into full communion with
God.
After
ascending into heaven, the Son of God sent the Holy Spirit upon His
apostles. We read in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles:
"Suddenly there came from heaven a sound like the rushing of a
violent wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
And there appeared to them tongues like flames of fire, divided among
them and resting on each one. And they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit!" So does the history of the Church begin,
with the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles at Jerusalem during
the feast of Pentecost. On that same day, through the preaching of
Apostle Peter, 3,000 men and women were baptized,
and the first Christian community at Jerusalem was formed.
Before long, the members of the Jerusalem Church were scattered by
the persecution which followed the stoning of St. Stephen. the first
martyr,
"Go forth therefore," Christ had said, "and make all nations My disciples" (Matt 28: l 9). Obedient to this
command, they preached wherever they went – at first to Jews, but before long to the Gentiles also.
Thus,
the apostles established the Church throughout the ancient world. St.
Peter and St. James founded the Church of Jerusalem. St. Paul founded
the Church of Antioch; St. Andrew the
Church of Constantinople; St. Mark, the Church of Alexandria; and Sts.
Peter and Paul, the Church of Rome. Some accounts of the apostolic
missionary journeys are recorded by St. Luke in the Book of Acts; others
are preserved in the Holy Tradition of the Church.
Thus was founded on earth Christ's Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church;
and thus it began its spread to all the ends of the earth.
The
Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. It is One Body, Unique and
Indivisible, with the Lord Jesus Christ as its Head. It is made holy in
an its members by the grace of the Holy
Spirit. The Church is catholic (in the original sense of whole and
universal) both because it includes true Christians of all times and
places, and also because it makes all its members one in Christ. The
Church is apostolic because it was founded on, and
organized by, the apostles chosen by Christ for that purpose, and
preserves intact the sacred Tradition they established in the Holy
Spirit. The Church is a mystical Body which lives both in heaven and on
earth, including those who have finished their earthly
course and come into eternal blessedness, and those who are still
struggling to work out their salvation here on earth. In prayer, in
faith, and in spirit, those in heaven and on earth are united with one
another and in the Lord and Head of the Church, Jesus
Christ.
The
visible part of the Church is likewise fully united in prayer, faith and
spirit. No doctrinal differences divide Her members. Guided by the
Holy Spirit dwelling in the Church since
Pentecost, the Church on earth lives by the original and unchangeable
Faith of the apostles. In administration, of course, the Church is
divided into various branches, like the living branches of the True Vine
of Christ. The apostles founded churches throughout
the world, but the churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch,
Constantinople and Rome, being located in major cities, acquired special
administrative importance. Their bishops came to be called patriarchs
or popes. Later, other patriarchates were established
in Russia, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, when these lands became
Christian. These patriarchs stand as first among equals with the
bishops of the national churches, whose primates bear the titles of
archbishop or metropolitan. Local councils of bishops and
the Seven Ecumenical Councils, acting with the grace of the Holy Spirit,
have settled major disputes concerning Church doctrine and practice,
beginning with the First Council of Jerusalem, recorded in the Book of
Acts.
The
Roman or Western or Latin church separated from the Eastern Church in
the year 1054, after changing the Creed and claiming supremacy of the
Bishop of Rome (i.e., the Pope) over the
other bishops. The Western church was then shattered into a multitude
of sects by the Protestant Reformation. However, in Greece, Russia, the
Balkans, Middle East and elsewhere, the Eastern Church continued to
flourish, preserving the Faith of Christ pure
and unchanged. Today, this Church is known as the Eastern Orthodox
Church.
We
belong to the Russian Orthodox Church –– specifically, the Russian
Orthdoox Church Outside of Russia. Let us briefly backtrack
historically to find out exactly what this means.
Christianity
was first brought to the Russian land by the holy Apostle Andrew, but
it was not until the year 988, under Grand Prince Vladimir, that the
Russian people and land were baptized
into Christ by missionaries from Constantinople and Bulgaria. Thus,
Holy Russia was born and grew into a great Christian empire, by the
Orthodox Tsar, rich in great saints and wonder-working icons, adorned
with great cathedrals and monasteries, and filled
with pious and God-fearing people. Missionaries from Russia brought
Orthodox Christianity to North America, first to Alaska and then to
California. Later, immigrants from Greece, Russia, and other Orthodox
lands spread the Orthodox Faith throughout the continent.
The
I917 revolution dethroned the Russian Tsar, and the Communist takeover
in 1918 destroyed the Russian Empire and plunged the world, and
especially the Orthodox world, into darkness.
The Church of Russia was subjected to incredible persecution and abuse
by the atheist Bolsheviks. Patriarch Tikhon,[Belavin] Primate of the
Church,[born 1865, passed to the Lord, -1925] anathematized the
Bolshevik rulers, and suffered imprisonment, torture
and finally death for his refusal to submit to their demands.
His successor, Metropolitan Sergius, ....
{WRONG!,
Sergius Stragorodsky was NOT the legitimate or canonical 'successor' to
Holy Patriarch Tikhon!, but a puppet-stooge installed
totally uncanonically by
dictator Joseph Stalin, when Stalin created his pseudo-church
organization, named the 'Moscow Patriarchy'. Sergius was a
usurper!..as have been all of his successors.......
(*clarifying note added by Rd. Daniel to better clarify this important miss-statement.)
But this misunderstanding/propaganda version from the communists, of the creation of this 'Moscow Patriarchy',
and 'who succeeded who', was used later, to justify ROCOR's 2007 submission to the MP, telling the big lie,
with the other big lie, 'that 'Russia is free now', and thus it is 'TIME NOW!... TO RE-UNITE', etc.
and that The Russian Church had an unbroken-continuity from Pat.
Tikhon...till NOW, [and thus too that Pat. Sergius was a heroic man, and
that he had 'saved the church', just as 'Stalin saved the nation']. The
actual fact is that Holy Patriarch Tikhon
was the very last valid Orthodox-Christian Russian patriarch and
legitimate head of the historical/canonical and martyric Russian
Church, and thus all that came after him, .who 'succeeded him', and
indeed still today are,....which
is the only relevant issue for us today, are ...completely... bogus
and slavish communist and apostate puppets in their Kremlin controlled
front organization, pretending to be The Russian Church, and that phony
KGB run organization, Stalin's MP, is
what Met. Lavr-Skurla submitted to in 2007}
however,
Sergius submitted and made his notorious Declaration in 1927, which
made the Church in the Soviet Union a political tool of the atheist
government. The majority of the bishops
vehemently protested against this concordat, but they were
systematically liquidated. The faithful Christians in the Soviet Union
went underground into the "catacombs" (the magnitude of this movement is only now becoming
clear as recent events in the U.S.S.R. have allowed a number of those in the catacombs to come into the open) to keep the Faith secretly under the persecutions, just as the first Christians had.
Millions
of Russians fled their homeland and settled in exile after the
Bolsheviks established their control over Russia. On November 7, 1920,
Patriarch Tikhon issued Encyclical #362,
ordering all Russian Orthodox bishops outside the Soviet Union to
organize a supreme Church authority and establish Church life and order
independent of the Church in the Soviet Union, which was and remains
under Communist domination. Thus, the Russian Orthodox
Church Abroad was organized under the senior bishop outside Russia,
Metropolitan Anthony.
This
free part of the Russian Orthodox Church has carried on Church life
under its governing Synod of Bishops, headed first by Metropolitan
Anthony, then by the late Metropolitan Anastassy,
then by Metropolitan Philaret who passed away in 1985, and presently by
Metropolitan Vitaly. After World War II, the Synod moved from its
original headquarters in Karlovtzy, Yugoslavia, to Munich, Germany, and
then to New York City, where it is now located.
The
Church Abroad has parishes on every continent throughout the
non-communist world. In Her faithfulness to the Holy Orthodox Faith,
she strives to remain faithful to Christ and to
bear witness to His Truth without compromise.
Throughout
the years of the existence of the Russian Church Abroad, and especially
in recent years, many natives of the lands in which the Church finds
itself have converted to Orthodox
Christianity, joining the Church and becoming zealous. energetic
members, furthering the spread of the Light of Christ “to all the
Nations.”
The
current relationship of the Russian Church Abroad to the Church in the
Soviet Union was summed up by the Sobor of Bishops in their jubilee
epistle of 1988:
“Beginning in 1917, raging, merciless, unprecedented persecutions
began against the faithful of the Church of Russia. Tens of millions of
the slain, tortured, those who perished in exile and forced-labor camps
— bishops, priests, monastics, and faithful
lay folk — were subjected to unheard-of repressions by the militant
atheists. Yet the Church survived by the blood of the martyrs.
Today, the Church of Russia is, first of all, the vast sea of the
believers of our land, who are harassed and persecuted for the sake of
Christ and His truth — pastors who have withdrawn into the catacombs of
their hearts, fathers and mothers who save
their children from atheism and unbelief by their prayers,
children-confessors — all mighty in their weakness, of whom today's
world is not worthy.
We also, who love them, together with them, though we are beyond
the boundaries of the homeland, are the Church of Russia, over which the
glory of the Lord has shone throughout the thousand years of its
existence.
We believe that the hour is not far off when today’s persecutors,
like Julian the Apostate, will say to Christ: "Thou hast conquered us, O
Galilean!" Then will the Church of Russia arise, cleansed by
persecutions, washed in the blood of the martyrs...
...ONLY THEN WILL....
the Church Abroad and the Council of Russian Bishops beyond the
boundaries of the homeland, bring to an end its independent existence.
But while confessors of the Faith of Christ languish and die in prisons
and camps, while the ecclesiastical administration
of the Patriarchate of Moscow is stricken by “non-glasnost" and cannot
speak the truth, we, the Russian bishops outside of Russia, feel an
awesome responsibility lying upon us for the WHOLE Church."
— Compiled by Fr. Gregory and Matushka Naumenko
from various sources
published by
The Saint John of Kronstadt Press
1180 Orthodox Way
Liberty TN 37095-4366
Leaflet #2276
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