perhaps you have wondered as i have does america need to rediscover the roots of our christian faith take a look at the christianity around us and it seems pretty influenced by the secular world i'll just cruise two examples that i have noticed one is that there is an emphasis because of the many denominations on relative truth whatever i believe is true is fine for me whatever one pastor teaches is equal with that of another pastor and so we go about choosing which ever i judge myself to be closest to the truth of the scripture this is like the blind leading the blind because many times personally people do not have enough information to make those judgments happen the second influence that we may notice is that of judging by appearances the church must be very beautiful and very large the bigger the better if it's a mega church that means it must be very important and they must have a very spiritual person now in fact the words of the lord himself in the gospel turn around these very values and we know that christianity is in reality the opposite of all of these secular ideas first of all it is the me and the humble it is the small it is the one that doesn't trumpet out in the marketplace it is the quiet prayer warrior that is the main member of the church of christ it is the one who knows there is one truth of the gospel and is willing to make a choice after examining the truth of the gospel and the churches which claim the closest history to that of the apostles you see christianity is of historical church because christ became man as god condescending to take on our human nature in our human history the closer we are to those historical teachings and understanding as an interpretations the more pure our christian life and understanding of god is this is a faith or religion if you want to use a general term and a general term christianity is a religion that is not based on the ideas of a man but we are based on the revelation of god to man beginning in god sent his own son to reveal in himself all that god in us the fact that he has love that he has totally poured out as one who loves and that he even goes after those who are lost and to recognize that they are in need of him as we see in the beatitudes bless are the poor in spirit we know we have nothing and we know that we need the revelation of god to us through christ now in examining the american church experience we must realize that most of these denominations around us are only a century or two all the wesley  revival in the seventeen hundreds of charles finney up in the northeast in new york experience in the outpouring of the holy spirit yet still held by his limited understanding of the scriptures since he didn't have the interpretations of the at the start writers in those days most of these denominations in our history came out of these early days of american colonial life wesley of course began in england sant george whitfield as part of that revival in england over to the southeastern united states that's when the circuit writers began and then later after charles finney the plantation slaves would grab on because they are the in spirit to this fire of the holy spirit and carry these burning coals through the civil war era in the eighteenth sixty's and into the early one thousand hundreds street revivals began in los angeles later there was a charismatic movement in the one nine hundred sixty s and this just to give you a general history of what you see around you as you look from church to church so when you see churches that say non denominational you must investigate because surely there is a denominational point of view that is being taught and is being preached the best way to discover what is behind every church in america is to ask what books are used chapel as a strong tradition so you have many of these churches who are giving the gospel as they know it so we might say why does america need orthodoxy orthodoxy is seem to be just another denomination to add to the long list of denominations already  existence in our country there is a huge and important difference one is that we have two thousand years truth who passed along from the apostles by the power of the holy spirit renewed in each century the teachings of christ as he gave them to his apostles and disciples remember the lord stayed forty days on earth after his resurrection teaching guiding counseling his apostles and his disciples st paul and the other writers of the rest of the new testament pick up this gospel that in that skeletal form is given by christ and they flesh out how to live the gospel of christ how to live a life as a christian so we have st peter we have most of the writings of the new testament are st paul's to the gentiles which is understandable because the gentiles that error and age of the gentiles is even now so the lord speaks especially to the gentile church we have st jean speaking from the church of jerusalem giving the insight of all of the people as they had met together in the first council of the church in acts chapter fifteen from then on the church would go into heavy persecution as i tell you about this ancient church let us realize it only makes sense as the body of christ on earth that this orthodox church looks much like christ himself we are battered bruise scourged persecuted demeaned mocked many of the other churches well disregard the importance of and historical witness and disregard the very words of christ himself who said the gates of hades will not prevail against my church now either his pictures and not until the rev reformation years did the church fully blossom no i'm afraid this is a mythology that is perpetrated by those who have only heard the people churches claims to be the early church without or the judge see in america there is no witness to the new testament church since the people church was obviously not the new testament church consequently the old testament remains the favorite topic for every sunday sermon in our next program we will discuss the tremendous influence of the scofield bible which renders much of the new testament that without any application for us today a later program we will get more into the history of the people change which is new relatively only about twelve hundred years old and which began in europe with the franki charlemagne charlemagne screed actually is used by the roman catholic church instead of the orthodox creed from the early church s in three twenty five eighty this creed is still used today unchanged in lightened by the holy spirit and drawn from the books of the scripture which word delineated by this christian church from the beginning the birth of this church was not from some man two or three hundred or even five hundred years ago the birth of the orthodox faith took place at pentecost and our bishops are still in jerusalem as a testimony to this historical reality as much as the papal church wanted to remove the presence of the orthodox church by the crusades and the pretense of going after the muslims this did not happen there was a short time of exile of the patriarchs fifty years or so but except for that little fifty year time of exile the all of the historical fans are true and real if anyone claims to be the new testament church you must say no wait when was the date of your founding you may be in good faith trying to exercise all of the teachings of the new testament but you are repeating what is not necessary you are trying to do what in reality has already been done and is being revealed by the teachings of the ancient orth faith discover where we got the name orthodox it goes way back to the first council after the persecution ended and the roman emperor became christian constantine council was called to synthesize all of the beliefs of scripture into a statement of faith now even churches today around us have statements of faith this is the original statement of  zero orthodox presbyterian meaning you have gone back to the early teachings of the presbyterian church now when we see orthodox christianity this goes back to the name itself which means right believing or right worship calor what they needed to do was to distinguish the true christian believer in the holy trinity in christ as equal with the father with the father the only begotten son and the holy spirit which proceeds from the father as the lord jesus reveals to us in john chapter fifteen so we have the teaching of the holy trinity those who believe in the quality of the son of god with the father then later the person of the holy spirit will be questioned so in the later council the seventh night scene council two years later the person of the holy spirit will be discussed and the last part of the creed of nicea will be completed that is i believe in the holy spirit the lord the giver of life who proceeds from the father who together with the father and the son is adored and laura had the error in her see was  sent into exile now if you look at church history during this time you will see how violent the heretics are they weren't happy with being sent into exile they came back with in upper egypt their being replaced twice or three times by their false teacher the people knew better and they would drive this bishop out of town and bring  athanasius the wonderful city back because they lost for the truth of the gospel you see when you live the truth at the cost and you know it you know every one of these scriptural verses and fits together into the one united whole of the revelation of god to me when you see this and you've been taught this then you sense the other just disarray the heretics as it come along much like the jehovah's witnesses today or the mormons who represent the early  man becomes god equal with god and mankind not women but men become little gods over little planetary areas they can rule their own  the true and the whole fullness of the christian understanding as it was given by christ himself and passed along of our salvation in c christ remember i always told the pharaoh says i didn't come to save the righteous i didn't come to save those who don't know they need healing who don't know they are sinners go through it and only individuals can use their the will to choose really why the orthodox christian in this country and elsewhere for righteousness because that person will seek and they will find we in our mission are a little unusual in that we are open about we are representing their voice in hebrews twelve one we are voicing what the cloud of witnesses are telling us with the angels with we are presenting the fact that there is an ancient path we should seek the ancient way in this we will find healing for our souls even as the israelites were told to seek the ancient ways and the ancient paths we are often asked to is the head of this church the orthodox church does not have a vicar of christ vicar you're standing in for someone who is absent in this case absent from his church this means you're replacing christ which is the very definition of the greek anti christ it doesn't mean opposite it means replacements of christ on very present through the holy spirit in the orthodox church he is our head the holy spirit is our chief shepherd it is actualized through the teachings of the right believing bishops and patriarchs and the people the people in the orthodox church have the capacity and power to remove bishops as needed to remove clergy if they are teaching h this is a very important function other than in the lightened spirit baptized laypeople after all liturgy means work of the people it is all of us together calling upon the holy spirit which brings the holy spirit down to st defy the gifts it is not the magic words as it is in the people church of the priest and the clergy this is the action of all the people spirit of understand the incarnation by understanding the role of the virgin mary and she is one of us not a separate clip version of humanity are in the case of our mission we have these teach us so that when we come out of our worship service we know much more if we've been paying attention everyone stinging along we know much more than we did at the beginning of the divine  pass to trusted what you have learned from me this has been done and we are the second largest church in the entire world much of the church is not seen here that is still in those places that are evangelize by the original apostles the apostle mark in egypt and  revived now in europe and it's just beginning to light the fire of the gospel again the fullness of the light of christ which will shine on our american people and our mere culture as we come out of the shadows of the old testament in our old and standing with the ba you know our american pragmatism that we like practicalities i am tempted and most of us are an american to take a little of this and a little of that so i take a little orthodoxy and i add it to what i'm used to and i'm comfortable with and i make my own religion and the first in doing this the first and and adopting various forms and methods of worship so we have guitar masses over in one area of the country and we have a very traditional  in other areas even in the same town and american protestants of course are daughters of this mother church so all of a turn to do even more of this  bringing everything together into one kind of mishmash where you don't have real or the drug scene you don't have anything else either there were even jelly candles who tried to do what is missing to what you say what is wrong with that because there is a god in heaven who has revealed his way his way is worship of spirit in spirit in truth that in john chapter four it's what the lord told the samaritan woman would be her guideline that the messiah would be worshiped because he had revealed the tr in spirit by the baptism of the holy spirit and in truth the truth of the gospel revealed in christ so the grace of the holy spirit asked only on this church i have to say only in the sense of the fungus of the holy spirit and his grace are there  others who are seeking and upon him the grace of the holy spirit is acting absolutely god pours out his love on anyone who will receive it but they will be led they just have to choose to follow that point the lord has said this sheep i have another fold them too must i bring so that we can be one fold and one shepherd that is not mean and how marginalised ecumenical church it means all of the other expressions of christianity which are not complete must be brought in by the holy spirit into the fullness where they can get fit in the pastors of the lord and the wider us of the spring of life from the holy spirit even though the catholic and bring in many of the ideas in teachings of their word that acts church and pretend i could only use that word to the and pretend that they were a part of the catholic church all along when you and i know they were not first of all the bible when i was growing up as a catholic was an index of forbidden books that alone takes that church teachings of christ himself and are thus honored let me go through some of the other distinctives as the world gets or we see the distinctive eastern christian church called orthodox at the time of pen there is no original sin as taught by the european church which relies on augustan of hippa the philosopher that's a pagan idea another pagan idea that was never ever taught in the early church never is in scripture is there is no atonement the son jesus christ did not have to pay off an english father that simply is not true scripture in john three sixteen is god loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so many scriptures we could use also the virgin mary is one of us she represents us before the throne of god along with the cloud of witnesses that are behind me even though i'm speaking for a two thousand year old church when there was no teaching on this it leaves the door open for many false teachings about christ having suffered in him and all this partake of christ but before we can partake we must be ready to give him what he to give him ourselves if we hold this we cannot be united with him at the moment christ appears to us slaughter a sacrificial victim and womens like voice feel ourselves margins killed for his we must be ready if necessary to die for him there is a greeting which means praised is our lord which is exchanged at all the marriages in christ with special wishes for the marriages and greetings the and with the continued presence of christ is contracting a mystical marriage with the lord joy is another word we use for marriage and the liturgy christ says to us enter into the joy of  promises us along with his disciples that he will be with us over his having received the holy spirit having beheld the secrets of the kingdom we can leave the liturgy with the eyes of our soul brimming with the beauty that we have experienced so my dear friends are liturgy is a pledge made by christ with us a marriage he places a sin his kingdom through that riches afterwards even if we depart we shall return home and our passions and our sins and on happiness come to haunt us but don't worry we shall go to liturgy again and seize hold of him again and he will have an isis and with this continued striving and struggle and constant progress the priest in front and we behind we shall reach the kingdom of heaven we have seen the heavens human beings are the way we are why we have the callings of the problems the inner contradictions within ourselves that at the core mental so many times and also about the tendency of upon us to liken ourselves to the sinners and the disobedient and unbelieving people of the old testament soul that having examined ourselves it gives us an opportunity to cleanse the idolatry out of our hearts and to follow god in truth and spirit knowing that we can only know god through jesus christ because in the old testament we so often s god through the limbs of the passions of humanity who are often transferring their own passions on to god because satan has pimping them to recreate god in their own image but what happens is that mankind has somehow become more and more wicked and this is not surprising because mankind history starts with falling into eagle then with murder so the story of noah is and the wickedness of mankind is the next narrative that will look out in order to try to find ourselves within it and to try to discover within our own hearts whether we would have been on board that arc or not of course we understand from the holy fathers that the ark is a type of the church and certainly it was the church of the old testament because it was the righteous the faithful who were on the ark and who were redeemed from the very beginning of the creation we see that god is constantly blessing mankind all of creation not just humanity noah is warning people for this very long period of time as he builds the ark as the church takes shape before them they're constantly warned to come on board or they'll be with and they're living by means of the passions now we don't have to have forty days and forty nights of rain in order to sweep us away we can be swept away from an authentic life light spring forth so the prophet private is also the boundary between light and darkness between the one who recognized and accepted christ and the one