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 At midnight on Pascha the words "CHRIST IS RISEN" can be heard in every Othodox in the world. What do these words really mean, and why do we say them? 2000 years ago God the Word became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, He died on a cross, and He rose from the dead on the third day. His life and miracles can still be seen in the accurate accounts of the four gospel readings. Jesus Christ raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, paralytics took up their beds, the deaf began to hear, the mute spoke, He cast out demons, and He preached the gospel of repentance to us. Jesus Christ performed many other miracles as well, but important is the words He spoke. He gave us the word of God in its purest form, from the Word of God Himself. He gave this Word orally to His Apostles, who then passed it down to the Church. This Word that He gave us has been save guarded by the Orthodox Church since the day of Pentecost until now. 
Jesus Christ gave us the Church. There is a scripture in Timothy that calls the Church the "pillar and ground of the Truth." In another place in scripture St. Paul says to hold fast to the traditions whether taught by epistle or word of mouth. Jesus said, "If they believed my Word, they will believe yours. If they do not believe you, they would not believe me." The scripture is not the only rule of faith. The Apostles handed down unwritten tradition. This tradition was transmitted successfully from generation to generation for the last 2000 years. The reason this tradition is reliable is because it is passed down through the hands of Holy men and women who we call saints. Just as the Apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit, each generation there were people who received the Holy Spirit in the same manner as the Apostles and were trustworthy to pass down the authentic tradition handed down from Jesus Christ to the Apostles. We all receive the Holy Spirit, but as the Apostles received a greater measure for preaching the gospel and working miracles, these saints were filled with the Holy Spirit and some of them have worked miracles such as raising the dead and they have existed since Pentecost until now.
We honor the Mother of God. There really is no tactful way to handle this protestants who have grown anti-Mary. We believe that the Saints are still alive in heaven and pray for us. They are in heaven, who better to pray for us than they? People on earth pray, why can't they? St. Paul told the Corinthians to gather with spirit. If while he was alive, St. Paul could know what was going on somewhere else, why not after his death? The Holy Spirit makes sure the Saint being asked for prayer gets the message in the same way Paul "got the message" from the Corinthians while he was not present. Yet many protestants will say, "There is no other mediator between God and man!" My response is usually, "What does a mediator have to do with prayers?" Jesus Christ still mediates the New Covenant. He has the power to forgive sins. It is still His sacrifice that saves us. The sacrifice on the cross can never be redone. Now, if we were sacrificing bulls once a year, or if we believed we needed one bishop (like the pope) to go between us and God and continue to mediate the covenant, then the protestants would have a case. The problem is that the protestants have no idea what a mediator does, so their quotation is grossly out of place. We believe simply that we can ask them to pray for us. The Jesus prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me," should be prayed by every Orthodox Christian without ceasing every day. We pray directly to Jesus Christ ALL of the time. Yet we turn to the Saints and ask them to pray for us. There is nothing wrong with that. We believe that since the Mother of God was closest to Jesus Christ, she first among all the Saints, even before the Apostles. She therefore is the first person I want to ask to pray for me. Another thing that is important to see is that even in the scriptures the Mother of God is honored. St. Elizabeth, the mother of St. John the Baptist, said as the Holy Virgin Mary approached, "Why is it granted to me that the MOTHER OF MY LORD would come to me?" She clearly felt honored to be in the presence of the Holy Virgin Mary! We as Orthodox Christians have taken the same approach for the last 2000 years. We worship all Holy Good and Life Giving Trinity, but honor the Holy Theotokos, or Mother of God, which ever term you prefer. 
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DID YOU KNOW??? 50% of children will lose their faith in college. 3 times more people will become an atheist than will find any faith whatsoever. Join us in our journey restoring faith in Jesus Christ to lost souls. There is a war being fought spiritually speaking. Our mission is to restore people to faith in Jesus Christ, but also equally important, a true understanding of ancient Christian belief and practice. The True God IS TRINITY. This is the truth expressed by the apostles, and it is the truth that we too will express. JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN ††† Many times we wonder to ourselves, "Is Jesus really alive?" We question our faith because the world tries to tear us down by telling us that Jesus was a mere man. Is that true? If we examine the history, we shall see and be convinced of the TRUTH. This is the gospel. Jesus Christ is Risen from the dead. It can be historically proven that the Christians were being tortured and killed as early as 49AD. 500 Christians claimed to have seen Christ risen from the dead all at once. Thousands were seeing the miracles. People being raised from the dead, healings by as little as touching Peter's shadow, Handkerchiefs from Paul worked mighty miracles, and prophecy was witnessed in its fulfillment. The early Christians were in a place to know if they were lying. Why would thousands of people make up and lie about Jesus being risen from the dead then get tortured for their lie. They were thrown to lions, they were crucified, they were burned alive, they were skinned alive, and just about every other imaginable torture. Only one conclusion. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. The TALMUD is an ancient writing that was written by the Jews who put Jesus on trial and sought to kill Him. They hated Jesus, and had no reason to make Him sound better. In this ancient document they accused Jesus of deceiving the people with sorceries. They could not deny His miracles, but had to come up with another explanation because EVERYONE saw and knew He performed miracles. There is no solid basis for denying Jesus was in fact a miracle worker. Even Josephus who was a Jewish historian during that time wrote about Jesus and His miracles. He was writing to please the Romans and He would not have included it if it were not true, because the Romans would not have been pleased with it at all. JOSH MCDOWELL also has an interesting story. He had actually tried to disprove the bible. When he was in law school some Christians challenged him to disprove the bible. He thought it would be a piece of cake. He was so serious about disproving the scriptures, that he quit school and went to Europe to study in the libraries enriched with material. He even felt that if he could disprove one point the whole thing would be disproven. Needless to say, he was addament and he would not give up easy. Then to everyone's amazement he came back a Christian. What he said was that the historical evidence would prove in the court of law that Jesus Christ is Resurrected from the dead. He has now written many books on the topic and he explains what convinced him. On of the most shocking discoveries he made was that the scriptures were actually written in the first century by the Apostles. He more thoroughly explains this in his book "EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT." (Click the link if you would like to purchase his book: it will be in the Christian books section) He said that if you were to destroy every single Christian New Testament including the ancient manuscripts you could still reconstruct the New Testament using early Church Father quotes of the New Testament except for 11 verses. The fact is that the New Testament is preserved authentically as it is supposed to be. It is not perfect, but close to it. He quotes all of the experts on this subject, and even the liberals have to admit that they could not have been written later than the 2nd century. Yet, even if they were written in the second century, I will explain why they are still accurate. However, Many experts do say that they could not possibly date beyond the first century. Namely because people that were alive in the first century quote the New Testament. Also after studying the book of Acts, they said that Luke was so detailed that when one studies they will find that the book of Acts simply won't fit in a second century setting, only in the first century. |
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