The Evidence for God's Existence.

To my friend Andy.
Andy, I understand your reasoning. The fact is all the Universe proves God's existence, even the nature of his Godhead. Do you how I know that? Because it is part of Apostolic Christianity.

Any reasonable person looks at the things that are made and says, "Something powerful made this." All humans in ALL of history have, EXCEPT those in modern times who have been brainwashed by the Godless Enlightenment movement, who have been conditioned from early age to doubt the meaning of their own existence. Even by the philosophy of some to doubt the REALITY of their own existence. It makes them pliable, easy to control. They don't find a sense of rightful "place" even in their own living, since life itself is doubtful. It is actually a mass-insanity grown to the point it seems 'the norm.'

You are also right that Science finds, "natural things" but you separate God's power from the natural power that sustains the universe. Also known by scripture. (The worlds hang together by the Word of his power). I do not ascribe to the "super-natural" category to which you relegate God. Why? What is the difference between "constitutional and extra-constitutional"? The later is not constitutional, it has removed itself FROM what is constitutional. So the term "super-natural" has the tendency to make of God, something "unnatural" AND absent. Your microscope analogy (not being able to see the shape of a polar bear by looking into a microscope in a rain forest) about discovering God's existence is predicated upon the "size" argument. One of the silliest and most child-like analogies of God. The narrow view that God is a really BIG thing. What you don't grasp is that God's "energia" is not absent from a single atom or particle of matter, visible even in the view inside that microscope and that ALL atoms, particles, cells, display the creative intelligence which he stamped upon them.

THINK! How did you do that? You say, "I used my brain. That is what a brain is for." NO, the LIFE in you, the LIGHT in you, the Spark of God's divinity in you, via the first grace of BEING, of BEING a living creature, USED your brain to think. Your brain is merely the mechanism given you to make connection to this plane of existence, to connect with the material world. All the chemicals and enzymes, connective tissue, tissue, nerve passages etc., etc., etc., are present in a corpse, but the corpse does not THINK, because the LIFE is missing. "That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Without THAT spark, that light, you don't experience cognition. The cognition of sentient beings is more a mystery to science than all the vast universe of inanimate objects and atomic and galactic processes.

The Western mindset, leaves you saying things like, "Is there evidence in the natural world for God? Perhaps, but such evidence is just as open to godless explanations."
Wrong.
The Godless have NO explanation for cognition and self awareness, they merely make pretense to.
The Godless have NO explanation for BEING (ontologically speaking) but they make pretense to.
The Godless have NO explanation how innate matter was formed, but they make pretense to.
The Godless have NO explanation how life was formed using innate matter, but they make pretenses to.

It is great benefit to those so hypnotized, who have been brainwashed to accept the "Science" for what is beyond science to show them the foolishness of their belief system. This is done in two ways. (1) by anomalous data (the things they can't cram into their small and rationalistic theory that disprove the validity of the theory. (2) the massive mythologies they accept as fact without using critical thinking, about which there is no TRUE scientific data, only mythology to paper over the chasm of ignorance. This requires of them "a leap of faith" exposing the Secular Humanist view as a religious ideology, instead of pure empirical science. I am a great fan of pure empirical science, I am suspicious for good reason for every "all inclusive" theory based upon it. Ontology is ultimately above and outside the confines of natural science.

You can't find the evidence of God in the universe because you have excepted the MYTH that he is removed from the Universe - and exist in some category called, "super-natural." Please show me the Scripture and/or Tradition that concludes that. Your problem is not about science, but about your own limitations of understanding the Biblical explication of the Nature of God. Yes, God is wholly OTHER, unknowable in his essence, but CONSTANTLY experienced in his energies. SO although God is not encompassed and limited to nature, he is not absent from one spark of natural energy or one monad of BEING.

In your hypothesis about the nature of God, you have to destroy the Apostolic Tradition, which says, "Rom 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
Rom 1:19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
Rom 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:"

Doesn't it frighten you a little bit, that you are a Christian who has reduced his understanding of God to some little personal passion play, who seems to find some hint of God's existence in some anecdotal stories of "signs of supernatural intervention." What did Jesus say, " Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." He was talking to NOT people of faith, but FaithLESS people. Please tell me what could be a greater sign and wonder than BEING, that is the Universe of THINGS and our ability to be cognizant of it. The IDIOTS argue God's non-existence while they use the power of HIS ENERGY to THINK.
WAKE UP.

Can Islam Be Reformed and Is it an Abrahamic Faith?

No one who has studied the core of Islam could ever think that Islam is capable of being reformed. It is self-inoculated against reform since the only tenets that hold Islam together are 
(1) that the Prophet Mohamed is the Perfect Muslim (the Koran says so) and must be imitated in word and deed - making Islam = Jihad and Jihad = Islam.
(2) that the Koran is Allah-Breathed and perfect (the Koran says so) and literal in its every command of barbarism, and the Koran on earth is a duplicate of the Koran in heaven.  I other words, it is ETERNAL.  

So what can be reformed? The second you try reform, you have 
(1) stated that Mohammed is not the Perfect Muslim, and therefore should not be imitated and 
(2) that the Koran is not the perfect book. 
You have just DESTROYED Islam. 

Both these suggestions of the imperfection of Mohammed and his Koran are apostasy subject to the penalty of death. Trust me, no truthful Koranic Scholar would entertain the idea that Islam can be reformed, unless he was purposely practicing Tyqqah for the sake of a non-muslim audience. 

The pull of the Marxist Dialectic is so complete in the U.S., which has given a common definition to all religions, that is, created a false paradigm wherein the concept of “religion” is discussed as a generic term devoid of the “reality” or “theology” or “practice” of any religion.  In Marxist Dialectic, “religion is religion, they are all the same.”  I debated an Orthodox Christian Theology Professor so locked into that “mindset” of Marxist Dialectics, that it took him more than three years, often debating his “latest position with me” to study Islam in depth enough to learn that what was I was telling him was true, authentic and authoritative. 

It is absolutely foreign to our way of thinking, that Islam cannot be reformed.  It completely skews the meaning of the word religion held with some commonality of meaning by Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.  Why? Because it is Islam. So statements like  "Judaism and Christianity seem to have confronted their evil and remained Jewish and Christian. I have every confidence Muslims can do the same" relies on the mythology that our Judeo/Christian heritage holds something in common with Islam and that Islam is “just another generic religion.” On the surface that is debatable, at the core of Islam it is absolutely false. There is NO commonality, between Islam and any other major religion on earth.  In fact Islam SHATTERS the generic meaning of the word “religion” and would be by that common term better stated the “anti-religion-religion.”  Because every common concept, that is the commonality the words shares between the major religions is totally absent in Islam.  And as we have stated Marxist Dialectic would have it that there is something generic called "religion" and that  those religions form, behave and may be reformed in a common way. That is an illusion of modern religious syncretism and multi-culturalism. (BTW both are products of Marxist Dialectics.)

When someone offers the oh so common sense idea that, “Christianity, Judiasm and Islam” share the same “Monotheism” or “Abrahamic Faith” - they speak the language of the Dhimmi. In other words they have capitulated to Islamic fabrications of History and Theology. 


(1) Simply put this “commonality” depends on the DHIMMI mythology that Islam is an "Abrahamic" religion. This is an Islamic Lie, which ALL Islam tries to force upon the "context of Judaism and Christianity," and if accepted makes of Christians and Jews, IN THE EYES OF MUSLIMS a “class of Dhimmi.”  That is to be enslaved in Dhimmitude and not killed IF possible.  This false confession that Christianity and Judaism share the same core, Islam DEMANDS of all Christians and Jews,  if they are to survive next to Muslims.   The second you accept this false confession, theologically and historically Islam has already won the debate. For if Islam is a genuine Abrahamic religion, then just like Judaism, its founding and purpose is ordained by God. Jews believe that of Judaism and Christians believe that of Judaism as well.  But if you believe it of Islam, there is no more basis for Judaism or Christianity.  You have accepted the Islamic mythology that both Christianity and Judaism are merely corrupted and distorted attempts by Allah, to create Islam in the world.   

And it is not a matter of “choosing a belief.”
We talk common sense, but how is it common sense that a religion began in the late 6th early 7th century, A.D. more than half a millennium AFTER the Cross of Christ, and TWO AND A HALF millenniums after the era of Abraham, a movement that began with its founder trying to REMOVE Jews FROM their Abrahamic Faith, giving them a choice to ABANDON their Abrahamic Faith or suffer BEHEADING . . . a movement founded by a mad man who HIMSELF oversaw the slaughter of 600 Jewish men IN A SINGLE DAY?  How stretched can an Islamic LIE get and stupid Christians say, “Oh yea man.  Islam is Abrahamic – we share the same Abrahamic faith.”  IF you were Orthodox Christian, that is understood the core of your Christianity, you would know that statement is the acceptance of the heresies of “unitarianism” and “ecumenicism.” 

Mohammed was a sick perverted child rapist, a murderous mad man with NO ties to Judaism or Christianity other than IN his own barbarous and sick imagination. What tied does the ravings of a demon possessed mad man have to Abrahamic Faith?  NONE. It is the same distortion of history as to say that New Agers of "The Course in Miracles" or the Mormons of "the Book of Mormon" are of the Abrahamic in faith.

(2) The Reformation came after massive Western Roman abuses under the Bishop of Rome, where the Bishop of Rome and the Roman Church moved away from core Christianity IN THEIR ABUSES. (Only slightly away in their core teachings) The Protestant Reformation began because of those ABUSES, not to reform the CORE of Christianity, but as any protestant will tell you, to try to move back to that basic core. Even today, a great many non-Orthodox Christians are becoming more Orthodox (more attuned to the Ancient Core of Christianity) by reaching to that core that has never gone away.  THINK! When you reach to the core of Islam, WHAT DO YOU FIND THERE?  You reach the murderous acts of a demonic mad man, whose actions and words ARE the murderous CORE of Islam. 

WE need to understand that anything that Islam says about "peace, harmony and love" that seems universally extended to the whole world, is only in the context of Jihad having conquered the whole world,  where all five pillars of Islam are complete, where there are only Muslims and those submitted to them left upon earth. When they speak about that period, their languages sound nearly Christian. But until that point it is ALL JIHAD, their language and theology holds more kinship to Genghis Khan than Christ. 

"KILLING JESUS" A Must Read

If you read ZEALOT, by REZA ASLAN, or have had someone use that book as reference putting down the HISTORIC reality of the Person Jesus, then "KILLING JESUS" is a MUST READ.

Watching Bill O'Reilly's interview with a Baptist pastor from Dallas and a Roman Catholic priest, who had read "Killing Jesus" so they could talk about it on his show, I realized the crux of O'Reilly's book and congratulate him for writing it. And HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT and it will be the first book I've ever read written by Bill O'Reilly. I will set it next to the book Zealot. 

They didn't say it, but it is in answer to the Book "Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan" which is a Muslim propaganda piece parading as History from extant secular sources which in fact leaves the actual SECULAR RECORD of Jesus' Life, to a great extent simply absent. I read Zealot and it made my blood boil because it was such shoddy academic work and such an obvious piece of propaganda.

Meanwhile, Reza Aslan was making the talk show circuit assuring us that the Jesus of History known by Christians was a pious fabrication. I was Reza'a work that was the fabrication.  He ignored all of the Secular Evidence of Jesus existence and ministry and the development of the Church for the first two centuries, as if there was no extant Secular Historic Record.  His first reference to an ACTUAL Secular record is a mocking statement by a Roman writer in 170 A.D. nearly 150 years after the Cross! And in the introduction he tells you in so many words that his "story" is of his construction, (construction = fabrication) since there is little recorded of Jesus in that period.

I knew of many references in the "Annals" of Rome by Pagan Roman writers of the 1st century making reference to Jesus and to Christians, and even more in the 2nd century, which were completely ignored by the author of Zealot. William Wrumbrand did an excellent job a generation ago using the actual secular record to answer the lies of the Soviet Communist produced, "The Atheist's Handbook" in his "The Answer to the Atheist's Handbook."  After reading Zealot I actually re-read "The Answer to the Atheist's Handbook." I thought at the time, someone needs to answer this piece of Muslim Propaganda (Zealot) with FACTS. I contemplated doing it and thought, well really I would just re-write Wrumbrand's book.

So it is clear from their conversation that O'Reilly (actually his co-author) has answered ZEALOT with the ACTUAL RECORD, the ACTUAL HISTORY and constructed and fabricated NOTHING.  Ignorant Fundamentalists are in arms because this book is not about "Christology" and does not focus on the Biblical Record.  Liberal Academics will be angry because it restores the historic record they have spent a hundred years trying to destroy.   This is NOT a book about Jesus "the Christ" but Jesus the historic figure, who really existed and did what was witnessed of him in HISTORY. It is the PERFECT answer to the Muslim propaganda piece "ZEALOT" and exposes Reza Aslan for the academic charlatan he is.

Archpriest Symeon Elias

REAL Bible Archaeology vs The Muslim Brotherhood's Psy-Opts Game

If you are a Bible believer or not, take the time to see this remarkable story of the historicity of the Bible narrative confirmed in Modern Archaeology. The Muslim Brotherhood, and the Secular Humanists have gone to great effort to try to cover over these 1000 plus finds in the last three decades all confirming the Biblical accounts. They actually have a massive disinformation campaign in the media, on Youtube, etc, trying to make people believe the Bible narrative is false. This tape only shows about 50 of the recent finds but it is well worth the time to see them. 
http://youtu.be/NWawVUZg3Es





Here is an example of the psychological operation against the truth, whose primary source is homosexual agenda "academics" and Muslim Brotherhood psy-opt film makers. 
http://youtu.be/gftH0MKjvts

Life after death… Mysteries beyond the grave

This is a transcript of a talk given by Fr. Thomas Hopko in Brisbane Australia during October, 1999.

Introduction

There is no clear dogmatic teaching of our Orthodox Church on death and what happens when we die. There is a lot of interest about death as reflected by the amount of books written about after death experiences, salvation and damnation. Furthermore, there are questions about the soul after death and the intermediate state (i.e. the period between when we die and the world's end). Christ is coming in glory and because the millennium is coming up, which by the way is the year 2001 with 2000 being the last year of the second millennium, has stirred interest in the 'end time', the 'coming of Christ', and 'the judgement of God on the world' are the interpretations of the time.

There is a lot is discussion going on right now on death, how we understand dying and what we are to say about those who are biologically dead already. There are related questions like praying for people who have departed this life. We Orthodox people just love to have memorial services. We have the Divine Liturgy and nobody is there, but when we have a Memorial Service the church is packed.

I will now make some very simple points, which I think are clearly the teaching of our Orthodox Church, although this may be debateable. I am not giving just my opinion; I am giving my opinion about what I believe the Church is teaching us.

Let us take the interpretation of the Holy Scripture, Church Fathers, Saints and Services of the Church together and ask certain questions, such as:

What is death?
How do we understand death?
What do we think happens?
How are we to relate to it?
What kind of answers would we get from the Holy Scripture?
The Holy Scripture is our basic authority of faith and is the witness of what the Christian faith is, and our tradition is an interpretation and understanding of Scripture. Our tradition is a way of understanding the Scripture and has a sense of which even the Scripture itself is a testimony to the tradition of faith or the kanonaspisteos (the rule of faith) that even antedated the writing of Scripture. Because, certainly there was the Christian faith before the writing of the New Testament Scriptures, which are basically interpretations of the Old Testament Scriptures. By the way, when the New Testament says "the Scriptures" it means what we call the " Old Testament", which includes the Law, Psalms, and the Prophets.

What do Orthodox Christians teach about death and what happens when we die?

It is beyond any doubt that we Christians are convinced that we are created for life; it is not God's will that we die. God doesn't want death; He wants life. In the Scripture, death is the enemy. The Apostle Paul even calls death, "the last enemy". Death is not natural, not a natural part of our life and not willed by God. The Wisdom of Solomon, which for us is part of the Bible, says very clearly, "God did not create death". Death comes into the world as a rebellion against God. Death comes into the world because people do not choose life, but choose death, darkness, and themselves over God.

St. Athanasios said, "if you choose yourself you are choosing nothing, because that what you are without God", since we are created out of nothing. For God gives our whole life to us, Who is the living God and the only One Who lives.

It is our teaching that death results from human rebellion against God from the beginning and with the help of the demons (who are lovers of death, darkness and evil). The Bible teaches actually teaches kind of a 'package plan', you have God, truth, life and glory, or you have the demons, darkness, death, satan, sin, corruption, ugliness and rot. This is the basic reality, and there is no middle path.

In the eight chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle Paul says, "working in our members is always a heterosnomos (another law)". Human beings think that they are economists, in other words, they are 'a law unto themselves', but according to the Scriptures we are not. Either there is the law (nomos) of Christ, which the Apostle Paul calls the law of the Holy Spirit and Life in his Epistle to the Romans, or there is the law of sin and death. There is either one law or the other that works, if it isn't the one it is the other. Here we interpret the Genesis story as the choice of death. Furthermore, it is even not strictly Orthodox to think of sin as a corrupted choice or making the wrong choice. I believe that our teaching is that the problem is not whether it is right or wrong but choice itself (as taught by St. Maximos the Confessor), because if you are a creature you have no choice.

If there is God and God is God and God is the living God and God is Who He is, our only choice is to give up our choice and listen to and obey Him. This is very important to understand, because the modern people think that the more choices they have and the more they deliberate the more the freer they are, however this is not Biblical. What we say is that if there is God, at any given moment the only choice we have is to give up choice and obey Him, listen to Him, trust Him, to love Him and to believe Him. The primordial sin is exactly saying "no, I will not obey, trust or love God. I will do it my way". You know what takes place when you do it your way; you perish and die. That is where death comes from. Where there is obedience, love and trust in God, there can not be death. If one was to obey God totally, live in communion with God, trust and love God in everything, that person will not be able to die.

It is interesting in the Genesis story, God did not say to Adam and Eve, "eat of the tree and I will kill you". He said, "you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil", meaning choice rather than obedience, "for when you eat of it you will surely die", for it is sin that kills you. God doesn't kill anybody, in that sense; we kill ourselves. So the minute we take our life in our own hands to do what we want to do, and do not obey God, basically we commit suicide. Furthermore, we put that death over to our children who are born in the same condition of death when born into the world. That is what the 'ancestral sin' is all about. A second point is that we would say that the human task is to overcome and destroy death, and to make death to die so that life can then live.

The whole Old Testament, which includes the Law, Psalms and Prophets, is really about teaching people the will of God to reconstruct a rebellious humanity in order that ultimately death can be destroyed. For example, in the Law of Moses you have two very interesting things, one is God says, through Moses, 'I present to you only two ways: the blessing and the curse' (i.e. life or death). Then it says, 'choose life and don't choose death'. The Law, Psalms and Prophets say Obey God, give up your choice, obey God and you will live. For example, Psalm 118 (119) that is read in our funeral service and on the night of Holy Saturday before Pascha says, "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with the whole heart!" Then the Psalm continues "If I keep I Your law, I find life in it and I can not die". That is way it is read over the body of the dead Jesus, because He is the only One who kept the Law of God completely, and therefore could not die.

What we believe is that Jesus Christ our Saviour came into the world in order to die. He is the only One who came in order to die so that He can transform death itself into a victory through His death. He is the only One, the only Person, and the only Human who has ever been born in order to die. He is also the only Human who is the Son of God, Who is divine as the same divinity as the Father, Who is born of a virgin, Who is begotten of the Father, Who comes exactly into the world for one purpose; to destroy the work of the devil and death, and to give us life.

Before the coming of Christ, according to the Bible, everyone is caught by death, no matter how good or bad they were. We can even say to this day that is the truth. Biologically, we are all dead; we are a room of dead people. It is a good idea once in a while to remember that. In fact, many of our monastics would even put a coffin and cross in their room to remember that. There is an American church story about some southern Protestants who heard about a Roman Catholic monk who used to write "remember death" and that he had a coffin prepared for his death. One of them says to the other, "You know that they used to do that, and sometimes they'd even sleep in that coffin?" Then the other character said, "Yep, they weren't as advance as we is". However, the question is who is really advanced?

The problem, however, is that in our time death has been so naturalised nobody will even think of it as an enemy. In much literature it is considered the last stage of life, normal, or you go into some sort of light somewhere, and if you are tired of this life or this world you call some doctor to end your life. However for Biblical Christians, that is absolutely not the teaching.

Let us compare the death of Socrates to the death of Jesus. Socrates the philosophic man, corrupting the youth of Athens because of his teaching of philosophia, says that the real philosopher is the one who can face death. When they finally catch him to put him to death and his friends want to rescue him, he says no. When they bring him the hemlock he drinks it and dies. By the way, the euthanasia society in the state of Massachusetts in the United States is called the Hemlock Society.

Then look at how Jesus dies. He is in the garden and begs His Father to let 'this cup pass' and sweating blood. For Him it is an outrage to die or that any person would die; it is the total victory of the devil. We were created to sing halleluiah to God, not to be corrupted and rot in the tomb. In the Old Testament, there was a big debate about death. Some thought that death is natural and you just died and went to your fathers. They also believed that God continues to live in the people and the dry bones of Israel (or the people of Israel) are resurrected, but the individual person is lost. These people, at the time of Jesus, were called the Sadducees. The Sadducees, if you read the Bible, did not believer in the spirit, soul or the resurrection of the dead. However, the Pharisees believed in them all. They interpreted from the Scripture that there will be a resurrection from the dead and the dead will rise. They also believed that when the God Messianic age will come, when God's glory will fill creation, when God's kingdom will finally be established through the Messiah the main thing that will happen is that the graves will be open (beside the blind seeing, the lame walking, the deaf hearing and the dumb talking…). Then all the dead will rise and God will judge every single person that has lived. That was the teaching of the pharisaic party and the Apostle Paul. If you read the Book of Acts, every time St. Paul got into trouble for preaching the Resurrection of Jesus, he would create a fight between the Jews. He would say that he was on trial because of the Resurrection, and the Sadducees would start fighting with he Pharisees and he would just stand aside and look on. Jesus, from this perspective, was a Pharisee because He believed in the Resurrection. In fact He said He was the Resurrection and the Life.

In the Old Testament, however, whatever the position was about resurrection everyone was dead. In the Bible, the place of the dead or the condition of being dead was called Sheol in the Hebrew or Hades in the Greek. One problem is that sometimes Sheol or Hades is translated into English as hell, and people speak of God descending into hell, but it should never be called hell, because there is no hell until the end of time.

In the Bible, specifically in the Wisdom of Solomon, it says that if you were a righteous, just person and died, you were still somehow in the hands of God who cares for you. People think that it is a tragedy, but it is not because God is still there. This was kind of a blissful state of death and was called the bosom of Abraham. So the righteous dead were in the bosom of Abraham, and those who believed in the Resurrection believed that they were blissfully dead until the Messianic King would come to raise the dead and then they would enter into glory. David, Solomon, the Prophets and even John the Baptist was in this state of bliss in the bosom of Abraham. In our Orthodox tradition, John the Baptist is the forerunner of Jesus even into Sheol. As expressed in his troparian, he dies before Jesus to announce that the Son of God is coming into the realm of the dead to smash it open, to raise up everyone from the dead, to usher in the kingdom of God, and to grant us the great mercy of everlasting life with God.

There is also the teaching that this realm of the dead, or Sheol, had what is called the 'pit' where the evil people were. When the Messianic King comes, those in the pit were also raised for just condemnation and judgement. It should be pointed out that the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in the Gospel is exactly about this. It has nothing to do with heaven and hell. In the parable is about the rich man in the pit talking to Abraham and not to God. The whole point of the parable is if you do not listen to Moses and the law of the Prophets and really love, choose and obey God you will not be saved even if a poor man rises from the dead. In other words, if you do not love God and do not find life before you die then you will not find it after death, even if Jesus the Son of God comes in order to be crucified and die to descent into Sheol and raise the dead. For us, that is the very center of the Gospel.

The Gospel is that we now have the new, final and last Adam named Jesus. St. Paul says that the first Adam was a 'tipos' of the one Who was to come. Jesus is the real Adam, because He is the One who really obeys God His own Father. He obeys God from all eternity as the Son of God begotten of the Father and became human born of the Virgin Mary to be the Man who literally could not die and to be the Man who was literally, totally and completely dedicated to God, His Father. His word was the word of the Father, His will was the will of the Father, His work was the work of the Father, everything that He did was the Father, and when you saw Him you saw the Father.

Everything that is attributed to God in the Old Testament is now attributed to Jesus, this Man who is a real man but not mere man. He is the Man that the Son of God, Who is the source and author of life, comes down on earth and takes on Himself the sin, the curse, and everything of our human falling's including the last enemy (death itself), in order to destroy death by death. It is our teaching that that is the only way death can be destroyed, because God desires all people to live, all sin to be forgiven, and that His is loved with all our soul, mind and love. Furthermore, if we were to keep His word and love Him, we would live forever, but nobody does this. We are all non-righteous and we can not save ourselves. The Psalm asks, 'who can bring themselves up from Sheol… who can raise themselves up from the dead?' Even the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, could not keep herself from dying, because everyone is under the curse of death and in the hands of the power of the evil one.

We need to be liberated and saved, but who can save us? God can not just say 'be saved', because if He could He would, but He can't. He has got to destroy death itself, and the only way that death could be destroyed is by life. The only way that darkness can be destroyed is by light. The only way that evil can be destroyed is by good, and the only way that hatred can be destroyed is by love. So you have to have the One who is Love, Truth, Light, Goodness, Beauty, and Perfection who literally has to actualise this in this life. However, if you actualise this in life the way it is you get crucified. If you live completely and totally according to God in this world you can be sure of one thing you will get crucified. Jesus came in order to be crucified.

Jesus is the only One to can in order to die, because He came in order to love, obey and trust God His Father no matter what. And how do you show that you love God? By loving your neighbour and your worst enemy, and by taking their sin and evil upon yourself and even by dying their death for them so that you can liberate them from death, because they have no power over it. That is exactly what Jesus does and that is what our faith is. So Jesus comes into the world in order to die, and He destroys death by death. In our Orthodox faith, this is the only way this can happen. That is why the center of our Church is "Xristos anesti ek nekron," (Christ has risen from among the dead,) "phanato phanaton patisas…"(by death trampling upon Death…). There isn't any other way; even for God there is no other way. He became human and had become a curse, sin and die and for us, because that is the act of ultimate obedience, trust and love. This is a perfect act of love, which destroys death from the inside and raises up all the dead whether they want it or not. In fact everyone with be raised from the dead, irrespective of his or her wishes, during the Universal Resurrection of the dead, as taught by the Orthodox Church. This is way our Paschal icon shows Jesus even pulling Adam and Eve, with all the righteous and unrighteous from the dead.

If you have even been to an Orthodox funeral, you hear the fifth chapter of St. John's gospel. It says, "… the hour is coming in which all who are in the grave will hear His voice and come forth - those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgement is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me". This part of the gospel is extremely important, which says all and everyone will be raised. Not just the good people, but everyone. This Universal Resurrection is our teaching, because death is destroyed.

"What about the dead now that Jesus is raised from the dead?"

Jesus is raised and glorified... He says, 'he who can believe in Me can not die". St. Paul says, 'I gladly die and be with Chris, but if I have to hang around here at least let it be fruitful work'. However, Christ is risen and glorified and is at the right hand of the Father. That is the most repeated sentence of the Old and New Testament, and is found in Psalm 109 (110). The Psalm says, "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool"". The last enemy to be put under is death. When death is destroyed everything is subject to Christ, He subjects everything to God the Father and God will be all and in all. This then will be the Messianic age, when the dead will be raised and God with glory will fill all creation. There will then be life for all those who repent and want to be righteous with God and there will be torment for those who do not repent and do not want the righteousness of God.

What about those who are dead, where are they and what are they doing?

We do not know what the dead is doing, and I did not think anybody knows exactly and clearly. However, there are some things that can be said, and I think that what we have to say is for us who believe death is already destroyed in Christ. The last enemy has already been destroyed. Christ is risen and life lives, as the last line of St. John Chrysostom's homily for the Paschal night says. "Christ is risen and the demons shutter, Christ is risen and no one is in the grave. Christ is risen and life reins" (we say in American English). This original word for 'rein' doesn't simply mean 'rein' it means abides and lives. I think, a good translation would be "… Christ is risen and life lives". Life can not be destroyed and that is our faith. We are alive in Christ and our Baptism is a death into Christ.

I said earlier that we are all biologically dead people; like it or not. However, it is also true that those who believe and those who are Baptised and accept their Baptism, and even those who St. Gregory the Theologian says who desire Baptism but may not have heard about it, are already dead in Christ. Therefore, we are not only biologically dead but also hopefully all of us are already spiritually and mystically dead. We have died with Christ and no longer live in this world. We are fellow citizens with the Saints and we eat and drink at the table of the kingdom. We already have passed through the veil. We are already raised and glorified. We are still in this world, bearing the flesh, but the Holy Spirit has been sealed all over us… Those who have been Baptised have died, raised and sealed with the life creating Spirit. They are literally raised from the dead and can not die, and death becomes the transfiguration or the passage of everlasting life in Christ, because Christ is risen. This is important, not because we have an immortal soul; our soul is as dead as our body is, as far as the Bible is concerned. We do not teach immortality of the soul in our Church; we are not Socrates or Plato, but we follow the Bible. Death is the enemy of the body and soul, and Christ raises us up in body and soul. It is because Christ is risen that we have hope over death, not because of any 'natural' teaching.

I have a feeling that most Christians generally are pagans when we are alive and Platonists when we die. We function as pagans when life is going well, and we function as pagans when things are going badly (because we want the priest to come and make everything go well). However, when ultimately things do not go well and we die then we turn into Platonists and say, "It is better anyway, because the soul goes to heaven and we are finally with God". Well let's make up our mind, if the soul is better off going to God anyway why don't we all just go off and kill ourselves? Then why do we keep calling the priest over to pray so a person can be healed or be healthy, and when they die we say "well it is God's will anyway"? Well it is God's will, but the point I am trying to make is that this whole approach is absolutely wrong according to the Scriptures and the Saints.

In this life we don't just live just for God to make us healthy, wealthy and happy, and when we die we say, "well it is better anyway". We do not live this life for clothes, health and wealth. We live this life taking on the Cross of Christ loving God with the love which Jesus Christ and God has loved us (which is the New Commandment) so that we can trample down death ourselves by faith and grace through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit given to us. So we have to live now as dead people and if we do not live as dead people we are not Christians. If we do not live as those who are already dead to this world, we are not Christians.

There is a wonderful story from the desert fathers. One man asks an old man, "What is this Christian perfection we are seeking for?" The old man replied, "Come, I will show you" and took him to a fresh grave in a cemetery and said to the dead man, "Brother, you are the worst pig that ever lived. No one is as rotten as you". Then the old man asked the young one, "What did he do?" The young man said, "Nothing, he is dead". The old man looked again at the same grave and said, "You are the greatest person who ever was. No one is like you. You are the most wonderful, perfect person". He then looked at the young man and asked, "What did he do". The young man again replied, "Nothing, he is dead". The old man then said, "Perfect". He lives only before the face of God. He is not living for what people say whether they flatter, curse or bless him; he lives before the face of God. Therefore, he is free and he already reins. And if he is with the love which God and Christ loves us, it is impossible to be before the face of God without being a lover of God.

So we are all already dead. It is our teaching that we Christians who die, we die in the hope that we will enter into the glory that Jesus already has at the right hand of the Father and that we will be alive in Him until the end of the ages. However, we also believe that because Christ, the Son of God, has taken on human life and died, everyone who dies is also raised up to be at the right hand of the Father in Christ. The problem is not everyone likes, wants or believes that. Even when people are convinced that it is true, they don't want it. So we can say in Jesus everyone is raised from the dead, everyone's sins are forgiven, and everyone is saved whether they want it or not, like it or not, or know it. If you want it, like it and know it is paradise and joy in life itself. If you don't, it is hell. Hell and paradise begins when we die.

Paradoxically we say that when a person dies, they already enter into the presence of God by being spiritually raised in Christ. If they love Him, they already experience the end of the ages, the joy of heaven and in the presence of God. If they resist and do not want it, that very same experience is torment. They are tormented by the evils that they cling to, tormented by the devils they serve in place of the living God, and they are tormented by all of the evil spirits instead of the Holy Spirit that are in their life. Furthermore, they are even tormented by the presence of Christ who loves, forgives and invites them into Paradise. Yet they do not want to come still thinking that they belong there. That is how they are not there with the just and righteous. That seems to be the picture that we have from the Holy Scripture.

In this sense it is very important that when we die now, we on early already image that and pray as it will be at the end of the ages. So, we believe that those who are revealed to us as being really holy, really God and Christ loving, and really full of grace are already glorified with Christ and that is why we can pray to them. That is why we can say, pray, be and intercede with us, because Christ Himself is alive making intercessions with God the Father on behave of us, before the end of the ages. So the dead in Christ are also in Him interceding on our behave before the end of the ages. We see it all in terms of the end and not some immortal soul that is out there floating around somewhere and we wonder where.

No, we see it all in terms of the final victory of Christ that is already anticipated by us on earth in the Church by our Baptism and Eucharist. Furthermore, when we die we leave the temporal and spatial conditions of the planet earth and enter the very presence of God anticipating already the age to come. That is why in our Eucharist, when we offer to God that which is His, we say "That which is Yours we offer to You". Then the priest continues remember all that has happened for us, the Cross, the tomb, the Resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the sitting at the right hand, and the Second and glorious Coming are remembered in the present tense. And we relate to the Theotokos (the Virgin Mary) and all the Saints as at the end of the ages when they are at the glory and ask them to intercede for us as we are offering the Eucharist of Christ's death for them. Since we say, "and first of all we offer this for the most holy, the most glorious lady Theotokos and Ever-virgin Mary", because the death of Christ is even for her salvation.

Now having said this, the questions arise: if when we die and enter into this reality, is it too late to repent? Is it all over? Are those who are fixed in their penitent, repentant and unrighteousness totally lost? Do you have to be totally perfect to enter paradise? How does all that work? Here is an issue that has become incredibly debated today. That is he issue of what happens to a person when they die. Sometimes it is put in terms of he soul. But that can be a little misleading, because soul in the Bible means 'their life' or 'person'. It means who they are. It shouldn't be thought of as a discarnate spirit and we are not a combination of a ghost and a corpse, but we are whole people.

When we die, is there a post-mortem repentance? Is there purification after we die? Can we change our mind after our earthly life is over? How do we relate to all of that? Here I think the simplest answer would be that death is the finally test. That is why the quintessential Christian is the marker; you prove your whole life by how you die. Christian life has only one purpose, to trample down death by death through the grace of God. So the transfiguration of death is where everything is proved, and how we die proves everything. Anything that we do up until that moment is prepared for that moment. That is why if we don't die daily we will not be able to transfigure death when the moment comes when we have to go through our passion, crucifixion and death by whatever way that is going to happen. As it is clearly the Orthodox teaching that death is the moment of truth, death therefore also is the final judgement on our life and it is the final chance and opportunity.

Here I think the teaching simplicity put is this, we do not believe in post-mortem conversions or eons of life where you can keep on repenting like Buddhists believe. However, I believe that from the Holy Scripture, the lives of the Saints and the funeral service tell us that in the process of dying and entering into the presence of the risen Christ we have to be purified from everything that is contrary to life, God and truth in that particular activity. It is in the very presence of the fire of God, or the consuming fire of God as put by the Scripture, that will burn out of us in that process of dying, everything that can not enter into life or God's kingdom.

The teaching of the Scripture is that death is a cathartic process even for the most righteous person. Perhaps the only person for whom death was a shear transition was the holy Theotokos, who was so full of God, life, faith and grace that her death is a pure entrance into paradise. All the rest of us are not the Theotokos and we are not pure. There is garbage, sin and rebellion in us even where our desire is for God and our prayer is for God and we want to repent still there is that in us that can not enter into the presence of God or the very heart of the Father (which is everlasting life). This impediment must be burnt away. I believe that our teaching is that this process of dying is this cathartic process where at the end of which you are either with God for ever or away from God forever tormenting yourself with the demons and being tormented by the love of God that is still upon you even though you are an unrepentant sinner. In fact many of the Saints say that the greatest torture of hell are not only the tortures of the evil but the torture of the mercy and love of God that is still upon you (because God loves you not matter what). St. Isaac the Syrian said that there is no greater torment than to be scourged with the scourge of love.

When you die and enter the presence of love and you resist it that becomes a torture to you. St. Mark of Ephesus, a great Church father, refused to sign the council of Florence because of the papacy, the filioque, and because of the Latin teaching on material hellfire. He said that our Church tradition has no teaching on material-hellfire. We have no such teaching; God is not a punisher. Jesus on the Cross was not punished for our sins. Jesus on the Cross loved and trusted God so He can destroy death by death. When I speak with that nuance I say that there is no such thing as punishment. The punishment comes from our own evil and the love of God upon us when we reject it. God is not torturing or punishing us. In our tradition, this teaching about the need to be purified to enter into the kingdom got developed into a kind of allegory called the 'tollbooths'. You can read in some of he Christian literature that you have to go through around 20 or 22 tests in order to make it into the kingdom of God. Then I think some weird teachings developed which are not Orthodox and not according to the Scripture, but like every crazy teaching have a kernel of truth. The crazy teachings are that when you die you have to be punished for the things that you do and go through each of these tool-booths in order to get punished by the demons for that particular sin. So you go through the tollbooth of lust to get punished for your lust, you go through the tollbooth of greed to be punished for your greed, you go through the tollbooth of anger to be punished for anger, and so on until you are punished enough and make it.

In the western church, even before the Reformation, there was a teaching that if you pray for these people you can get some of the punishment off. It was called temporal punishment due to your sin and those were called were called indulgences and then you could actually go to church to light a candle, say a prayer or give some money to get the time off from the punishment. This was called the "purgatorium" (or the "purgatory") connected with the doctrine of punishment and inflicted pain that had to be done away with. This is not our Orthodox teaching.

The Orthodox teaching is that we do have to be tested by every possible demon and be victorious over that demon by the grace of God, the intercessions of the Saints, and anything that we can do to open ourselves in faith to God so that we can be delivered. So the truth of the tollbooth myth or allegory is not that the soul will go through some "astral space" getting tempted by demons and getting punished for sin. The right interpretation is that, as taught by many holy fathers such as Sts John Klimacus and Athanasias, death is the moment of truth and every demon is going to try to get you to apostatise, hate God and try to make you cling to corporeal things. They would like to stop you from letting go of everything so that you can only love God and let God save you. So the tests will see if we hang on to our pride, arrogance and so on. These tests you have to pass through are symbolically represented by the tollbooths; you have to be 'tried'. Then we that the prayer of the Church and the prayer of the Saints do help us to resist the demons and to be faithful and to be faithful and trust God, but this is true at any moment of our life. We pray for one another now, we are prayer for by the Saints now so that we will not succumb to lust, greed, power etc, so that when we die we are ready to float right through and not have to deal with all that at the very end of our life. However, the teaching is this, deal with it we must because we must do the work that Jesus Christ Himself did. Jesus said, "He who believes in Me will do the work that I do". We must conquer the devils like He did. We must resist the temptations like He did. We must destroy death the way that He did. That is what He gives us the power to do through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Sacraments and the life of the Church.

So folks, lets gets started now by being freed from all of this, because at the moment of death it is going to come upon us like a power. But not only at the moment of death, if a person tries to die now before they die all the demons will come to bother them. Evagrus Pontokos said, "If you come to the Church, say your prayers, stand there and say to God 'Lord have mercy, God save me, God be with me, God purify me' all the Panagia Theotokos with all the angels with all the Saints will come and pray with you". Then he said, "So does every demon in hell". To try to get you not to love God and not to trust God, but hang on to your own self, power, greed, money, and what ever it is that your idol. That is going on all the time, but the teaching is that it intensifies at the very moment of death. Therefore, the prayers at the very moment of death are important and we have special prayers for dying people. We have two canons and a funeral service. In our Church it takes 40 days to die.

Some people say, "Well, when you die it is too late and it is certainly too late for us to pray for a person. Why should I pray for my mother and father who have departed this life? They are dead and into the presence of God already. There is nothing that these prayers can do, because it's over for them". Here our Church would say this, "As long as I am alive in this world, it isn't over for me. And I don't know what is going on out there, but if I love my mother and father and even my worst enemy, and I know that they are dying and they are going into the presence of the Lord, and have to pass this incredible test and have to really come to love and have faith in God, then I will pray for them will all my heart and soul. I will pray to my last brief that God's mercy and love would be accepted by them and that they would be saved". But I also have to say this, our Church teaches that God hears our prayers before we even pray them. In fact our Church teaches that God hears our prayers before He even created the world and us. So if I pray today for my father like I did at the Holy Liturgy this morning, when they say remember the departed, I always say John and Anna as my parents and others, like we all do, God heard that even before He created even the whole world. That prayer becomes part of the whole divine providence for my mother and father and others we pray for. Therefore, it isn't too late for God, because God hears our prayers whenever we make them for all eternity, and they have an effect upon the whole of creation. One little prayer changes the entire divine providence. So if I pray now for my parents, I am obviously going to pray for them as being already asleep in the Lord, because they are biologically dead. Although I believe that they are alive in God and sometimes I must say have mercy on them. One in a while I even pray to them and say "mum and dad, please help me today. Because I have to give a talk in Brisbane".

I believe that my parents are with God and I have the right to believe that. And I can risk that in faith and I can even ask for their prayers in the same way I can ask for the prayers of the Bishop. I can also ask a Bishop who has already fallen asleep in the Lord; the Bishop who ordained me. For God, this is for all eternity. So it is not too late, but we pray from our position. If a person is sick, we pray for them as sick and if they have fallen asleep we pray from them as dead… We pray for people from our perspective, but God takes the whole thing into consideration from all eternity and arranges the whole plan on the basis of our prayers, including the prayers we make for people who are dead. Therefore we believe that my prayer for my father not only helps him to enter into the presence of the Lord and to be saved in the age to come, but I believe that it helped him when his father died when he was 12 years old, before I was even born. It helped him get a job in a factory and it helped him to support me being a priest. I believe this, because God is embracing the whole thing. That is why we can have memorial services and pray. It is not that we have one more memorial service and bingo dad gets into heaven. That is not our teaching. God knows what everybody needs and He knows what we are all doing and works together the whole thing, according to love as well as He can. So we are coworkers with God and a big part of that co-work is remembering and holding before God those who are already fallen asleep and have already entered into the life of the age to come. And we relate to them that way in the life of the Church.

Darwin As Theologian

Just ended (hopefully) an argument with a couple of brain dead Secular Humanists about the possibility of the "spontaneous generation of life" from inert matter, which of course is the bedrock of Darwinism/Evolution.  The average person accepts the "work of experts" who are not "experts" at all in terms of existential science, but merely doctrinaire Darwinist/Evolutionist theologians.  They ARE theologian because their beliefs are based on multiple "leaps of faith" each being mathematically proved, IMPOSSIBILITIES.  If you are interested the story goes like this: 
+++
People often get the impression that scientists, when they talk about genetic data, are reading directly from the "book of life." That's an illusion. Genetic data is just a series of A's, T's, G's, and C's, representing a sequence of molecules called nucleotides (adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine) on a DNA strand. _ _ How am I doing so far - I mean for a theologian.

When scientists try to turn that series of letters into statements about human origins, they use many speculative assumptions and interpretations. - (actually leaps across data impossible to a mathematical certainty - rather called leaps of faith) Correct?

Many have surmised that it is pernicious pseudo-scientific ideology that "independently" genetic data tell a story. The story is filled with sloppy thought and work, and one is left to wonder about the epistemological foundations of any specific conclusions based on the genetic data. - Come on for a theologian not bad? Right? I would say that from my many years of reading on the subject, that the history proves that biological anthropology, from the beginning of the last century has posited grossly naive conclusions, promoting them simply on the basis derived from genetics.

Contrary to Ernst Haeckel and Thomas Huxley's mythology ( which were foundations of Darwin's theory) that primitive cells were mere blobs of protoplasm, which allowed for infantile and silly theories of how life "spontaneously generated" modern SCIENCE proves that cell structure even in the simplest cell (single cell organisms) prove that the FIRST REAL living things were also single cells. Haeckel and Huxley thought that chemicals like carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and oxygen would somehow spontaneously crystallize into the slimy substance of life. Seems that even though Sara's slime (Sara- one of the brain dead Secular Humanists) is more complex (or not really) she has not progressed past the fantasies of Haechel and Huxley and is 150 years behind the scientific curve.

What is the complexity of even the most primitive and simplest form of life? Oparin, a Russian bio-chemist, outlined an elaborate set of chemical stages leading to the formation of the first cell. Of course he hid his theory inside eons of time (billions of years). And he relied on the idea of certain chemicals "attracting" when there is no reason to assume it and no EVIDENCE of it. Then there is that pesky FACT that the geo-chemical analysis of the sediments from early earth history failed to find evidence of a nitrogen-rich pre-biotic soup, the kind predicted by Oparin. And other earth sciences have proved that the atmosphere wasn't as Oparin assumed. By this and a thousand other stretches of the imagination evolutionists maintain their faith that the ingredients for the bodies of the first living things could be formed spontaneously during the earth's early history. - Now - we can go into the specific stages of "impossibility" but - I'll have to do some brushing up - since I haven't approached this argument in a couple of years and it is not my field - I have to depend on SCIENCE.
(Alexander Oparin, "The Orgin of Life" and "Genesis and Evolutionary Development of Life") 

Deborah your words to Lesley are spot on, "Keep looking for life in your primordial soup."  She will have a very long wait.  Let us look at the science: 

Some evolutionist suggest that Chance on the molecular level can explain the origin of proteins, long chains of amino acid subunits necessary. But there's a pesky obstacle. A very simple protein is composed of at least 100 amino acid subunits. For proteins to function as an "organism" the bonds between the proteins must be peptide bonds.  Amino acids can bond with each other in varioius ways, with peptide bonds occurring HALF the time.  So the odds of getting 100 amino acids ALL with peptide bonds is One in Ten - to the thirtieth power.  (1 in 10 - followed by thirty zeros.  For the visual  - - 
1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.  
Or kindly stated "not good odds") 
(Stephen C. Meyer - "Mere Creation: Science, Faith, and Intelligent Design)

Then we have another pesky problem. Each amino acid molecule is Laevus or Left handed L or Dexter, or right handed  - D - (latin for left and right)  The two forms are mirror  images - like right and left handed gloves.  In living organisms all proteins are made of amino acid subunits of the L form.  But L and D forms of amino acids occur equally in nature.  To get a chain of 100 L-form amino acids, the odds are then, One in ten to the sixtieth power (1 in 10 followed by 60 zeros.   For the visual:
 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.  <smile> again to say the least not very good odds. 

Then we have another pesky problem.  Even if all the bonds are peptide bonds and all the amino acids are L forms (like some of the FAKE experiments in DNA research) that is still not enough to give us a functional protein. You see it is not that any combination of amino acid subunits will give us a protein that CONTRIBUTE to the function of a cell.  The right amino acids must be arranged in a very specific order.  The odds of the right 100 amino acids arranging themselves in the right order are in themselves quite high - about One in Ten to the Sixty-fifth power or 1 in 10 followed by 65 Zeros.  For a visual, -  JUST ABOUT THE SAME NUMBER OF ATOMS IN OUR GALAXY. 
(Now for another visual. If the earth were the size of an apple or orange and you blew that apple up the size of the earth, the relative size of the atoms in that earth sized apple would be about the size of a cherry. Beginning to get the picture?)

 The biochemist Michael Behe says that getting a sequence of 100 amino acids that functions as a protein is comparable to finding one especially marked grain of sand in the Sahara desert - THREE TIMES IN A ROW.  
(Michael Behe - quoted in "Darwinism: Science or Philosophy" edited by J. Buell and G. Hearn)

Now when you put all of the requirements (factors) together (peptide binding, L-forms only) then the odds go up to 1 chance in Ten to the One-Hundred-Twenty-Fifth Power, that is a 1 in 10 followed by one hundred twenty five zeros.  For the visual"  
1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Now, while Lesley and Sara mock you about the amazing coincidences, against the odds, contained in the "Torah" (Haven't investigated the Bible Codes so I'm not offering an opinion) she hangs her hat on a mathematical fantasy, thoroughly dis-proved by SCIENCE. 

Life DID NOT spontaneously generate from inert matter.  And you do realize that we haven approached the idea what matter is (mostly empty space) NOR how it came to be.

Let us do a visual of what matter is:  If you took that previously mentioned apple that is the size of the earth, wherein the atoms in relative size are the size of cherries. Now further in your mind, take that cherry sized atom and blow it up the size of a modern football stadium, the nucleus of that atom "may" appear the size of a grain of salt and the orbiting particles will not yet be visible.  Now picture standing next to that grain of salt sized nucleus, say on the 50 yard line. Look around that atom and tell me what you see.  The answer is "many trillions time EMPTY SPACE".  Which lead us to the energy present in that atom, which is a whole other story.

The present science says matter spontaneously "erupted into being" called "space/time" but when pressed why it erupted or what was before the big bang, they call that "a singularity" which is code for "we don't have a feak'n idea."



Archpriest Symeon Elias

The Paganization of America:

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which is known of God is manifest among them, for God has shown it to them.  For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things made, both His eternal power and Divinity, so that they are without excuse.

Because, having known God, they did not glorify Him as God, or give thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened.  Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for a likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and reptiles.
Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of the own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to passions of dishonor; for even their females exchanged the natural use for that which is contrary to nature, and likewise also the males, having left the natural use of the female, were inflamed by their lust for one another, males with males, committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was fitting for their error. And just as they did not approve to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do the things which are not fitting; having been filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, greed, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness; they are whisperers,   slanderers, hateful to God, insolent men, proud, braggarts, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful;  who, having known the righteous judgment of God, that those practicing such things are worthy of death, not only do them, but also approve of those who practice them.