If you are a Lutheran, your religion was founded by Martin Luther, an ex-monk of the Catholic Church, in the year 1517.
If you belong to the Church of England, your religion was founded by King Henry VIII in the year 1534 because the Pope would not grant him a divorce with the right to re-marry.
If you are a Presbyterian, your religion was founded by John Knox in Scotland in the year 1560.
If you are a Congregationalist, your religion was originated by Robert Brown in Holland in 1582.
If you are Protestant Episcopalian, your religion was an offshoot of the Church of England, founded by Samuel Seabury in the American colonies in the 17th century.
If you are a Baptist, you owe the tenets of your religion to John Smyth, who launched it in Amsterdam in 1606.
If you are of the Dutch Reformed Church, you recognize Michelis Jones as founder because he originated your religion in New York in 1628.
If you are a Methodist, your religion was founded by John and Charles Wesley in England in 1774.
If you are a Mormon (Latter Day Saints), Joseph Smith started your religion in Palmyra, New York, in 1829.
If you worship with the Salvation Army, your sect began with William Booth in London in 1865.
If you are Christian Scientist, you look to 1879 as the year in which your religion was born and to Mary Baker Eddy as its founder.
If you belong to one of the religious organizations known as “Church of the Nazarene, Pentecostal Gospel,” “Holiness Church,” or “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” your religion is one of the hundreds of new sects founded by men within the past hundred years.
If you are Roman Catholic, your church shared the same rich apostolic and doctrinal heritage as the Orthodox Church for the first thousand years of its history, since during the first millennium they were one and the same Church.
Lamentably, in 1054, the Pope of Rome broke away from the other four Apostolic Patriarchates (which include Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem), by tampering with the Original Creed of the Church, and considering himself to be infallible. Thus your church is 1,000 years old.
If you are Orthodox Christian, your religion was founded in the year 33 by Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It has not changed since that time. Our church is now almost 2,000 years old. And it is for this reason, that Orthodoxy, the Church of the Apostles and the Fathers is considered the true “one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” This is the greatest legacy that we can pass on to the young people of the new millennium.
by Rev. Dr. Miltiades Efthimiou
Interesting article, I thought. Plenty of food for thought.
I must disagree with Rev Efthimiou. He states that if you are a Pentecostal you are a member of a sect founded in the last hundred years by men. Anyone with a Bible can see that the Church Jesus birthed on the day of Pentecost, with its doctrine of salvation “Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Acts 2:38 along with the experience that was held by ALL the followers of Jesus in the beginning of that chapter They were ALL filled with the holy Ghost and began to speak in tongues as the spirit gave the utterance IS the Pentecostal church, founded NOT one hundred years ago but is the ORIGINAL church, while Rev. Efthimious denomination only appeared as the influence of the Apostles wained and the Platonic philosophies of Greek leavened the church.
That in these latter days the full gospel is once again freely and openly preached around the world, quickly reaching men women boys and girls of all walks of life and belief systems while the church he represents continues to lose members as they turn elsewhere to find a living Jesus is undoubtedly in back of his very arrogant remarks.
It is no wonder that the Pentecostal church of Jesus Christ is the fastest growing branch of what is called Christianity, It is where the world is finding Jesus!
Sorry Joseph, but the modern Pentecostal movement traces its history back to 1906, on Azusa street and since a most Protestants feel, in one way or the other that the early Church has apostatized, as you state: “while Rev. Efthimious denomination only appeared as the influence of the Apostles wained and the Platonic philosophies of Greek leavened the church.”
As to Azusa Street? Here is the link back to the preacher who started it: “What happened at Azusa Street? At the center of
this “new thing” stood an African-American preacher named William Seymour. The son of slaves, Seymour had traveled to Los Angeles from Texas to share what he had learned from a self-made preacher named Charles Fox Parham.
During the 1890s, Parham had heard much talk about the baptism with the Holy Spirit, but he observed a lack of consensus on the evidence for this baptism. In 1901, Parham began to preach that the “Bible evidence” of the baptism with the Holy Spirit was speaking in tongues. He called his message the Apostolic Faith. In 1903, thanks to a healing and local revival in eastern Kansas, Parharm’s Apostolic Faith began attracting followers. By 1905 his work had reached the Houston area, where he met Seymour. Parham encouraged Seymour to accept an invitation to preach in Los Angeles.
The Azusa Street mission, then, had direct antecedents in Parham’s modest midwestern efforts. ”
There is no new thing and there is only one baptism for the remission of sins. Those outside of the Church only new what they read and could only use their limited discernment to try and find their way. They were not grounded in the Fathers and Church Tradition, and one wonders if they tested the spirits…
As far as the Orthodox Church being “leavened” by the Greeks and their “platonism”, Fr. Georges Florovsky writes:
One can simply say: in establishing dogmas the Church expressed Revelation in the language of Greek philosophy — or, if preferable: translated Revelation from the Hebraic, poetic and prophetic language into Greek. That meant, in a certain sense, a “Hellenization” of Revelation. In reality, however, it was a “Churchification” (“Verkirchlichung”) of Hellenism…
We must acknowledge this basic fact of Christian history in humility before the will of God, which is fulfilled in the destiny of nations. And the “calling of the Gentiles” meant that Hellenism became blessed by God. In this there was no “historical accident” — no such accident could lie therein. In the religious destiny of man there are no “accidents.” In any case the fact remains that the Gospel is given to us all and for all time in the Greek language. It is in this language that we hear the Gospel in all its entirety and fulness. That does not and cannot, of course, mean that it is untranslatable — but we always translate it from the Greek. And there was precisely as little “chance” or “accident” in this “selection” of the Greek language — as the unchanging proto-language of the Christian Gospel — as there was in God’s “selection” of the Jewish people — out of all the people of antiquity — as “His” People — there was as little “accident” in the “selection” of the Greek language as there was in the fact that “salvation comes from the Jews” (John 4:22). We receive the Revelation of God as it occurred. And it would be pointless to ask whether it could have been otherwise. In the selection of the “Hellenes” we must acknowledge the hidden decisions of God’s will. In any case, the presentation of Revelation in the language of historical Hellenism in no way restricts Revelation. It rather proves precisely the opposite — that this language possessed certain powers and resources which aided in expounding and expressing the truth of Revelation.”
I only end by saying that Holy Orthodoxy is not a “denomination” of the Church that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ established it is THE Church that He established and the gates of Hades have not prevailed against Her. To think or say otherwise is to make a liar of our Lord and that is something I would never, ever, do.