A former priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine talks about his conversion to the living God and his departure from the traditions of human Orthodoxy. Part one, chapters 1-2.
I. Live document
This book is a living document, a personal testimony of a former Orthodox priest, and now a presbyter of the Church of Evangelical Christians-Baptists.
Priest G. Dobrovolsky seriously and conscientiously studied the Gospel, comparing the teaching of Christ with church practice. He saw a blatant distortion of the simple and understandable teaching of the Gospel about repentance, about being born again, about the salvation of sinners, saw delusion and could no longer remain in the fence of the Orthodox Church. Having experienced a new birth, he emerged from it.
With all sincerity and inherent simplicity, the author analyzes the main provisions of the Orthodox catechism, reveals it before the unfading light of Holy Scripture.
Doing this according to revelation from above, the author is sympathetic towards Orthodox people, does not criticize them, but points to a single, not clouded by dogmas, way of salvation according to the Gospel.
I deeply believe that this book will be a great blessing for every serious thinking person and will lead many to Christ as their personal Savior.
II. Why did I move away
This question worries many of those friends and acquaintances of mine who are used to seeing me as a priest of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
For many it was normal to see me as a priest, and now that I have ceased to be one, they almost all moved away from me, broke their acquaintance, began to avoid meeting me, and do not even answer my letters. They accuse me of treason to God and Ukraine. Some even made inquiries: "Will I soon go to Moscow?" But I do not accept this tragically, although I feel sorry for these naive people who have a bad opinion of me and express regret for me as a “lost sheep” who “will come to its senses and turn back someday”. These people just don't know what they should know. If they had a better judgment, they would not condemn me. but they rejoiced and followed an example.
I do not mean to judge them for this. The judgment belongs to God. I only take the liberty of confirming the fact that they are spiritually meaningless. I do it with great heartache.
My prayer to the Almighty is that He would open their spiritual eyes and let them see His Truth as it is: pure, holy, unchanging, free from human inventions and perversions. My prayer is that they should see her and know her, and thus know the True Living God, the Creator of heaven and earth and everything visible and invisible. To know that God is a Spirit and He is looking for His worshipers who would worship Him in spirit and truth, according to the teaching of Christ. So that they also know that God does not require the ministry of human hands, as if He has what in need, for He Himself has everything and gives us everything that is good for life.
The Lord transmitted these His Truths to us through His chosen husbands-prophets in the Old Testament, and later, through His Only Begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ and His holy Apostles, and today He proclaims to us through Holy Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit and useful to us for teaching, so that we can, following the Apostle Paul, say: "But we have the mind of Christ." God wants us to have in our hearts the love of Christ for Him and for our neighbor. Holy love, unhypocritical, indestructible, warmed by the rays of the Sun of Truth.
How blessed our Ukrainian people could be if our leaders sanctified themselves and with the help of God would have these Christian qualities. By doing this, they would show the people a good example and through them the abundant blessings of God could then be poured out in a graceful rain on the whole world.
I have a sincere desire, with the help of God, to illuminate in this work some issues of Orthodox worship, about which the ordinary parishioner has no idea. The parishioner does not know if this or that part of the Service is pleasing to God? Maybe God turns His Face away so as not to look and listen to what really dishonor His name. Don't let this scare the reader. It will be better for him if he patiently reads this book to the end, seriously and prayerfully reflects on what he has read, and makes the appropriate decision.
Worshiping God, according to the Holy Scriptures, should begin with an appeal to God and acceptance of His Teachings. Only then can one begin to Serve Him, according to His will. In the Orthodox Church, this is far from the case. In order to highlight the discrepancy between the teaching of the Orthodox Church and the Teaching of Holy Scripture, let us try to consider some Services, of which there are quite a few. The most important of these is the service called the Liturgy. It is preceded by other services:
Vespers and Matins. These two services, combined together, with some abbreviations, are called the Vigil, which is served the night before. We will leave them alone, and starting with the Liturgy, we will move on to the following in turn: Commemoration of the Living, Commemoration of the Dead, Prayers to the Saints, Various Consecrations, Reading of Holy Scripture, Baptism, and also consider some rituals and customs.
[Source: bereanbeacon.org]
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