If Josef Stalin had "truly repented & accepted Christ" on his death bed...

Looks like you didn't notice our Orthodox services this Sunday. How about some videos. Mind you this went on in almost every city and town throughout the world - including the US. There are over 300 million Orthodox Christians.

Moscow


Jerusalem


Belgrade


Bucharest


Athens

 

….neat.....

 

In Catholicism, you still get into heaven, no matter what you do, if you received "Absolution" from a preist. It doesn't matter what you did, so long as you received Last Rites and had you sensed forgiven by a preist before you died.

 

As I understand it, most Christian denominations believe there will be gradations of reward in heaven.

But, you're either "saved" or "not saved", with God deciding all the edge issues of babies, those who never heard of Christianity, etc.

It seems like you might be better off if you've never heard of Christianity! All those missionaries may be highly counterproductive!

 

Does that statement support the idea that Jesus was the reincarnation of someone who lived before Abraham?

 

Many Roman Catholic doctrines are to at least some degree based on near death experience accounts that occurred over the last 1500 to 3300 or so years. (It is even possible that Matthew chapter 4 has elements of a near death experience or at least of something like an out of the body experience, it is also possible that Psalms 22 and 23 could have been inspired by something like a near death experience or similar spiritual encounter)???

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/nt/2-cor/12?lang=eng

My guess would be that at the time that he wrote II Corinthians 12 the Apostle Paul may have felt that an idea as controversial as the following was a subject that he could at that time NOT go into in detail.

https://www.near-death.com/experiences/gay/christian-andreason.html#a04h

I assume that he must have written Romans a few years later and he was really playing around with similar ideas to what Christian Andreason had been shown when he penned:


https://www.lds.org/scriptures/nt/rom/11?lang=eng

Is the Catholic concept of Purgatory more accurate than heaven vs hell?

 

Correct...... and to some degree this idea is based on some near death experience accounts over these last two thousand years or so.

Dr. George Ritchie in his 1943 NDE was shown at least four different levels of the afterlife.

https://www.near-death.com/experiences/exceptional/george-ritchie.html

 

What state will babies be in? Well no one knows, since we are limited mentally. A Saint did say that animals will have the same type of existence after death as they have here, which is understandable since they are not able to achieve a higher state.

 

There will be rats, lice, dinosaurs, etc., in heaven?

 

It's not our heaven, it's doggy heaven - but I was thinking the same thing.

My Baby!

 

I think it is both.......
and for the record.......
all denominations of Christianity come up with formula's supposedly to get somebody into heaven..... that are actually a lot like Black Magic..........
if I do this and say that............ then Messiah Yeshua - Jesus and the Ancient of Days the Father have to take me to heaven............

.... but actually... that approach...... can delay and delay and delay and delay somebody actually getting to heaven........

Josef Stalin and Michael Corleone could perhaps make it to heaven faster than somebody who thinks that they have heaven made in the shade based on a technicality?!

To review his life and do something of a Vulcan Mind Meld with a significant percentage of his victims.........

https://www.near-death.com/science/research/life-review.html

Yes.... about one near death experience in six involves a meeting with a previously deceased pet.

Near-Death Experiences with Pets
By Kevin R. Williams, B.Sc.

 

Prove it.

Anything in the Bible can be taken as support for any cockamamie idea.

 

Pretty much true. It's a lesson fundamentalist Christians use to their advantage, while denying the Bible is open to interpretation by others.

 

Christianity was written by lawyers.

 

Yes, the second largest church body in Christianity, they can claim to be the early church just as much if not more than the RCC, and not corrupted as they are.

 

If someone opens their heart to God, it doesn't matter if they did so when they are young or older, their hearts are equally open to His Grace. Of course the one who converted at a later age will be starting their spiritual accession towards Theosis/Divinity (unity with God), at a lower level.

Giving Absolution means God has forgiven the sins a person confessed to. It's really for man's benefit, since it gives release from guilt for what they did. If someone committed a serious sin such as abortion or killed someone - maybe in a war, then there will be some penance. I know that they can't receive the Eucharist for two years.

Anyway the sacraments are really for man's benefit so as to facilitate them in their growth, not that they're necessary. I mean Christ's disciples certainly didn't need them, nor the prophets in the OT.

 

All Churches become corrupted in some way and in some places and at some time. By the same token all Saints have been calumniated and slandered in some way, in some places and at some time. There has also been some fraud in some places and at some time. Nothing is permanent believe me. Satan is alive and well - and he never stops the attacks.

If it wasn't for the slandering and calumniating of Saints throughout Christian history, the RC would not have ignored the accusations towards priests so readily.

The difference between the RC and the Orthodox is really the power of the Pope. He took a more imperialist stance when the Vatican changed from a Greek/Latin culture into a Frank/Latin one. It's what they wanted I guess. More orderly than the Greek volatility.

As for the differences in theology, it was because the RC had to contend with heresies that the Orthodox didn't have to contend with. To combat the Arian heresy in Spain they ended up with the Filioque in the Creed. More recently a Pope had made the Immaculate Conception a dogma so as to fight the Protestant concepts which were starting to creep into the Church, and which lessened Mary's position in God's salvation.

To make the dogma without an Ecumenical Council since the Churches were split, the Pope had to establish himself as being infallible. What dismayed the Orthodox was not the dogma's since they weren't fully defined. What dismayed them was the infallibility of the Pope since he could be prone to error and it would lead to heresy.

Anyway this is the opinions I formed from what I read.

 

Yes, but Catholics believe someone is forgive regardless of whether or not they truly repent, as long as a preist says they are forgiven. During the Cruisades, the Pope would issue special documents forgiving any sins committed by CHristian Knights during their time in the holy land. This is why Christian knights had a reputation as grave robbers, theives, and rapists, because the church told them all sins they committed were pre-forgiven, and they used it as an excuse to do whatever they wanted.

 

Dennis, in the ancient Churches like the Orthodox and Catholics, we have Saints which are like the prophets in the OT. They do not have spiritual encounters, but reach such a high state of Grace and perfection that they experience God while still in this world. It was these Saints and Fathers of the Church that compiled the Bible, and decided which writings are truly the Word of God, and which ones aren't.

These Saints and Apostles are also the ones that spread Christianity to the world through their miracles and martyrdom - and there are tens of thousands of them, known and unknown.

Greece has had many saints in these past decades. I guess God is trying to tell them something. (Jonah and the whale comes to mind). Many Saints are given gifts by God, such as being able to read people's souls and minds. My confessor at the Monastery of Saint Nektarios in NY said that someone came into the monastery once that smelled awful, but it wasn't because he was dirty. It was a reflection of his soul. I once read that the Catholic Saint Vianney of France said to a woman from Paris, that the stench of her soul made him sick to his stomach.

Our recent Saint Porphorius had X-Ray vision and was able to see through mountains. When someone wanted to dig and find water, Saint Porphorius was able to see all the geological formations in the earth, and tell him just how far he had to go. He could also bi locate and be in two places at the same time - as could many other Saints such as the Catholic Saint Padre Pio. .

Someone I know had suffered injuries during the 1981 bridge collapse in the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City. I believe she was attending Harvard at the time and was being edified into the Orthodox Church. While attending a concert with friends, the bridge collapsed and she found herself locked between the survivors on one side, and the ones who died instantly on the other side.

No one could pull her out, and while they were attending to the other survivors, someone appeared and took her arm and slid her out. This man comforted her until the others came and took her to the hospital. She thought the man who pulled her out was her guardian angel, until she saw his picture on a wall. He turned out to be Elder Amilianos, who happened to be the spiritual father of the monk that was edifying her into the Orthodox faith. Elder Amilianos was not in Kansas at the time, nor was he ever in Kansas. He was in Greece.

Needless to say, she became a nun and together with some other American nuns restored and established 15 monasteries in Greece. She is now the Eldress of Saint Nina's Monastery in Maryland.

Anyway Dennis, this is just one of the many experiences I have had. I'm saying it to let you know that everything we know, whether it's of the afterlife and God, has come to us through revelations by our Saints. If you or anyone you know has spiritual encounters be careful, because they are probably not coming from God, but from another source.

 

Killing people is a major sin, and because of this, the Byzantine Empire depended on foreigners for their armies. For the Pope to get the Western Knights to fight during a very devout age, he had to let them know it was okay. For anyone to think that it extended to rape would be a little foolish. Pillage maybe, since it gave them an incentive to take a town.

Anyway there was a lot of friction, even between the Greek Christians and the Crusaders as well as the Muslims. The Greeks would provoke, and the short tempered knights probably bashed their heads in. There are also nice incidents, such as the kind hearted Muslim who carried a knight around who couldn't walk.

 

Christianity has superseded the law for man's salvation. Man is saved through Grace, not through an adherence to laws.

 

It's not without punishment though. I think Stalin would spend a VERY long time in purgatory

 

To make him suffer as much as all the people he made suffer to suffer. In Stalin's case that could well take millions of years, but we have eternity.

One must also understand that Stalin was a committed communist radical revolutionary in the most backward nation in Europe and a large part of that backwardness was due to the granite hard conservatism of the Russian Orthodox Church. It has been said that the conservatism of the RO Church was not a contrast between the 19thcentury and the 20th but between the 19th and the 9th The RO by the time of the Revolution had long since gone beyond normal conservatism and become bizarre, hence the cults that sprang up worshipping Alexander I as a Christlike figure who would return to save the Motherland, the truly gruesome Skoptsi and the weird worship of sexual excess practiced by Rasputin (this last so resembling our own Branch Davidians and the People's Temple in that regard). Stalin was, as has been noted, steeped in that ultra-conservatism, saw its consequent hypocrisy and knew its baleful effects probably from personal experience. It is any wonder he turned against it?.

 

Nice, that is the first time in my life I have ever heard anyone get that theologically correct outside a theologian. You clearly have had some good teachers.

 

Church policy during the cruisades that murder only applied to Christian victims, and that it wasn't a sin to kill non-Christians. The Templars,who example had a reputation for "protecting" Christian pilgrims, but what they actualy did was slaughter Muslim pilgrims. The church praised the for it, and they had great favor with the Pope for many years.