Ukraine

Message of Bishop Longinus

Reverend Hierarchs, with pain in my soul, I would ask all of your my brethren: Let us stand aright, let us stand with fear, let us attend!  At all costs it is necessary to protect and preserve our Only Orthodox Faith, Holy and Saving, and we must not be traitors like Judas. There is nothing above God’s Truth; neither friendship, nor peace, nor life, nor anything else.

The Cretan Council (16-27 June 2016), a lawless synod, a robber synod, heretical, false, and wicked.  And you, my brother bishops, as you go home, in the church, to your people, are you innocent of the Body and Blood of Christ which you deliver?

You proceed to the Altar of Christ!? How will you make the Holy Mysteries of the Church of Christ, for you are graceless and traitors? How will you proceed to the Holy, to the Faith of our Holy Orthodoxy, to the Dogmas, Canons, and Decisions of the Seven Ecumenical Councils which are necessary for salvation?

What need was there for a Pan-Orthodox Council without Orthodoxy? Serving in the spirit of the Cretan Synod, you were not in the truth, but in the spirit of globalism and the occult, preparing the way for the arrival of the Antichrist! Do you want that? You’ve become traitors to the country, to the people, and to God!

How do you look into the eyes of Christ and the faithful of our Holy Orthodox Church? No matter how many Orthodox people have suffered, they have not been conquered by the atheists, the communists, the heretics, though they went through many hardships and tribulations, yet still remained faithful to the Lord! And we today, are counted as accursed, having sold that most sacred thing–Faith in God. Do you not feel sorry for these people, for which we will have to give an answer before God?

All of you, who have worked in this lawless Council and agreed with it, putting down your signatures, at the last moment you can bring forth repentance–bring forth repentance toward God, and His Church, and to the Holy Fathers, and to all the Orthodox people.

If you do not give up all of that Council, the wrath of God will come upon you, ye workers of iniquity!

Does not your conscience bite at you, who even remain silent? You are betrayers of God, gathering with the ecumenists and welcoming all the heresies and their teachings!

All of you, who have participated in this Council, are turned away from Grace! Who are you after that? It would have been better for you not to have lived, than for you to become traitors to the Holy and outcasts from the Holy Spirit.

And does not conscience gnaw at you for what you have done? Do you wish that after 2000 years to become a new Ananias and Caiaphas and betray the Sacred Truths?

I beg and exhort you: let us remain humble and obedient children of our Holy Orthodox Church, its canons, dogmas, and traditions that we know, with the testimony of so many saints and of the Orthodox people. Why do we wish to change the Holy Truth and to fight against it?

In Orthodoxy there is nothing irreversible, so repent and return to the sheepfold of Christ’s Flock, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

With brotherly love in Christ,

Bishop Longinus of Banceski

Original Russian