Principles for Orthodox apologetics. 1 - Before anything, revere God in your heart. This involves prayer, attending services, and seeking God with all your heart. This is only found on your knees in prayer. 2 - Be prepared. For Protestants this "preparation" centers around knowing the Bible very well. If you are going to debate a Sola Scriptura person you need to be prepared to answer them on their terms - from Scripture, not tradition. And Scripture supports Orthodoxy because it came out of the Church. But the Bible also tells us that we are not to prepare a defense in advance. Luk 21:14-15 But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. This means we are to be guided by the Spirit. 3 - When apologetics is done right, it's done with ""gentleness and respect". Pride and arrogance are the downfall for all of us. Talking over the other person is one evidence you are not acting with respect. The other person is allowed to be rude. The Orthodox Christian is not. They are allowed to be arrogant. The Orthodox Christian is not.

John Dirks overlapping time w/ JP. Maybe I'll watch - neither. LOL.

Being a low church Protestant is like a Chinese Buffet - you can eat what you like but you get hungry two hours later.

Think of it this way, the term and concept or denomination is an 18th/19th century creation to pick out dissenting sects that left the Church of England. What were such groups called before? Sects. How were they viewed before? Not churches, bereft of the means of grace, etc. Much of Ortlund's rhetorical apologetic here turns on conflating American political pluralism with ecclesiology. Protestants historically were just fine with state enforced churches, going to war with other Christians, and anathematizing them. Ortlund ends up with a Docetistic ecclesiology. It is everywhere in general and nowhere in particular. It can never be incarnate. It can only be contiguous.

⛔️ This Christian pastor in Lebanon, his wife, and daughters were murdered by the IDF, and their church destroyed. Do you stand with Israel in its crimes against the Christian Church in Lebanon ?‼️‼️

Day 179 since @RepJoeWilson was invited to visit the ROCOR parish in his district. #SavetheUOC Evidently I missed yesterday! Apologies, my son was in the hospital.

Piers lives in a glass house.

I’m noticing a theme… everything Zionists have accused Russia of, Israel is actually involved in. An Israeli citizen, Ori Solomon, was operating illegal bio labs in Las Vegas. Now we learn Israel is interfering in elections. Color me shocked. Bolshevism became Zionism.

PUT THE BREAKS ON THE IRAN DEAL: IRAN SAYS NO PLAN TO SIGN ON SUNDAY Iranian news agency FARS reports that the Iranian officials have NOT agreed to the terms of the MoU, and there is NOT a signing deal presently set up for tomorrow. Maybe backchannel negotiations will continue into the night and by Sunday maybe a deal will be worked out, but the fact that the Iranian side is emphatically saying all the terms have not been agreed to, casts doubt on Trump claiming that all details have been agreed to and now its merely to publish them tomorrow. This is starting to have the feel of yet another of those situation where the president claims one thing, with great confidence, only to find out in a very short period of time, he was not telling the truth. Based on the public positions of the U.S. and Iran on the single issue of release of frozen funds up front - Iran saying they are a non-negotiable requirement; Trump and Vance saying it won't happen - the other, thornier issues (such as Hezbollah support in Lebanon and Israel's requirement to withdraw from the country) - chances of a big breaktrhough tomorrow seem slim.

If protestants appeal to the North African council in the 300s as not being an ecumenical council therefore the 73 book canon doesn't count then (where or which) council of any kind has ever listed the 66 book canon? 🤔

This is like how Trump called NAFTA “the worst Trade Deal ever made,” rebranded it as USMCA, and then called it “the best and most important trade deal ever made.”

First century Jews prayed to patriarchs for intercession to God. This is recorded in the Talmud (Sotah 34b) where it describes Caleb (one of the biblical spies sent by Moses) separating from the group, prostrating himself at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and saying: "My fathers, pray on my behalf that I may be delivered from the plan of the spies." This reflects a longstanding idea that the righteous (tzaddikim), including the patriarchs, can intercede from the afterlife - their souls are seen as "alive" and able to plead before God on behalf of the living (a concept sometimes linked to "zechut avot," the merit of the ancestors). While direct prayer is always to God alone (praying to a person as a divine being would be idolatry in normative Judaism), asking righteous figures to pray for you or invoking their merit is attested in rabbinic literature and earlier sources. They still do at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. chabad.org/library/article_c…

The Fathers at Nicaea didn’t gather to declare “we are now an infallible council” in some juridical sense. They met in the name of Christ, praying and deliberating under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (as the Apostles did in Acts 15: “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”) to confess the faith once delivered to the saints against Arianism. They understood themselves as guardians of apostolic Tradition, not innovators. The Church as a whole received their Creed and decisions as true and binding. That reception- by bishops, faithful, and confirmed in later Ecumenical Councils - is how we recognize a council as truly ecumenical and its dogmatic definitions as infallible expressions of the truth. In Orthodoxy, infallibility isn’t a council self-certifying its own authority like a legal charter. It is the promise of Christ that the Holy Spirit guides His Church into all truth (John 16:13). We accept Nicaea because history and the consensus of the Church show that it faithfully preserved that truth, not because the 325 bishops issued a formal “infallibility decree".

They actually did the mission. The cover story was the mythical search for wounded pilot.

Both?

This manhole in Haifa is older than the state of Israel 😆

$500 per vote. That’s what the Israeli lobby spent to beat me, and they still couldn’t do it with factual ads, or even fake ads based on policy. They ran with personal lies and AI videos to convince elderly voters I was sleeping with Ilhan Omar and AOC at the same time.

The Ukraine biolab story has completed its journey: "Conspiracy theory" → "Russian disinformation" → "Fact-checked" → Official government disclosure. For years, anyone asking questions was smeared and censored. Now the intelligence community itself acknowledges a vast US-funded biolab network.

Posted by the White House then immediately deleted

Who is more detrimental to civilized western society?