From Russia With Love

holy ryssia

by Gary Summers I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. Matthew 16:18  My journey to Orthodoxy began about 12 years ago in St Petersburg, Russia.  My wife and I were there in the process of adopting two children when I toured the ancient Orthodox cathedral of St [...]

Reformed Calvinist Converts To Orthodoxy

Turning-point

By Allison Bennett I grew up in a fundamentalist “Bible church” that loved God and had a clear desire to serve him, but I questioned why my church was so isolated from other Christians. By the time I graduated from high school I found something in the more historical faith of Reformed Presbyterianism but still [...]

My Search for the Truth: Part 17

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by Tamara Schmerse This is the final installment of Tamara’s delightful story about her journey to the Orthodox faith and it is absolutely captivating. We published it in it’s entirety as a series from her blog, My Search For The Truth. Judging from the responses from you, the readers, it has been well received. Thank [...]

My Search For The Truth: Part 16

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by Tamara Schmerse Part 16 of 17. 16: Roman Catholicism In the lead-up to Reformation Day, my beloved History Channel had been screening many Lutheran documentaries, and now that it had passed, they were now, for better or worse, focusing on the Roman Catholic Church. I watched shows for and against, and ironically, it was [...]

My Search For The Truth: Part 15

LutherSeal

by Tamara Schmerse Part 15 of 17. 15: Lutheranism And so there I was again, sitting in between my computer, my Bibles and my Foxtel remote, with no idea of how to proceed further in my search for the Truth. I looked back over my previous few months: I had studied with Jews, and come [...]

My Search For The Truth: Part 14

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by Tamara Schmerse Part 14 of 17. 14: Islam While I had been sniffing around the adherents.com website, I could not help but notice the next most populous group. 1.5 billion people in the world followed the teachings of Islam. And while I had been brought up to believe that the reason their religion was [...]

My Search For The Truth: Part 13

judaism

13: Judaism Part 13 of 17. I had begun to feel that the Torah was where the answers were at. A few well-timed Jewish documentaries on the History Channel added to my growing doubt about Jesus being the real Messiah. Along came a young man on Facebook who seemed to smell my moment of weakness [...]

My Search For The Truth: Part 12

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12: The Union of Chanochian Netzarim Yisraelites  Part 12 of 17. So back to Facebook it was with a mind that was in some ways more open, in others more closed, and in most, more confused and impatient. Being like the Ethiopian eunuch, before that fateful trip to Jerusalem, I fervently searched the Scriptures daily [...]

My Search For The Truth: Part 7

Anglican Communion, compass rose

by Tamara Schmerse Anglican Part 7 of 17 The defining moment came while I was sitting in a wooden pew of Paul Church, looking out the faraway window upon the sprawling lawns and jagged cliffs of Mousehole. The thought occurred to me that many of my family members must have stared out that same window [...]

How an Icon Brought a Calvinist to Orthodoxy

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By Robert K. Arakaki A Journey to Orthodoxy It was my first week at seminary. Walking down the hallway of the main dorm, I saw an icon of Christ on a student’s door. I thought: “An icon in an evangelical seminary?! What’s going on here?” Even more amazing was the fact that Jim’s background was [...]