On being an Orthodox Christian

By Michael Pravica

There is a popular saying among the Serbs: "Teško biti Srbin" (it's difficult to be a Serb) that I frequently heard as a child but never really understood until I sought, as an activist, to help give near totally censored Serbians and Serbian-Americans a voice in the United States.  But then again, neither did I understand the true meaning of being an Orthodox Christian until I witnessed and continue to witness the persecution of Orthodox Christians all over the world including, shamefully, here in the United States - a nation that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and whose founding fathers were very keen to separate Church from the State. 

As Russians and Serbians are largely Orthodox Christians and who have collectively suffered the most in the 20^th Century (with more than 26 million slaughtered just during WWII), the most recent efforts among Western "elites" to destroy them are becoming even more blatantly obvious.   These elites/globalists don't like Orthodox Christians because of their stubborn Faith in God, the Creator of our Universe, Who transcends our Universe and, as stated even in the US Declaration of Independence, God gives us our freedom and certain inalienable and fundamental rights which cannot be revoked by humans. 

When you remove God from the equation, you can enslave humans by removing their hope.  Thus, we are witnessing relentless efforts to negotiate, relativize, dilute, destroy, and otherwise transform (via false ecumenism) the Orthodox Christianity that was passed on to humanity by Jesus Christ to ultimately turn it upside down and throw God out of human affairs.  Then, as people worship the Golden Calf of materialism (just as the Nazis and Soviets replaced God with Hitler and Stalin respectively), they become firmly rooted in four-dimensional spacetime and thus more manageable, controllable, and enslavable.

I can understand the efforts of some Islamic and German leaders (e.g.) to destroy Orthodox Christianity given the horrible and barbaric track record of both groups persecuting Orthodox Christians.  For example, the only leader of a major religion to be incarcerated by the Nazis was Patriarch Gavrilo along with Saint (then Bishop) Nikolai Velimirovich during WWII for their strong anti-Nazi feelings and statements.  However, I must admit that I am astonished to see my own country, the United States, which was founded upon Judeo-Christian principles and the notion of religious tolerance and separation of religion from state, do the same.   We intervened one-sidedly in the Yugoslav civil wars to support the anti-Orthodox Christian sides.  We have created an Islamic terrorist safe haven in Kosovo - the spiritual Jerusalem and heart of the Serbian Orthodox Faith - by stealing the 1300 year old Serbian province from Serbia and protecting racist Islamic terrorists, many of whom committed horrible crimes (such as organ trafficking) against the Serbians residing there and against my own fellow Americans.  Bill Clinton bombed the Serbs during Orthodox Easter in 1999 (just as the Nazis did in April 1941) but of course, NATO offered a cease fire during Ramadan when illegally bombing Libya.  When the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Manhattan was destroyed in the 9/11 bombings in one of the most potent groundbreaking episodes of American history, New York City leaders were quick to approve the construction of a Muslim "cultural center" but took over a decade to approve the reconstruction of the Orthodox Church at the heart of the "Bull" (Golden Calf/Ground Zero).  These collective actions demonstrate how some US leaders view Orthodox Christians despite their tremendous contributions to America over the past two centuries including those made by one of the greatest inventors/scientists of all time: Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American who is largely considered the godfather of the 20^th century and beyond and whose father was a Serbian Orthodox Priest.

The ultimate irony is that Americans and Serbians have many similarities as they both broke free from imperialistic tyrannies (British Empire and Ottoman Empire respectively), celebrate battles that were both lost (Bunker Hill in 1775 and Kosovo Polje in 1389) but gave hope to successful resistance, both fought valiantly against fascism as allies in both world wars, and both nations have been attacked by Islamic extremists.  Just as the Serbs are being persecuted for their love of freedom (which is integral to their Orthodox Christian faith), America as the vanguard of freedom and democracy is also being attacked by globalists who want to break down national sovereignty in favor of the "one world"/ supranational "concept" wherein an unelected "elite" rule mercilessly over all peoples, where borders are meaningless, and where all humans worship money and trade their freedom for "safety."

Jesus Christ did warn us that true believers would be severely persecuted for their Faith.  Today's truly Faithful exist in places such as in Kosovo where NATO is preparing the "final solution" for Serbian Orthodox Christians and thus they must be doing something right.   It should thus come as no surprise that those who seek to create a "New" World Order based on the laws of the jungle (might makes right) would first seek to rescind the moral foundation that separate humans from animals (who, as far as we know, live only in four dimensional spacetime and in the present).  Thus, Orthodox Christianity is the primary target because it is immutable and gives its believers hope in an everlasting future and realization that there is much more to God's miracle of life and consciousness than meets the eye in our constrained, tiny, seemingly inconsequential, and temporal world.

Last December, there were two nearly simultaneous events that could no better illustrate the striking contrast and clash between the temporal and spiritual worlds.  In the first, we had Black Friday in the US  where fellow Americans jostled with one another to worship on the altar of the Golden Calf purchasing "cheap" goods largely made in China (to end up in the trash heap a few months later) and pepper spraying one another to engorge on material goods. In the second event, thousands of Russian Orthodox Christians waited patiently on a cold, dark night in Moscow to revere a relic from Mary, the Mother of God. Perhaps there is hope yet for humanity.   

I will never forget an occasion when I was visiting my wife's relatives in central Serbia in 2009 and they took me to a small wooden Church literally in the middle of a forest - accessible by only dirt roads.  They explained to me that the Ottoman Turks (who subjugated much of the Balkans for over 500 years) forbade Serbs to worship.   The Serbs in this region then constructed this hidden Orthodox Church (along with thousands of other Churches and Monasteries throughout Serbia) without the knowledge of the Ottoman authorities, worshipping in secret.  The Turks also burned the relics of Saint Sava, the founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church, in 1595 believing that the Serbs would forget him and ultimately convert to Islam.  But they haven't forgotten and in fact, they constructed the largest Church of any kind (known as "Vracar") in the Balkans (and the largest Orthodox Church in the world barring St. Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople which was stolen and desecrated by the Turks) on the site where the great Saint's relics were burned.

The more that the West persecutes Orthodox Christians, the more they will revere their heritage and the more tightly they will cling to their Faith.  This reverence for the Faith and for one's country ("God and Country") has been fanatically condemned by the Western "free and fair" mainstream corporate-owned media as "nationalism."   In America, we call this "patriotism" - love of one's country and the principles upon which it was founded - which is now a very bad word in "globalspeak."

We, citizens of the world, should all be deeply worried by the persecution of Orthodox Christians and other Christians by the US and other Western Christian-majority "democracies" where the majority are somehow persecuted by a very organized and very wealthy minority as it is a harbinger of impending persecution of all other freedom-loving peoples who will be similarly targeted.  By removing all moral barriers and restraint (but of course restricting the fundamental right to worship as one chooses) within humanity, we create a "new" world order that enables chaos and gives the globalist "elite" a free hand to enslave all humanity. 

Indeed:  "Tesko biti Srbin."

Michael Pravica, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Physics
University of Nevada, Las Vegas