Dear Editor,
It was a joy to read Wallace Benn’s article on questioning whether we are only willing to follow Jesus up to a point. He asks if faithfulness to the Word of God and the gospel of Christ is at stake are we willing to lose everything and look to God to vindicate that?
This question relates to the current state of the Anglican Church but I would like to apply this question to those who are being drawn to the Eastern Orthodox Church referencing recent correspondence on the FIEC congregation in Halifax and also the growing Orthodox church in my area. I write as someone who has conducted a large number of missions in most Eastern European countries.
The cost for Orthodox believers converting to evangelicalism is great. This is because they are taught that salvation is in the church and the priest is practically their intermediary. Indeed often members who lose loved ones pay the priest to pray for their salvation.
The key question is that of authority. Is it the Bible or is it the priest? A number of years ago the Gospel Coalition reported that a man named Theron left an evangelical church for the Eastern Orthodox Church. His reason was that having lost authority in Scripture he had to find it elsewhere.
Forgive me straying from Wallace Benn’s article but it does lead to ask if we are prepared to nail our colours to a mast which absolutely and only takes authority from the Bible and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Yours sincerely,
Fane Conant
Church Stretton, Shropshire
