The Church of Christ

The Orthodox Church is the True Apostolic Church of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who founded His Church through His Apostles. By the grace of the Holy Spirit received at Pentecost, the Apostles established the Church throughout the ancient world. For a millennium, Orthodox Christendom was undivided, under the leadership of the Bishops of the five Apostolic Patriarchates: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

Over time, however, the Patriarchate of Rome introduced various heresies, such as changing the Nicene Creed, claiming supremacy of the Pope of Rome over the other Bishops, promoting the false doctrine of purgatory. These and other innovations,unhistorical and unsupported by either Holy Scripture or Holy Tradition, resulted in the separation 0f Rome from the historical and true Church of Christ, the common date of this separation being 1054.

Drifting further from its‘ origins, continuing to introduce innovations, the Western church in the 16‘h century was shattered into a myriad of sects by the Protestant Reformation. Also in that century, Rome introduced the Gregorian calendar, in direct contradiction to the tradition of the Church, which followed the Julian calendar. In Greece, Russia, the Balkans, the Middle East, and elsewhere, however, the True Apostolic Church of Christ continued to flourish, preserving the Faith of Christ pure and unchanged.