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Tell, where you can read in the Bible that God has appointed to worship the bones, the bodies of the dead people, though they’ve had the righteous life?
There is only one answer: nowhere, since God said the converse:
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Leviticus 21.1
And the LORD said to Moses,
"Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them:
No one shall make himself unclean for the dead among his people."
Leviticus 21.11
He shall not go in to any dead bodies nor make himself unclean,
even for his father or for his mother.
Numbers 19.16
Whoever in the open field touches someone
who was killed with a sword or who died naturally,
or touches a human bone or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.
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| 2. |
What should you do if the desecration has happened?
You should call for a priest who will consecrate with the holy water the dwelling and people, who have been desecrated, as it is said:
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Numbers 19.18
Then a clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water
and sprinkle it on the tent and on all the furnishings
and on the persons who were there and on whoever touched the bone,
or the slain or the dead or the grave.
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Therefore, such a tradition has preserved in some regions: after the funeral all the people have to wash their hands before enter the house and start the funeral repast, and the priests consecrate the house, relatives and all around. As it was in Ukraine from the establishment of Christianity until recently, when Ukraine fell under the Russian Empire’s power, wherefrom the sinful tradition of worshipping, praying to relics and buying them came to Ukraine.
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| 3. |
Why the present Orthodox Church, for the most part, teaches the things that are nastily to God? Is it not a sin that the clergy cut the flesh of the saints into pieces and sell for the big sums of money to people and clergymen, who afterwards sew that pieces up in the antimensions and put inside the crosses? And afterwards they even serve the Divine Liturgy on that antimensions and invoke to the Holy Spirit to descend upon the gifts, which are bread and wine and which are put inside that antimensions. Isn’t it nastily for the Holy Spirit to descend upon the desecrated to bless bread and wine into Divine Body and Blood, when God forbade touching the dead, even holy in order not to desecrate?
So God said to such careless clergymen:
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Micah 3.2
You who hate the good and love the evil,
who tear the skin from off my people
and their flesh from off their bones.
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Indeed, if you visit Kyiv-Pecherska Laura, then you’ll see what the monks have done with the relics of the reverend and saints. Many of them have their extremities cut and sold for the large sums of money.
Or the Greeks rent the parts of saints’ bodies to Ukraine for the monks of Kyiv-Pecherska Laura to cash in on the unconscientious crowd that worship the relics, on the right hand of John the Forerunner, while he was beheaded, on the head of apostle Andrew the First-Called, while he was just crucified by his enemies and all the parts of his body should be together. They tear the saints into pieces because one body – it’s already not enough for all. Indeed nobody knows, maybe the Greeks have rented the same one head of Andrew the First-Called to Serbia and Africa. Why is this mockery at the bodies of saints?
And some priests in Ukraine, wishing to make a fortune, send the relics of martyr Varvara all around the country raising such enormous sums of money that no bully would be able to raise that. And it is rather doubtful as for the relics of martyr Varvara, whether the staff of People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs didn’t substitute or destroy them.
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Micah 3.3
You who eat the flesh of my people,
and flay their skin from off them,
and break their bones in pieces
and chop them up like meat in a pot,
like flesh in a cauldron.
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| 4. |
Don’t people make a mistake, worshipping the dead body and thinking that in that way they serve to living God? Is it possible to get the everlasting life through the worship the dead? Is it possible even to get the healing of body when they can’t get it from God? So one ought to cure a soul to get the healing of a body, and here it’s like you can get it for free, therefore the desecrations happen.
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1 Corinthians 15.50
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,
nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Leviticus 19.31
Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out,
and so make yourselves unclean by them:
I am the LORD your God.
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| 5. |
Archangel Michael forbade Satan to promulgate the relics of Moses, for Jews not to worship the body of Moses, who was the carrier of God’s will, and not to set Moses before God. But Satan managed to introduce that in the Orthodox Church. Now Satan promulgates the bodies of other saints and thousands of people go to bow to them. And Church makes solemnity of it. Moreover, it secures big profit. Don’t you think that the bodies of saint people deserve repose? How would you take it, if after your death your body would be cut and torn into pieces and people start to sell it and worship it? Don’t you see meanness in this towards you and the Holy Spirit?
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Jude 1.9
But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil,
was disputing about the body of Moses,
he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment,
but said, "The Lord rebuke you."
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And the evidence of God’s prohibition is that the body of Moses isn’t found even today.
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Deuteronomy 34.6
And he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-peor;
but no one knows the place of his burial to this day.
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| 6. |
How Jesus treats such clergymen, who profiteer in the bodies of saints in different ways?
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Matthew 23.29
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you are like whitewashed tombs,
which outwardly appear beautiful,
but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.
So you also outwardly appear righteous to others,
but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you build the tombs of the prophets and
decorate the monuments of the righteous…"
John 6.51
I am the living bread that came down from heaven.
If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.
And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.
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| 7. |
Who take the Holy Lord’s Gifts not only symbolically but with belief and in the Holy Spirit and with the good deeds, he will indeed abide in God and God will abide in him.
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So the second God’s Commandment says:
You shall not make for yourself an idol,
whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above,
or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;
You shall not bow down to them or worship them.
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One should hold the relics in respect but not worship them.
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