Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism. 

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written. 

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.



August 4, 2010

ICA Reveals A PASOK Plot Against Vatopaidi


A Document By the Institute of Chartered Accountants Reveals the Plot Set Up By PASOK Around the So-called “Vatopaidi Scandal”

They will be getting rid of one, fifty will come after him.

The PASOK government is in power for almost ten months and no one is yet able to tell us objectively how the state was hurt by the land exchanges with the Great and Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi. Is this a coincidence? I do not think so, since the only body accredited worldwide for its objective property valuations is the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICA). That is the reason why in cases of discrepancy between the valuations of a citizen and the state, the law gives the former the right to apply to the ICA, because its valuation is binding on the Inland Revenue!

Yesterday, it was revealed that not one, not two, but four valuations have been carried out by the ICA which indicate the same thing: The state did not undervalue the land to be exchanged so that the monastery would benefit! The only case where excessive value may have been achieved concerns the few pieces of exchanged land which underwent a change of use from forest land to a building plot. But this is another matter.

Since PASOK did not like the ICA valuations, the Ministry of Finance, under the instructions of Papakonstantinou, sent a letter to the ICA trying to negate their conclusions because they show nothing reprehensible. The ICA’s reply was a catapult!

The state instructed ICA to carry out two valuations before March 2009. They showed nothing inappropriate. As soon as the ‘scandal’ was in full swing, the ICA at its own initiative requested a foreign, rival Institution to carry out its own valuation: The result was the same. Nothing reprehensible.

At the same time the monastery instructed the biggest foreign institution worldwide to value the land. The result was exactly the same: Nothing inappropriate!

Therefore, even though four objective valuations exist from the proper authorities, PASOK continues to ignore them. In order to blow up the value of the exchanged pieces, it takes into account the valuations of DOY (Deparment of Financial Services), which according to the ICA only take into account the ‘objective’ as opposed to the ‘real value’ of the land. It is well known that the two values are not comparable especially in relation to forest land, whose ‘objective’ value is up to six times the ‘real’!

Here is the reply given by ICA to the last PASOK attempt to nullify its conclusions:

Notice that in the correspondence between the Ministry of Finance and the ICA, the Ministry talks about the Vatopedi scandal, while the ICA, which is not ‘everyone’s coffee shop’, uses inverted commas around the word ‘scandal’!

One wonders what is the real purpose behind the investigation when the Ministry ( i.e. the state) agrees with PASOK and calls the case a ‘scandal’? Whom are they kidding?

Source: DEXI EXTREM/ OLYMPIA

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