Why just "Greek Orthodox" Why not the other Eastern, Coptic, and Asian Orthodox Churches (Which are all one church).
And I will not judge an others religion
Protestant and Anabaptist's would be the closest. Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic have too many extra/non-biblical teachings and traditions, while Mormonism is the furthest, since it adds their own book to the Bible.
Each person is going to say that their religion is the closest. I certainly believe that Catholicism and Orthodox are the closest, followed closely by Anglican and Episcopalian.
The Orthodox are more faithful to the traditions of apostolic Christianity, while the Catholic Church is the only one faithful to Jesus' teaching regarding divorce. Mormons are better at keeping his commandment to evangelize and "pair up two by two" to preach the Gospel.
I think my point is that you should expect various answers since everyone will be coming with their own biases in mind as to which teachings are the most essential and require more obedience than others.
roman Catholicism and orthodox churches are part of the one catholic church but protestant churches are Anabaptist's or Mormons are not part of the ancient christian churches and they are man-made.. the christian apostolic churches are Orthodoxes and roman catholic.
But it is the Protestant & Roman Catholic that would be the top choice. Roman Catholic Church is about the oldest of them all too... & technically the Jews were the first to have the whole "Christian God" & then Catholics adopted it & then Christianity... But any way out of your whole list it would no doubt be the Roman Catholic Chruch.
Luke 9:49 And John, answering, said: Master, we saw a certain man casting out devils in your name: and we forbade him, because he follows not with us. 50 And Jesus said to him: Forbid him not: for he that is not against you is for you.
Well, obviously, adherents to each sect of Christianity will for the most part claim their own as the most faithful. But I say the differences are small overall.
The Orthodox include more than just the Greeks. As tradition goes the Orthodox are first and then the Roman Catholic a close second, then the Anglican and Lutheran. There is much to learn from each of these, especially the first two. Those churches who ignore this are really missing a great deal. There is great wisdom in the teaching of the Fathers of the Church and in the Saints, and what is called "Holy Tradition". Holy Tradition is passed down from generation to generation. It is not enough to look just to the Bible, that is only part of the foundation of Christianity.
Well, I'm neither, so perhaps you will take this as an objective opinion.
I would say the Greek Orthodox for a number of reasons. First, the New Testament was largely written in Greek, so there is less errors in their Bible due to the fact there has been less need for translation. An important example is the word "logos". In the fourth century, when St. Jerome was translating the Greek New Testament into Latin, he translated the word "logos" into the word "verb um". Today, we say "In the beginning was the Word," at the beginning of the Gospel of John, because "verb um" does mean "word." But "logos" means something closer to "ratio". So it should read "In the beginning was the Ratio, and the Ratio was with God, and the Ratio was God," even though that sounds a bit weird. It really means "the relationship between all things", which when you think about it makes a lot of sense. At least to me.
Another reason I'd say the Greek Orthodox is closer to the original teachings of Jesus is because they have four of the five ancient Holy Sees declared by the Emperor Justinian I to be the inheritors of apostolic authority, each church having been founded by one of the apostles of Jesus. Catholicism only has Rome, but it is true that Rome had the two most important apostles, Peter and Paul, both of whom were martyred in the city. Peter is also given extra clout as the first Pope, designated by Jesus Himself when he gave him the "keys to the kingdom." However, Greek Orthodoxy has Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. Basically, the early history of Church politics revolves around Rome grasping for more and more power, culminating in the Great Schism of 1054, which the two churches split for good. On a side note, I always found it interesting that was the year of a great supernova, recorded by both Native Americans and Chinese astronomers. Sign in the heavens, perhaps?
I'm not sure. Honestly i think the Christian Groups that think the World is going to End soon & ask their followers to give away all of their possessions. Are the most like the early Christians in the New Testament based on my understanding of it. People always try to point to certain passages to try to lessen the urgency of the message or the amount of attachments one is asked to give up when asked to follow Christ in the New Testament Texts. I think most Christians today would have thought that Jesus of Nazareth was a loony bird. And he was probably more like your Cult Leaders than any Pastor or Christian Religious Leader today which are probably more like the Pharisees & Scribes of Jesus's day. People seem to forget that Jesus of Nazareth was thought to have been considered a Heretic by those who followed the strict interpretation of Judaism during his time. According to what's passed down to us through the Centuries & is now in the Christian Scriptures. Jesus just flat out disturbed people. He said very harsh things at times to respectable Men & Women. And seemed to beat to his own drummer when it comes to his following of the Scriptures & the Laws of the Jewish God. I mean he was accused of Blasphemy.
So for a Group today to be the most like the early Christians they'd have to completely buck the establishment. Not care about material wealth or needs at all & live like Jesus is coming back to Judge Everyone before they die. And that's all that matters is to follow Jesus & his teachings before they die. Making money isn't important. One's career isn't important, Getting Married isn't important. Nothing & i mean nothing else is important except following Jesus & being ready when he comes like before you are even able to age 5 more years. You're on the hot seat & you've got to follow him now or it's all over & you'll miss a blissful eternity. And there's very few Christian Groups that have been around for a long time that act like that. Because those groups weren't really meant to last in my opinion.
(Matthew 28:19-20) .?.?.Go therefore and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit, 20?teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded YOU..?.?.
How?
(Matthew 24:14) .?.?.And this good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations; and then the end will come.
These religions don't preach as Jesus and his disciples did. They were all active, there wasn't a chosen group who preached.
(Acts 20:20) .?.?.while I did not hold back from telling YOU any of the things that were profitable nor from teaching YOU publicly and from house to house.
Mormons do this to some degree - but only the ones who decide to do a 2 year mission. Jesus and his disciples preached their whole lives.
Jesus also said the following quoting from Deuteronomy 5:9:
(Matthew 4:10) .?.?.Then Jesus said to him: ?Go away, Satan! For it is written, ?It is Jehovah your God you must worship, and it is to him alone you must render sacred service.?.?.?.
These religions mentioned above follow many doctrines and teachings made by men. In the verse here in Matthew 4 Jesus said 'it is written...' meaning that he relied heavily on the scriptures - not his own teachings and he made it clear that we are to worship only God. Sadly in many religions the leaders become the focus of the people and God's word is left behind or taken out of context for personal advantage.
I have a feeling that if Jesus did come back in judgment,
the very first thing on his agenda would be
to lay some righteous judgment on all organized religions.
According to the Bible,
that's exactly who he fought against while he was alive..
To evaluate the various churches, using something besides prayer, one must have a proper understanding of both the New Testament books, and of the various so-called stenography, and of the writings of the church fathers. There is no doubt at all, but what the various versions of the Catholic church have "evolved" over time, and the protestants even more so. When the Romans were putting Christians to death in the arenas for sport, the members felt pressure to change - to drop those parts of Christianity which the Romans considered offensive. There is ample evidence, that this is exactly what they did. For example, the Christian Mysteries, or "Gnosis" of the gnostic churches are mentioned throughout the stenographypahd also by many of the church fathers. This "gnosis" was the secret teachings of Christ during his 40-day post resurrection ministry. Most modern Christians have never even heard of them, but at one time they were considered the hallmark of the true Christian faith. Today, the only church that embraces this tradition is the Mormons.
After Judas died, a new apostle was called to fill his place. Over time, several new apostles were called to replace those that had died. Paul himself became an apostle after the death and resurrection of Christ. Why did this tradition end? Where are the modern apostles showing an unbroken line of authority back to the original apostles? None of the orthodox churches have a quorum of twelve apostles. In fact there is a huge gap in church history, precisely during that transition from apostle to pope in the first two centuries AD. The Catholic church (any of them) would have us believe that it continued unbroken from the days of the apostles, but history shows a huge gap after the death of the apostles. Once again, Mormons are one of the few major churches that believe in a living quorum of twelve apostles. They even claim to have received the authority from the resurrected Peter, James and John, who appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in 1829.
The period just after the death of the apostles could be rightly refered to as the Christian heresy wars. At least dozens, and perhaps hundreds of separate sects accused each other of heresy. We know that the Catholic church won the heresy wars, through torture and capital punishment, but we don't know which doctrines were the true heresies.
Protestants lose as they say so la Scripture but then say you have to believe in the Trinity (which isn't in the Bible). They baptize infants but don't do immersion baptism of adults. They say by grace alone which is in direct conflict of the teachings in the Bible.
Joseph Smith was a con man. People paid him money to find treasures. His excuse for not finding treasure was it was guarded by spirits. He was arrested as a "juggler," or "con man." He was brought before a justice of the peace. The judge ascertained that there was enough evidence to try him. This was in Bainbridge, N.Y., in 1826, The judge was Albert Neely. Smith was labeled a "glass looker". The evidence against Smith was sufficient that, if Smith had not left town, he would have been judged guilty. Smith then went on and fabricated the Book of Mormon. He got his idea for the book from Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews, or "The Tribes of Israel in America".He supposedly used a pair of spectacles to "translate" the plates for the Book of Mormon, friends and relatives said he used the same stone he used in his former money digging scheme.The gold plates never existed according to a witness. An early Mormon convert heard Harris say "I never saw the plates."
Details can be found in "Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon", by David Persuitte.
There has not been found one piece of archaeological evidence to support the story of ancient America found in the Book of Mormon. In the 1950s, the LDS church financed "the largest archaeological project ever funded by a religious institution" It was successful in that it uncovered an enormous amount of archaeological information about ancient America, but as far as providing any evidence for the Book of Mormon, it was a failure. That has not been changed by any subsequent archaeological findings.
In his book, Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church, Simon G. Southerton shows that the American natives show no evidence of Israelite descent, which contradicts what the Book of Mormon says.
Joseph Smith had an eye for women, so he instituted plural marriage and took over 50 wives, some of them the wives of other men.
Mormon doctrine:
God was once a man He has a body of flesh and bone and lives on a planet near the star Kolob. The sun gets its light from the Kolob. God has at least one wife, our "Mother in Heaven," but she is so holy that we are not to discuss her nor pray to her. We can become like God and rule over our own universe. There are many gods. In the highest degree of the celestial kingdom men have more than one wife. A righteous Mormon will see the face of God in the Mormon temple. If a Gentile becomes Mormon, the Holy Ghost actually purges his Gentile blood and replaces it with Israelite blood.
. Jesus was married. Jesus and Satan are brothers, They are our brothers. We are spirit children of Heavenly Father. Jesus was conceived by God by having sex with Mary. We should not pray to Jesus. The "Lord" in the Old Testament is Jesus in the New Testament, but different from "God the Father". Christ will not return to earth in any year that has seen a rainbow.
Before coming to this earth we lived as spirits in a "Prue-existence", in which we were tested. Dark skin is a curse from God, the result of our sin or our ancestors sin. If righteous, a dark-skinned person will become light-skinned. Not only will humans be resurrected to eternal life, but also all animals.
All humans before the Flood lived in the western hemisphere. The Ark transported Noah to the eastern hemisphere. Mormons should avoid traveling on water, Satan rules the waters. You can identify a false angel by the color of his hair, or by offering to shake his hand.
American Indians are "descendants of Lehi", but there is not a hint of the Hebrew language in any of the Indian dialects. The Garden of Eden was in Missouri.The Book of Mormon says that Lehi found horses in America. Horses did not exist in the Americas until the 16Th century. The Book of Mormon says that Nephi had a bow of steel. Jews did not have steel in this time period and iron was not smelted in the Americas until Spaniard arrived. The book of Mormon mentions "swords and cimeters." Scimitars were not around until the rise of Islam (500A.D.) The Book of Mormon mentions silk. This did not exist in the Americas at this time.
In D&C 130:3 it says, "The idea that the Father and the Son dwell in a man's heart is an old sectarian notion, and is false."
Which tradition of Christianity is most faithful to the teachings of Christ: Greek Or
