"When the government fears God, the people are free. When the people fear government, God is forgotten."
— St. Lavrentiy of Chernigov
stole this from @Bitko
From a book Frederica Matthews-Green (her husband is a priest) is working on:
When the Temple was destroyed (AD 70), Christians didn’t need to make up a whole new kind of prayer service. They already knew how God wanted to be worshiped, because he’d told Moses in great detail.
Those instructions, in Exodus 25-30, are certainly demanding. Even though the Hebrew people were still refugees, wandering in the desert and living in tents, God required them to offer worship that was lavishly beautiful. He told Moses to craft a portable temple, and to furnish it with incense, oil lamps, bells, gold, silver, precious stones, blue and purple cloth, vestments, embroidery, anointing oil, images of angels, and an altar.
You’ll find all those things in an Orthodox church today.
