Thirty years ago Saint Porphyrios said to Metropolitan Neophytos of Morphou:

“You will see, my son, that when you pass your 50th year [the Metropolitan is now 58 years old] that God has a plan to change the ‘crew’ of the ship.”

“I said to him, what do you mean, Geronda, the “crew of the ship”?. . .”

“The ship of Christ is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, Orthodox Church. Only this Church.,” he tells me. “Whoever is a ‘captain,’ whether he be a patriarch, an abbot, a priest, a deacon...He will change them if they are not doing their job well. He will allow a variety of events to happen - sicknesses, earthquakes, floods, and a massive war...and after all of this there will come a great peace with the NEW crew of the ship, which Christ will bring. And in the crew it is not only the captains, but also the simple people.”

And Metropolitan Neophytos continues:

“Doesn’t is make an impression on you how many faithful from among such as the singers, actors, etc., which the church goers did not have in great estimation, as coming from a place of sinfulness, now come and confess their faith and work for the sake of Orthodoxy, and we have bishops which are afraid to say clearly, ‘come my children to the Church and don’t be afraid’.... Oh, my bishop!, oh, my father!, Christ is sending us a fantastic opportunity to teach the people how to repent for particular sins and we are talking about how to protect ourselves and live another 20 or so years!...and yet we will nevertheless die!. . . Our problem is repentance, forgiveness of sins and eternal life! . . . The hierarchy needs to be talking about this - our life after death (a death which lasts all of 2 seconds); afterwards?...our eternal life. . .”

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This is our translation of an excerpt from this radio interview, posted today (Nov. 21) online (on You Tube): “Neophytos of Morphou: What did Saint Porphyrios say about the Crew of the Church?”