Macedonia is a key country in the spread of the message of “I AM,” or the knowledge of who Jesus is. It once was a province of the Roman Empire and borders Greece to the north.
The Apostle Paul, author of much of the New Testament epistles, was a traveling church planter. One night he dreamed of a man waving to him pleading, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Paul went. (Acts 16:6-10) He landed in Philippi and began telling the good news of Jesus, the message “I AM,” for the first time in Europe.
After leaving, Paul returned twice to visit Philippi, and also wrote the Philippian church a letter just past 60 A.D., which is now part of the New Testament—Philippians.
Paul also traveled to Thessalonika, later penning them a letter too, now know as the Thessalonian epistle.
The Macedonian Orthodox Church has the oldest Christian traditions of any church in Europe. Though there have been movements to drop the title “Macedonian” from the church’s name, their Archbishop Stefan maintains that “Macedonian” will remain.
To honor the Word of God, which includes “Macedonia” as the first entrance of the Gospel to Europe, this church has kept its title.
After the fall of the western portion of the Roman Empire, the eastern half continued as the Byzantine Empire, which included the Macedonian Orthodox Church.
In 862 A.D., two brothers who were also Christian missionaries, Cyril and Methodius, developed the earliest form of the Cyrillic Script to help spread Christianity throughout Eastern Europe among the Slavic-speaking peoples. They translated the Greek Scriptures into the Slavic language and its new alphabet. These two brothers influenced culture and literacy across Eastern Europe. Cyril and Methodius were born in Thessalonika—they were Macedonians.
God uses language, both the spoken and the written, to unite the church and carry forward the message of Jesus, the “I AM.”
The Macedonian tongue is Slavic as well. It incorporates the Cyrillic alphabet, even in its Bible. This alphabet is yet in use in other Slavic languages and in Russian.
Today, there are approximately 260 million Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide. God has used two Macedonian brothers, members of the Eastern Orthodox Church, to influence and create a foundation of Christ throughout Eastern Europe and into Russia which remains to this day.
Listen to Macedonian, the language of early believers: