Eli Bear
A rock star, atheist, Marxist, world-class theologian, African missionary, and a Greek Orthodox Bishop all in one lifetime? Bishop Themistocles Adamopoulo’s life story reads more like a bestselling novel than a biography.Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Bishop Themi’s family emigrated to Australia in the 1950s. In the 1960s, Themi was the bass player for The Flies, a Beatles-type band that took Australia by storm for two years. Then he entered Melbourne University and became an academic star and a neo-Marxist social activist.After a personal tragedy, Themi sank into a fog of hippie confusion. His rock star, atheist persona was shattered. Then one night in Eltham, Australia, changed his life forever. Over a few months, a series of Divine visions changed a young man from a lost soul into a servant of Jesus Christ. He studied theology, languages, and Biblical studies at some of the most prestigious universities in Australia and America, including Brown, Princeton, and Harvard. Themi became an elite Biblical scholar, able to read Coptic, Aramaic, and Hebrew and fluently speak English, French, and Greek.In the late 1990s, Themi again questioned his life’s direction. Was he serving Christ best as a top-tier academic? A series of events led him to follow another path, serving the poor in his native Africa.Themi founded the Holy Orthodox Mission in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 2008. Over the past fourteen years, Bishop Themi has battled Ebola, the indifference of much of the developed world to African poverty, and the ruinous impact of centuries of racism and colonialism to feed, educate and offer the love of Christ to thousands of West African men, women, and children.Bishop Themi Adamopoulo’s life story is a reminder that there are real Christian heroes in this all too often phony world. Themi is the genuine article, someone who truly embraces Christ’s greatest commandment, to love one another as He loved us.
