Daniel Bambang Dwi Byantoro

Byantoro was born to a middle-class family in Indonesia.[2]. He was brought up by his maternal grandfather. He studied the Koran, and received Islamic teaching. According to his claim, he was converted to Charismatic Christianity, when Christ appeared to him during his evening Islamic prayers.[2]

In 1978, he studied in Protestant Theological Seminary, the Asian Center for Theological Studies and Mission, (ACTS) in Seoul, South Korea. In 1982, he found The Orthodox Church by Kallistos Ware in a bookshop in Seoul, who introduced the Orthodox Church to him. On September 6, 1983, he converted to the Orthodox Church with the blessing of Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Patriarch Demetrios and Metropolitan Bishop Dionysius of New Zealand and crismated by Archimandrite Sotirios Trambas (Zelon Bishop, serving in Korea).[3]

He graduated from Korea, and went to Greece, the United States, before returning to Indonesia.[3]

On June 8, 1988, Byantoro began ministry in Indonesia. The first person who he converted to Orthodox Church was an ex-Muslim man named Muhammed Sugi Bassari, baptized as Photios, on April 1989.[3]

Theologically speaking, Archimandrite Daniel Byantoro has used the existing thought patterns of Indonesian culture to package Orthodox teaching within the Indonesian mental set up. Just as the Church Fathers had to face Greek paganism, Judaism, and Gnosticism in order to present the Gospel intelligibly to ancient peoples, Orthodox theology faces similar challenges in the context of the Indonesian mission. Those challenges are the Islamic strand that has similarities with Judaism, the Hindu-Buddhistic strand that has similarities with Greek paganism, the Javanese-mystical strand called "Kebatinan" (the "Esoteric Belief") that has similarities to Gnosticism. (It is a blend of ancient shamanistic-animism on the one hand and Hindu-Buddhistic mysticism and Islamic Sufism on the other, and is divided into many mystical denominations and groups, just like Gnosticism was.), and the secularistic-materialistic strand of the modern world.[4][5]