Prophetic Words Spoken to the Russian People

PROPHETIC WORDS SPOKEN TO THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE
Vadim Vinogradov

From the prophet to the priest - all act falsely; they heal the wounds of My people frivolously, saying, “Peace! Peace!” but there is no peace.  Are they ashamed, committing abominations??  No, they are not ashamed at all, nor do they blush. (Jer. 6:13-15)

This prophecy sounds over Russia today as never before, proclaiming the spirit of our time.

Yes, we must say with bitter tears, it is precisely today that the wounds of the people of the Russian Federation are being healed frivolously.  It is precisely today that they are not ashamed and do not blush, acting falsely, committing abominations, from the bishop to the priest.

"How cunning and crafty Satan is, in order to destroy Russia, he fanned ignorance and depravity in it through higher and secondary educational institutions, through malicious writers, through the so-called intelligentsia"
                    (Holy  Righteous John of Kronstadt)

But the main trick of Satan in relation to Russia was not revealed even to the holy righteous John of Kronstadt during his earthly life.  Only time gives the opportunity, clearly, if not in full, then at least in part, to come closer to a true understanding of what happened.

The main cunning of Satan in relation to Russia was revealed only after the time of the Soviet advisors ended in Russia and Russia plunged into the darkness of liberalism, when after the Soviet destruction of churches, church buildings again shone with the gold of their domes.

It seemed to everyone that the destruction of churches by the Soviet advisors was destroying the Orthodox Faith in Russia.  But it was not so at all – with the destruction of churches by the Soviet advisors and the appearance of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, the Orthodox Faith in Russia experienced such a spiritual upsurge that Holy Rus' had never seen in its entire millennium.  For: Persecution and oppression are useful to us, for they strengthen the faith (Venerable Nikon of Optina)

And all who wish to live piously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. (2 Cor. 3:12).   How can we deal with this –  They will be persecuted?  So, was it not at this moment of terrible waves of God-fighting and terrible persecution of Christianity that the true Church of Christ lived in Russia, and not its substitute, not its ghost, not its double?

What shall we ask of the Lord for persecution? NOTHING!

Because: Not as I will, but as You will. (Matthew 26)

And with the believing Russian people during the Soviet period there was the very thing that was best described by the Apostle Paul:

We are oppressed on every side, but not constrained; we are in desperate circumstances, but we do not despair; we are persecuted, but not abandoned; we are cast down, but not destroyed.  (2 Cor. 4:8-9)

Here it is, the true church life, and therefore true freedom.

She is all in the patience of sorrows.  And there is no other true life of the Church.

Then they will deliver you up to torture and kill you; and you will be hated of all nations for My name's sake.  (Matthew 24:9)

And all who desire to live piously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.  (2 Cor. 3:12)

It seems that these prophetic teachings are today considered by the Sergians to be insignificant, not worthy of attention, otherwise, why is their attitude to the Soviet Union so un-Christian?

And here is the WAR, called the Great Patriotic War.

What else the Russian soul retained by this time was the great Russian self-sacrifice - the readiness to lay down one's life for one's friends.  It was precisely thanks to the self-sacrifice of the Russian people that the Lord gave them this Victory.

- 26 million dead - to this day, liberals together with Sergianists are foisting the horrors of this war on today's schoolchildren.

And why don't they talk about the fact that these 26 million souls were the second exodus to the Kingdom of Heaven after the New Martyrs and Confessors of the remnants of Holy Rus', washed in blood at the front and laid down their souls for their friends in the rear?

The schoolchildren of the Russian Federation, confused by liberals, senselessly repeat today:

- Thank you, Grandpa, for the victory!

But a hundred years before that, in Rus', they used to say about the Victory:

- Not to us, not to us, but to Your Name!

This is also an expressive sign of the times, of the century ending - to see the war not in a spiritual light. But in order to understand the Russian soul during this war, it is enough to at least listen attentively to the war songs of that time, first of all to the songs of Bulat Ogudzhava.

But after 1945, self-sacrifice gradually began to leave the Russian soul and be replaced by... concern for the arrangement of one's earthly life, which strengthened fearfulness in the soul – a sin placed by the Lord first in the series of deadly sins (Rev. 21:8).  Fearfulness of what?

And the fear of losing one's power, one's earthly advantages.

And by 1991, the thirst for freedom to please the flesh reached such a level that all the prerequisites for the Criminal Revolution, the revolution of universal perversion, appeared, which did happen.  In spiritual terms, its significance is explained by the second, more terrible transfer of Job into the hands of Satan:  He is in your hand only….. That is, the Russian soul was sent a disease, the essence of which is no longer the belief in lies.  [And there will be a bridle in the jaws of the people, leading to error (Isaiah 30:28)], as in the first transfer of the Russian soul to Satan, but the search for lies – Sons of men, why seek you lies? (Psalm 4:4)

This search for lies is especially bright and clear today on countless television talk shows, where the so-called political scientists, convinced that Russia is not governed by the right hand of God, but by earthly calculations, what is called foaming at the mouth, are looking for who is to blame and what to do with them.

And so what was also predicted in the Scripture happened - a person becomes devoted to abomination and lies (Rev. 21:27). Truth is suppressed by unrighteousness. (Rom. 1:18).

The truth of God is replaced by lies. (Rom. 1:25).

And now a person already believes a lie.  And then he can no longer live without it and simply begins to look for lies.

And the Sergians, as they say, don't give a damn about all this.

And all this was accomplished by the servants of Satan through temptations to please the flesh, about which the holy apostle Paul warned: You were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for pleasing the flesh, but through love serve one another. (1 Pet. 2:16; 1 Cor. 8:9)

Thus: This prophetic word chastises us even now. (Theodoret)

To sum it up, we conclude: This century ended with the fact that – The thirst for Absolute Truth has disappeared, it has been swallowed up by worldliness. (Hieromonk Seraphim Rose)

So, with the onset of the time of liberalism in Russia, they began to restore church buildings and gild the domes.  Now, when the time has come to destroy the very spirit of the Orthodox faith!

And you will never hear in Butovo that anyone would recall here, during the anger poured out on  the Boldheviks, the word of the New Martyrs:

- When they blame the Soviet government for taking away churches and religious objects from the Church, then they should not blame it, but themselves.

We were bad Christians, we were believers only in name, and therefore God took away our right to manage churches and their accessories; and the Soviet power is only an instrument of God's wrath.

And therefore we must protest not against the Soviet power, but against ourselves and become true and impartial Christians.

We have lost the main value – God, and therefore He took away from us secondary religious values ​​– churches and so on.  (Holy Martyr Roman Medved)

Temples are... a secondary religious value.

And so, today churches have become a value... of primary importance!

The result?  The desire to boast, like the Apostle Paul, ... only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. 6:14) is not present in the current clergy. The current clergy does not boast in the cross of the Lord Christ, like the Apostle Paul, but only in the restoration of destroyed churches.

This is the essence of this century – a century of general perversion.

And so, old churches are being restored and new ones are being built, and everyone is incredibly happy.  But the one who rejoices most of all about this restoration of churches is ... Satan himself!

Why?  Because it is precisely through this construction of churches that the Orthodox faith is finally perverted in the Russian people.

How?  Well, let us be imbued with the lamentation of the outstanding spiritual writer Sergei Fudel about his father, Archpriest Joseph, who gave his soul to his flock, who were prisoners of the Butyrka prison.

But when he was appointed rector of the church in the center of Moscow, and began to build a parish house and repair the temple itself, then his loving son wrote down with tears: His soul began to dry up in the construction dust.

And the question itself arises: And what about the thousands of current priests who are now restoring churches, that their souls do not dry up in the construction dust, or what?

That's when the terrible persecution began, not of believers, as under the Soviets, but the persecution of the very spirit of the Orthodox faith began – this is how Bishop Ippolit characterized the times of gilding the domes.  Here is his authentic text:

"One of the insidious means of our enemies is to give the Church material well-being after persecuting it.  This is another persecution, but more sophisticated: persecution of the spirit of the Orthodox faith.  The goal is to break the will, and then destroy it."

But it turns out that the revolution was cleansing for the Church – here is the voice of the Church!

And not divisive, as the current Sergianism buzzes about like a wound-up record.

It was not the revolution in 1917 that divided the Russian Orthodox Church into the MP and the ROCOR, but the declaration in 1927.

WHY?

But here it is, the truth that the Sergianists removed from their consciousness, thereby distorting the church's attitude to the state structure:  “The Savior of the world established His Kingdom on earth, but a spiritual Kingdom, capable of dwelling in any human society, no matter what this society is called according to its civil structure – a monarchy, or a republic, or something else.  Because the Kingdom of Christ, being not of this world (John 18:36), has no relation to the civil form of states.” (Saint Ignatius)

We repeat that the first sin in the series of mortal sins is set by the Lord... timidity.  [fear, cowardice]

In connection with this, one cannot help but pay attention to the ever-increasing brainchild of this century... SERGIANISM, through which it was possible to completely distort Orthodoxy by loving the external more than the internal and the ritual more than faith.  But the essence of Sergianism is not at all how the Sergians themselves define it.

The triumph of the Sergianist spirit began with the gilding of the domes, when the Moscow Patriarchate, not in words but in deeds, began to rejoice in the joys of the rulers of permissiveness.  And now, this secret is forced to be hidden, having declared Sergianism to be an attribute of the Soviet era.  The Patriarch of the MP declared: -– No Soviet era – no Sergianism.  And this is the greatest deception of the 21st century, which forces us to love the external more than the internal, and the ritual more than the spirit.

Let's give a precise definition of Sergianism right away, in order to close the lie spread by the Sergians themselves, that Sergianism is an alliance of the church with the Soviet advisors.  But this is not at all the case, and in fact it is like this:

“It is NOT God’s will that has entered the Church.  That’s all.  Everything in the Church is guided by God’s will, the Holy Spirit, but here it is not God’s will that has entered, and they obey it, and in order to disguise themselves, they abandon the entire external rite – please, incense, give sermons, adhere to the old style – do everything as it should be.  But the will will not be yours.  That’s all.  We call it Sergianism.  When it is not God’s will that guides the Church, then the performance of rituals gradually becomes empty, and ritual worship begins.  They abandon rituals – please, as many as you want, and the more magnificent – ​​the better.  This is a terrible thing, this is a subtle thing, it goes far, far away.  Knowledge – please, know the history of the Church, know all the schisms down to the finest details, know all the philosophical systems, be theologians so that you are revered as doctors of theology – please.  But our will will be done.  And everything is in the will, freedom or lack of freedom depends on it.  The Church does not need anything, only freedom, and that is what they do not have." 
                    (Metropolitan Vitaly, the fourth First Hierarch of the ROCOR)

"Sergianism is not a dogmatic phenomenon, but a spiritual and moral one, however, it is more terrible than any heresy, because, while apparently preserving dogmas and canons, it destroys the very essence of Christianity." 
                    (Hegumen Andrei Erastov)

And Archbishop Averky pronounced the word itself, defining the spirit of this century, and this word is false Orthodoxy: "It is necessary to understand and always remember that Orthodoxy is not only and not always what is officially called "Orthodoxy", because in our evil and deceitful times the appearance of a false "Orthodoxy" everywhere, which is raising its head and establishing itself in the world, is an exceptionally sad, but, unfortunately, already indisputable fact.  This false Orthodoxy is furiously trying to impersonate true Orthodoxy, just as in his time the Antichrist will try to take the place of Christ, to replace Him with himself."

And it is absolutely necessary to pay attention to one more brainchild of the century we are living through, 1917-2017, this is ORTHODOX ATHEISM.  Which, like Sergianism, is being strenuously hidden by our most cunning century.

The pure childish soul of our beloved TV presenter, academician Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa, simply could not hide it.  And when he was asked during a conversation on TV whether he believed in God, he sincerely answered:

I am an Orthodox atheist.

And if Sergei Petrovich directly designated the most subtle phenomenon of our century – Orthodox atheism, then Vladimir Vladimirovich confessed the essence of Orthodox atheism to the whole world in a different way, briefly and clearly answering the question of a foreign correspondent:

- Do you believe in God?

- I believe in man!, - answered Vladimir Vladimirovich.

What, gentlemen - comrades, do we believe in man, and are we standing in the temple for PR?

Faith in man, under the ringing of bells, under the glitter of gilded domes, under the banner chant, under the procession of religious processions and other external actions, has become, noticed by everyone but not discussed by anyone, perhaps the most significant sign of our time, which has led a significant part of the population to play at Orthodoxy.

This century also became the time when the devil was given the opportunity to establish an instrument that absorbs the thirst for Absolute Truth.

The devil managed to force not only the civilized West, but also the entire population of the Russian Federation... THE EARTH TO HAVE HEARTS!

And here it is, an instrument created by the underworld to absorb man's thirst for Absolute Truth - this is Civilization.

"Civilization absorbs the essence of Man, builds it for itself, imposes programs that eat up Man's Time, and he is left with no opportunity to know his True Self. Someone invented such a machine for suppressing free will... but WHO?"

Who is that weapon of execution in the machine of Civilization that falls on the heads of doomed victims without pity or regret?

The pinnacle of vulgarity and impudence, which has bent humanity so that it is no longer able to straighten up, which has a pernicious spirit that most vividly reflects it, the spirit of our time... is... ADVERTISING!  Namely, Advertising of the 21st century, deliberately vulgar and vile, without any tension or protests, forms in a person the consciousness that he has no freedom, no rights – just as Advertising is turned on on TV at the most undesirable time for him, so everything else, including elections  (If something depended on elections, then we would not be allowed to participate in them.  Mark Twain)  include only what is needed by the underworld, and not by man.  

 

Of course, Advertising existed in the 19th century, but Advertising became an instrument of the underworld for fooling the population, for turning it into Panurge's herd only in this century, which we are studying.  [panurge's refers to "sheeple."]

Advertising can be safely attributed to the victory of the devil. Under the guise of caring for a person, for his well-being (how many medicines alone does Advertising foist on him), it has occupied the niche of a sacred cow, interrupting any thought, spitting on all Human Rights, which are also a "thing" of this century, called to fool people with deception.

So, the century of 1917 - 2017 became:

The time of SOVIETISM,
The time of SERGIANTISM
The time of ORTHODOX ATHEISM*,
The time of ADVERTISING, that is, the time of general SECULARITY.
The time of Television and the Internet, where... The dead bury their dead.

That is, the century 1917 - 2017 became the Time when, finally:

We have made lies our refuge, and covered ourselves with deceit. (Isaiah 28:15)

- Who are these "WE"? – Ah, the servants of Satan, called by the Lord the synagogue of Satan (Rev. 2:9)

William Shakespeare's Revelation: Hell is empty. All the devils are here!, - it, like Lermontov's, is primarily about the time of 1917 - 2017.

As a result, during the time from 1917 to 2017: The thirst for Absolute Truth has dried up, it has been swallowed up by worldliness.
                   (Hieromonk Seraphim Rose)

And all these innovations, reflecting the spirit of this century, were necessary in order to... make the path of the Antichrist straight. And the admonition of Archbishop Averky (Taushev) today is the first support for those studying the spirit of our time:

Now there is no one left to oppose the appearance of the Antichrist, and therefore it is quite natural to expect his arrival and reign in a world completely mired in all sorts of sins and lawlessness. And not only is no one opposing the arrival of the Antichrist now, but even on the contrary - many have already joined in the most intense work to prepare for his speedy accession to the throne, not excluding - it is terrible to say! - and some Christian clergy, right up to the highest hierarchs of the Church, collaborating with the atheists and the obvious and secret enemies of our Lord and Savior, conducting all kinds of negotiations with them, entering into various compromises and concluding all kinds of agreements, often bordering on betrayal of our holy faith and the Church.

The “apostasy” or “falling away” foretold by the Word of God in the person of the holy Apostle Paul (see 2 Thessalonians 2) is now in full swing, and woe to him who does not see it, or, more accurately, does not want to see it, closing his eyes to everything that is happening in the world with unpardonable frivolity, and reassuring himself and others that “there is nothing special,” that “it is all normal and natural.”  But is this only unpardonable frivolity?  Is there not something else hidden behind this, a thought that naturally suggests itself when one hears such naive assurances?  After all, the Antichrist and his servants are by no means interested in his coming and enthronement being talked about too much and openly proclaimed: after all, he will come as the greatest benefactor of humanity, a benefactor and even a patron of the faith and the Church, and will expect universal recognition and popular worship.  And from the patristic predictions we know that not only the completely unbelieving will accept the Antichrist and worship him, but also those who have been deceived by him, as if they were believers, and even Christian clergy, up to those who hold the highest rank.  AMEN! 
                    (Archbishop Averky Taushev)

But what prophecy of our spirit-bearing fathers no one ever remembers today?  What is taboo in the century that is ending?

And no one has the right today to remind us that before the coming of the Antichrist, the collective Antichrist will reign.

So, the time of 1917 - 2017 is precisely the time of the collective antichrist. But that is why Sergianism was established in the first place, in order to prevent the truth about the collective antichrist from entering the world.

Although this is clearly visible, as they say, to the naked eye, because every single state ruler is now subordinate to it.

MERCENARIES OF THE COLLECTIVE ANTICHRIST

But the hireling, who is not the shepherd, whose sheep are not his own, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf plunders the sheep and scatters them. But the hireling flees, because he is a hireling, and cares not for the sheep. (John 10:11)

And, just as the Lord revealed to Lermontov about the black year of Russia, so the Lord revealed to the new martyr of Alapaevsk, Prince Vladimir Paley, what the Antichrist will seek: 

           And he in blasphemous praise
           Will prove to us with arrogant lies,
           That happiness on earth
           Should be contrasted with the Kingdom of God.

  It was precisely the century 1917 – 2017 that proved the correctness of this prophecy!
 
What, today, at the end of the century 1917 – 2017, all over the world, is not happiness on earth opposed to the Kingdom of God?

And here it is, the spirit of the times, reigning through the efforts of the ending century 1917 – 2017:

 

Friendship with the world (James 4:4) - that is what underlies the desire for comfort. As a result, it turns out that if Christ is fearlessness itself, then His present servants in great numbers are fearfulness itself. From the pulpits we ardently glorify martyrs, passion-bearers, confessors, who are not afraid to lose all earthly goods and even life (sometimes - for just one word, as was the case in the era of great dogmatic disputes) - they are glorified by those who themselves are panicky afraid of losing - not life, not freedom, no! - but only a small part of their earthly well-being...

Hence the lack of faith, fearfulness, and confusion among the people.” (Archpriest Lev Lebedev)

And we will conclude with the revelation of Saint John of Shanghai (+ 1966), given to him by God, which in the century under discussion has already been accomplished through the collective antichrist:

"The Antichrist will provide an opportunity for the "life of the Church," will allow it to hold services, promise to build beautiful churches on condition that he is recognized as the supreme ruler and worshiped. He will have a personal hatred of Christ. He will live with this hatred and rejoice at the apostasy of people from Christ and the Church.  There will be a mass apostasy from the Orthodox Faith, and many bishops will betray the Faith and will point to the "brilliant position of the Church" as justification.  The search for compromise will be the characteristic mood of people. Directness of confession will disappear.  People will SOPHISTICATEDLY JUSTIFY their fall, and gentle evil will support such a general mood, and people will have the skill of apostasy from the truth and the sweetness of compromise and sin."

And today all these three qualities have become the principle of life of the entire so-called civilized world.   {Having begun his march in 1917 with a clear prediction of his path:}
 

There is betrayal and cowardice all around!

   And today all these three qualities have become the principle of life of the entire so-called civilized world.

   Yes, this is the result of the past century.

   So this is what the Lord wants!

   What would be good to remember and never forget from this century?

And the New Martyrs and Confessors of our Russia, given to us by the Lord as an example, so that we could follow their path.

And one thing more.

The spirit of this century has also found its screen reflection in the chosen one of God, Alexei Balabanov, all of whose films are one film, and the films themselves are episodes of this unique epic, which even included the essence of the beginning of this century.

             Вадим Виноградов
 
source:
https://metanthonymemorial.org/VernostNo209.html 

several articles by same author further expound on this theme.

.

Old RRb post from 2013

"St. Philaret Censored"
RRb Archives folder is uploaded to Joanna's Shared Library

see November 2013

THE LOST PEARL FROM THE TREASURY OF THE THIRD FIRST HIERARCH OF ROCA - MET. PHILARET (Voznesensky) 
Discovery of the lost treasured words of Metropolitan Philaret. 
by A Concerned Faithful 2008;

Recently, a cassette found its way into the hands of a faithful member of the former true ROCOR and admirer of Met.Philaret, containing the sermons of this remarkable and memorable prelate.  After listening to its contents and comparing them to the text in the books titled, "Sermons and teachings of the Most Eminent Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky)" - published in 1989 - a significant disparity was discovered between the words that were actually articulated by Met. Philaret from the pulpit, and those printed in the books.  This disparity can be found in the 2nd tome on page 82, which deals with the sermon on "Love your enemy."  As it happened, the significant section uttered by the prelate was mercilessly excised from the book by the editor.  The editor of this book was Bishop Hilarion, current Archbishop of Australia and New Zealand! 

We now request our God-loving readers to familiarize themselves with the segment, which fell under Bhp. Hilarion's censorship.  The text of this spiritual pearl of enormous significance, which was denied to the Orthodox faithful by the imprudent hand of the erudite Orthodox bishop, can be found after the third paragraph in the book with the concluding submission: "With regard to the current comments uttered by those 'intellectual' individuals, I must say that it is not the Church that has lagged behind the times, but it is they that have fled to who knows where!  
 

"To what lengths of lunacy has contemporary mankind gone to! It is not difficult to arrive at this conclusion, if one observes what is transpiring in the world. Recently, there was a press report stating that the organization of the so-called World Council of Churches - which includes nearly all Christian denominations and Orthodox Churches, except one i.e., ROCA - has accepted as a full member, a new religious order that serves satan! Satanism has been embraced by the World Council of Churches! 

Consequently, this means that the ill-fated person, which heads this frightening and ungodly teaching - Satanism, will be seated at the same table with representatives of Christian faiths, perhaps assisting in the formulation of ecumenical communion and services that will not displease anyone! This means that the WCC has secured a new brother-in-arms, a new colleague - the leader of this insane Satanism. 

Incidentally, in passing, and as I stated before, nearly all Orthodox Churches have joined the World Council of Churches, the most recent being the partial entry of the American Red Sovietonomous Church, which has now existed for a number of years. 

All these developments beg the question - where to now? This is to what extent of madness that humanity has reached! Yet they yell that the Church cannot keep up with them. But keep up with what? I reiterate - it's not the Church that has lagged behind the times, but these people that have created their new lifestyle. They are the ones that have fled from the Church to who knows where, and their demise will be frightening!" 

In a later content of the book, Met. Philaret warns: "But we, brothers, must watch ourselves...." 

In conclusion, Archbishop Hilarion's action invariably begs the question: "Why did he delete this priceless gem from Metropolitan Philaret's collection of sermons?"

source:
http://metanthonymemorial.org/VernostNo104a.html March 2008 

________________________
Why did Hilarion delete this?  1st, there are too many ROCOR-MP members who were in church on St. Michael's day 1998 and who remember the joyous announcement that Metr. Philaret's relics had been found incorrupt at Jordanville.  So, ROCOR-MP can not sweep St. Philaret under the rug; they have to pretend they are pleased to accept Metr. Philaret as an honored Church Father (but nothing more).  2nd, today (2025) it's too clear that MP is no way going to withdraw from the WCC; and that used to be a requirement for any reunion to take place:

Originally we said there were 5 conditions that had to be met before re-unification could be possible:
  1) admit they lied saying there was no persecution under the Soviet government,
  2) glorify the New Martyrs
  3) renounce/denounce Sergianism
  4) get out of WCC
  5) remove all the KGB agents from the clergy

Visions Outside the Church

Visions Outside the Church

Monk Gorazd

1990

 

 This applies not just to the "marion" apparitions, but also to charismatic "gifts" and to false elders in world-orthodoxy promoting new-age ideas ["thoughts determine our lives,"  "all souls are interconnected," etc.] 

What criterion should we use to guide us in testing the truth of visions outside of the Orthodox Church?

Many people have heard that the Mother of God has supposedly appeared to Roman Catholics in various places.  They do not know what to think about these events.  Some even go so far as to think that since the Mother of God appears to Roman Catholics, it follows that the Roman Catholic Church is a true, grace-filled church, especially since various miracles and healings take place at the locations of the visions.  Fatima, in particular, has aroused much interest among Russians living abroad because the apparition allegedly speaks about Russia in strongly anti-communist terms, leading them to overlook the heretical and anti-Orthodox content of the message as a whole.  What are we to make of these appearances and the claims made for them?  What criterion should we use to guide us in testing the truth of visions outside of the Orthodox Church?  Hopefully, what follows will help in understanding such phenomena.

The Holy Fathers, knowing that Satan can transform himself into an angel of light, advise us to be cautious and distrustful of all appearances in the visible world.  “If you are silent in a good way, desiring to be with God,” says St. Gregory the Sinaite,   “never accept any physical or spiritual appearances, either outside or inside yourself, even if it might be an image of Christ, or an angel, or some Saint, or if light should appear, or imprint itself in the mind... Be attentive, that you may not come to believe something, even if it is something good, and be not captivated by it before consulting those who are experienced and are able to analyze the matter, so that you do not suffer harm... God is not displeased with the person who is attentive to himself, even if he, out of fear of deception, does not accept even that which is from Him, without consulting and testing....”    We might add that the Lord God could at all times give full assurance to a person, if He is pleased to do so, concerning the truth of a vision.  If such caution is necessary concerning visions WITHIN the Orthodox Church, how much more circumspect should we be in relation to apparitions OUTSIDE the one, true Church!  The sole criterion for examining these visions should be their Orthodoxy.  If in any respect their Orthodoxy is lacking, then they must be rejected: even if 99% of the message is Orthodox and only 1% deviates from the doctrines laid down by the Church, then the whole must be rejected.  God cannot deny Himself or preach untruth even in the smallest degree.

FATIMA

Let us examine three well-known cases which have occurred in our own century. First, we will deal with Fatima, which is of special interest, since the apparition there speaks about Russia and its role in the destiny of mankind.

Towards the end of the First World War, at Fatima in Portugal, between May and October, 1917, three shepherd children, two girls and a boy, had a series of visions of someone whom they said was our Lady, the Blessed Virgin.... Throughout the six months of the apparitions, the messages which Lucia was told to make public, at that time or somewhat later, were largely concerned with the need to encourage devotion to the rosary and to our Lady’s immaculate heart, and with the need for mankind to change the direction in which it was moving. Failure to make that change would bring down the wrath of God... (from Studies in Comparative Religion. A Question Concerning the Second Vatican Council, by Verak).

In December, 1940 Sister Lucy (the only one of the three who remained alive and who is now a nun of the Carmelite order) wrote to Pope Pius XII saying, “In 1917 the Most Holy Mother prophesied to us the end of the war which at that darkened the face of Europe; she prophesied another war and said that she would come again. She insisted on the dedication of Russia to her most sacred heart, promising in return to hinder the spread of false teaching from Russia and to convert Russia.” (from News About Fatima, the Greatest Miracle of Our Time, Brussels, 1962 p. 144).  It is necessary to remember that Catholics understand “the conversion of Russia” to mean her conversion to Roman Catholicism.  

Again we read in the journal The Fatima Crusader (issue #17, April-May, 1985):  “So it may well be that the conversion of a few Russians to Catholicism now is part of God’s preparations for the conversion of Russia when the Pope and bishops finally obey the command of our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia in the manner prescribed by God... The reason why Jesus gave this specific command to the Pope and bishops is because he wants his whole church to recognize the consecration of Russia as a triumph of the immaculate heart of Mary... Sister Lucy records... in a letter dated May 18, 1936: ‘Intimately I have spoken to our Lord about the subject and not long ago, I asked Him why He would not convert Russia without the Holy Father making the consecration. He replied, “Because I want My whole Church to acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of the immaculate heart of Mary so that it may extend its cult later on and put the devotion to the immaculate heart beside the devotion to My sacred heart”.  

Here something should be said about the un-Orthodox forms of devotion to the sacred heart of Jesus and the immaculate heart of Mary which the apparition advocates.

A Roman Catholic nun, Mary Margaret Alacoque (who died in 1690), allegedly had a vision of Jesus Christ who showed her His heart, burning with love, and asked her to spread devotion to it.  The revelations she received were first printed in the account of her life by the Jesuit bishop Lanje and caused such a scandal that the edition was destroyed.  Due to the fact that these “revelations” were so exposed to the public eye, they were condemned by Pope Clement in 1772.  Nonetheless, this cult continued to exist under the auspices of the Jesuits, and finally entered into the mainstream of Catholic religious life (Pastoral Theology, Part II, Archimandrite Constantine, Jordanville, 1961, p. 16).  Sacred heart pictures and devotions became a major part of Catholic spirituality, and the popes added their endorsements in encyclicals, granting indulgences for the observance of the devotion.  Not to be outdone, other groups, claiming to have seen apparitions of Mary, put forward the idea of devotion to “The Immaculate Heart of Mary.”  The heart of Mary was sometimes depicted together with the sacred heart of Jesus motif: a picture with two hearts... and later, the sorrowful heart of Mary, with five or seven swords piercing it, became extremely popular... It would be difficult to accuse Roman Catholicism of denying the divinity of Christ, rather they have split the wholeness of Christ, emphasizing His human nature as a separate devotion, sometimes in a crudely biological way.  This violates a central principle of the Councils, that devotion should be given to the devotion of Christ, and not to one of His natures, or parts of His body.  Thus, by fragmenting the wholeness of the Son of God, a tendency develops to ‘Nestorianize.’  Parts of the body of Christ should not become parts of isolated objects of adoration, nor should they be pictorially depicted (i.e., a heart on fire, or a heart crowned with thorns surrounding it)” (from Comparative Religion, “Roman Catholicism: Some Devotional Practices,” by Father George Mitchell). We mention these devotions here in order to illustrate the abyss which lies between Orthodox and Roman Catholic spirituality.

GARBANDAL

Yet another series of apparitions took place in a small mountain village called San Sebastian de Garabandal in the north of Spain.

These apparitions took place between June, 1961 and November, 1965.  The seers were four young girls.  We repeat some of the messages given:

“The Virgin also reminded us very often about visiting the blessed sacrament.  As a matter of fact even in her final apparition (November 13, 1965) the Virgin told me, ‘Conchita, why do you not go more often to visit my Son in the tabernacle?’  When I saw the Virgin I said to her, as if there were a spy in the village, ‘You know, there are some Protestants here.’  The Virgin replied, ‘They are all my children.’  The angel came and said, ‘Many cardinals, many bishops and many priests are on the road to perdition and taking many souls with them.  Less and less importance is given to the Eucharist.”

It is interesting to note that in 1967 Conchita Gonzales (one of the seers) started to have doubts about the apparitions:

“Yes, in 1967, sometime after the apparitions had taken place, I did have doubts.   It happened suddenly on August 15.  I will never forget it.  There were many people around me and I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I was not honest.  I felt I was deceiving all those people and that I ought to confess it.  I went to a priest and told him that it was like an illusion or a dream or living a lie, that I had never seen the Virgin and that I had been deceiving everybody all the time... These doubts and denials of the Virgin’s apparitions lasted five or six days.  Since then, up to this time, I have confusion and doubt within me” (from Miracle at Garabandal by Conchita Gonzales with Harry Daley, Dubleday and Company, N.Y., 1983).

We mention this apparition here to show that even in a case where the seer herself is ultimately uncertain of the reality of what she saw, the story still seems to find apparently serious believers.  They are not even discouraged by such disturbing facts as the following, reported by one of the seers:

“After the apparitions started, we never missed a day of communion.  When there wasn’t a priest in town, an angel would come down to give us communion... At one point we were instructed by a priest to ask how it was that, since only a priest could consecrate the hosts, the angel was administering communion to us.  We did ask, and the Virgin said that the angel would come down and take the already consecrated hosts from tabernacles on earth.”

Can we not imagine the consternation this would cause in the church from which the hosts were taken!  Can it be possible that angels need to take hosts from the tabernacles of churches?  In the Orthodox life of St. Onuphrius an angel does, indeed, bring the Holy Communion, but it is quite unthinkable that an angel would need to take the Holy Gifts from an earthly tabernacle.

MEDJUGORJE

The third series of visions we will mention began on June 24, 1981, in the Yugoslavian town of Medjugorje, where a number of young children began to have visions of what they considered to be the Mother of God.  The apparition has claimed that these revelations will be the last in the world.  In November, 1982 the apparition said, ‘After these revelations finish there will be only some false revelations in the world.”  People have flocked to Medjugorje from all over the world even though the local Roman Catholic bishop of Mostar, Pavao Zanic, who denies the verity of the apparitions, made a public declaration in the name of the Yugoslavian Bishops’ Conference to the effect that “It is not permitted for pilgrimages or for other manifestations to be organized which are motivated by the supernatural character supposedly attributed to the events of Medjugorje.”

Already in 1981 the seers were saying: “There will be a visible and lasting sign on the hill of the apparitions; it will come soon, you will see it in a short time.  Wait a little longer, be patient.”  And again: “The sign will be on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1981, then at Christmas, then at New Year, etc.”   Needless to say, no sign has yet appeared on the hill.  For an Orthodox reader it is sufficient to know only some of the ecumenical messages given by the apparition to be certain that it is not the Mother of God who is appearing there.  For instance:

“All the religions are the same before God. God commands in all these religions as a king in his realm.” (Counter-Reformation-Catholic, 201 Eng. ed. Cf. Fr. Blaise, 500 Messages a Vivre, p. 370, Montreal, 1986.)  “In God neither divisions or religions count. It is you in the world who have created the divisions because believers have separated themselves from one another.”  (Apparition of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje, Jan Urban [in Czech].  The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the XX Century, Sept ./Oct;, 1987; Nov./Dec., 1985).

For the uninformed, this message has a seductive appeal and is in keeping with the “one world” thinking.  But as Orthodox Christians we know that to say “all the religions are the same before God” is a denial of Christ as the only Truth.  Is it not He Himself who says, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me (John 14:6).  Therefore, to say that all religions are the same is a denial of Christ!

CONCLUSION

Without attempting to analyze too deeply the meaning of all the messages it is sufficient enough to realize that each one of these apparitions, claiming to be the Mother of God, accepts the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church (Holy Communion, Priesthood, Confession) as true, grace-filled Mysteries.  This alone makes these apparitions totally unacceptable for us since we know that grace-filled Mysteries can only be found in the one, true Church of Christ.  Since the Western Church separated itself from the one, true Church in the 11th century there can be no question about the existence of true Mysteries in the Roman Catholic Church. 

“The Church is one and only she has the fullness of the grace-filled gifts of the Holy Spirit.  No matter who, or in what way one has fallen away from the Church, whether in heresy, schism, or in uncanonical gatherings, one loses the communion of the grace of God. Therefore no sacraments performed outside the Church have any grace-filled power.” (Archbishop Hilarion, There Is No Christianity Without the Church, p. 114, San Paulo, Brazil, 1954.)  Even the presence of healings is not a proof of the truth of the appearances.  Healings might be from God, from natural causes, or if God allows, from the evil one.  Sozomen, in his Ecclesiastical History (Book II, #5) writes: “The temple of Aesculapius in Aegis, a city of Cilicia, and the temple of Venus at Aphaca, near Mt. Lebanon and the river Adonis, were undermined and entirely destroyed.  Both of these temples were highly honored and revered by the ancients... because those among them who were infirm in body were delivered from diseases because the demon manifested himself by night and healed them.”  In the Vita Patrum of St. Gregory of Tours we read in the life of St. Friardus the Recluse, “And as they courageously persevered in prayer, the tempter appeared at night to the deacon Secundellus, taking the form of the Lord and saying to him, ‘I am Christ, to whom you pray every day. Already you are holy, and your name is written in the Book of Life. So go out from this island and perform healings among the people.’ Secundellus, taken in by this deception, left the island...and even so as soon as he laid his hand upon the sick in the name of Jesus Christ, they were healed.”

The words of Archpriest Boris Molchanov are very timely here:

“It is very important to be aware of that little-known but remarkable spiritual law by which all false and hypocritical Christianity will inevitably lead its followers to acceptance of the Antichrist or to a movement which will prepare for his appearance.  In every false teaching, like in the Pharisee’s attitude towards truth, there is hidden the seeds of eternal damnation. Foolishly and in vain many people do, not accept the importance of dogma.  The close union between dogma of the faith, practical, moral activity, and the struggle for salvation has been expounded on by bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninoff) and His Beatitude Metropolitan Anthony (Krapovitsky).  According the teaching of the Church, there is nothing as import as confessing divinely-revealed Truth, in the work of The Word of God itself bears witness that God must be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth (John 4:23-24).  Truth is not some kind of insignificant thing, which one could relate to as one wishes. In the truth, the Spirit of Truth, Who proceeds from the Father, is present in a real way.  And correspondingly, in every lie, there is present the father of lies, the devil.  Therefore, a person who confesses the truth receives the Spirit of Truth; and the one who confesses a lie will necessarily assimilate the spirit of lies, the fallen spirit.  Outside the one, holy Orthodox Church there are not, and there will not appear the means for recognizing the Antichrist, nor is there any grace-filled power to resist him and all his temptations" (Epoch of Apostasy, Jordanville, 1976, p. 18).

We do not need heterodox apparitions to call us to repentance, prayer, and fasting.  Further, these apparitions accept Roman Catholic sacraments, the papacy, encourage un-Orthodox forms of piety, and embrace false ecumenism.  In our troubled times, times of subtle temptations and sublime deceptions, when false miracles, visions, and apparitions are on the increase, we Orthodox Christians should work out our salvation with fear and trembling, holding firm to our Holy Orthodox Faith and looking for guidance and inspiration to our Holy Orthodox Church alone.

as of June 2025 Jordanville has 8 hardcopies remaining

selling for $1.95 each 

The Vatican and Russia & Visions Outside the Church
Dcn. Herman Ivanov-Treednadzaty; Monk Gorazd
Two related articles providing "A View of the Spiritual and Political Trends in Roman Catholicism 

let us pray along with our Ruling Hierarch

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From Internet Sobor
http://internetsobor.org/index.php/novosti/mirovoe-pravoslavie/moskovskaya-patriarkhiya/2025

You don't have to be a prophet to see....

"May God grant that at least one from the ROCOR-MP returns to the true ROCOR"

Announcement from ROPCOR-MP website
https://www.synod.com/synod/2025/20250605_synodstatement.html

link not activated on purpose

comments on the announcement from our synod
COMMENTS  
# RE: ROCOR-MP raised its voice in 2025 - Alexej 05.06.2025 19:01
Most Veminent Lord, you are absolutely right. Today, studying the materials of the new martyrs of Russia, I met the term in relation to Sergei Starogorodsky - "moral elasticity". I don't think there's anything to add...

+1
# RE: ROCOR-MP raised its voice in 2025 - Metropolitan Agafangel 05.06.2025 16:18
It's even strange to read this today - after all, both the MP and Soviet society in 2007 were the same as it appears today. Here, unfortunately, you don't have to be a prophet to predict how this "exaltation of the voice" will end - they will swallow both Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, as they swallowed and digested "spiritually" ecumenism and Sergianism, from which today's "flowers" grew (not even "berries" yet). They will also swallow the coming greater evil, unfortunately. May God grant that at least one of them returns to the pure source, which was the former, uncompromising to lies, ROCOR.

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Could ROCOR-MP be waking up?

Challenging the Moscow Patriarchate: 
Is ROCOR-MP Finally Awakening to Their Sergianist Masters?
Subdeacon Nektarios
June 5, 2025
https://www.orthodoxtraditionalist.com/post/challenging-the-moscow-patriarchate-is-rocor-mp-finally-awakening-to-their-sergianist-masters
 
On June 5th, 2025, the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia – Moscow Patriarchate (ROCOR-MP) released a statement entitled "Statement by the Synod of Bishops on the Renewal of 20th-Century Ideologies in Russia."

In this encyclical, the ROCOR-MP Synod—after seventeen years of silence, cowardice, and betrayal of the true Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA), which never submitted to Soviet masters—has finally decided to make a peep.  Now, reluctantly, ROCOR-MP acknowledges that the satanic leviathan they entered into Eucharistic communion with—the Soviet-created Moscow Patriarchate—has never truly changed.  Early in the text, there is a clear allusion that the Russian Federation is effectively a continuation of the USSR, and that the supposed revival of Orthodoxy in Russia served primarily as a political tool wielded by former Soviet officials turned Federation politicians.  In this encyclical, the ROCOR-MP Synod states:

We find that in a time of crisis and growing confrontation amongst nations, aspects of the Russian state and society are wandering onto an extremely dangerous path: instead of the promulgation of Christian repentance and purification, we observe in certain circles a return to a false, God-opposing ideology that prevailed in the last century.  This return is fraught with harmful consequences. Should it continue, we fear that modern Russia risks being considered a dark stain amongst the nations, marked by a revival of spiritual corruption, instead of her being a radiant beacon of Orthodox Truth, which is surely the calling to which her long history of Christian piety directs her.1

What the Synod is referring to here are the apparent changes in the state document titled “The Concept of State Policy on the Commemoration of the Victims of Political Repression,” as well as the numerous public and ecclesiastical revivals and glorifications of various Soviet totalitarian figures—both governmental and ecclesiastical.

Regarding the document “The Concept of State Policy on the Commemoration of the Victims of Political Repression,” the Synod states the following:
 

The state document, “The Concept of State Policy on the Commemoration of the Victims of Political Repression,” which concerns those condemned under the Communist regime, was revised in 2024, evidencing notable alterations to the previous version (of 2015).  These changes cannot but cause alarm amongst Orthodox believers, for they indicate a rising tendency to whitewash the crimes of the God-fighting regime of the twentieth century.  When the revised version of this document was mentioned in the context of a report from a government advisor at the last official meeting of the “Ecclesial-Social Council under the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia for the Commemoration of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church,” the representative of the ROCOR [MP] at that meeting already raised questions about the serious problems associated with it and other recent trends.  We feel we must now add to this our synodal voice.

Instead of a sober reflection on the essence of the criminal regime that cost Russia countless victims over decades, instead of a deepening of the people’s understanding and memory of the tragedy that befell them (a task actively undertaken by the Ecclesial-Social Council), the new “Concept” document demonstrates a backwards-step and a tendency to curtail this spiritually significant subject.  The previous version, on many issues, opened the door of repentance.  The new one closes it, precisely through the silencing and distortion of history.2

In addition to this policy shift by the Russian government, both the state and the Church have consistently promoted godless Soviet figures within Russian society—figures who actively persecuted the Church of Christ during the Russian Revolution.  After seventeen years of deafening silence, the ROCOR-MP Synod has now acknowledged that, in reality, nothing has changed in Russia.  The so-called resurgence of Orthodoxy following the fall of the USSR was, in truth, nothing more than a façade.

Of course, as you might expect, they said as much without actually having the courage to say it plainly.  However, what this Synod of Judases did manage to say regarding the public glorification of Soviet propaganda in Russia is the following:

In practical terms, this mentality could be nowhere more visible than in the appalling installation of statues of the criminal figures of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, which have recently been erected in Moscow, as if in public tribute to individuals whose inhuman and anti-Christian crimes were amongst the worst of the twentieth century; and in the recent announcements that the idolatrous mausoleum on Red Square, rather than being removed, is in fact set to undergo restoration.3

We must ask: where have they been for the last seventeen years, that only now this has become a problem worth addressing?  The Soviet-created Moscow Patriarchate has been promoting these satanic figureheads ever since the supposed "collapse" of the Soviet Union in 1991.  They have not only glorified Stalin, Lenin, and Dzerzhinsky, but have also persistently venerated betrayers of Christ—such as the pseudo-patriarch Sergius—and Metropolitan Nikodim Rotov, the infamous deathbed Latin Papist of sorry memory.

In reality, these public displays of Soviet propaganda have been ongoing for far longer.  What is worse is that this isn’t obscure or hidden knowledge to these bishops.  On the well-known YouTube channel of Gregory Decapolite—a staunch supporter of the Russian Catacomb Church and the uncompromised part of the Church Abroad that refused to capitulate in cowardice to the Sergianists in Moscow—there have been videos for over six years exposing this very reality.  These videos include footage, photographs, and other media showing Soviet imagery across Russia and in their so-called churches: portraits of the betrayer of Christ, "Patriarch" Sergius; Soviet red stars and symbols embedded in new cathedrals; clergy posing beside statues of Lenin and Stalin; priests blessing these same monuments; and even icons depicting these anti-Christ figures.

Further on in the document, the Synod protests that the Russian government and the Soviet Patriarchate have reneged on their supposed recognition of the many clergy and laity unjustly condemned or martyred during the Soviet era.  In a particularly shocking example, the encyclical recounts how a Soviet propagandist professor in Russia openly blamed Tsar-Martyr Saint Nicholas for the destruction of Russia, stating that had he been alive at the time, he would have personally executed the Tsar.  The Synod recalls this disturbing episode as follows:

An example of the character of this new activity was revealed when, in the mass media, a well- known professor—respected by many in Russia—recently stated that it was Tsar Nicholas II who in fact destroyed and ruined Russia, who even led it into war.  Such may be this individual’s personal opinion, wholly echoing the Bolshevik propaganda of the early twentieth century; but to those who know how the Ekaterinburg murder unfolded, this man’s words about the Tsar, “I would have shot him myself,” sound ominous indeed.4

Where was the Synod when the Soviet Patriarchate, in its supposed canonization of the New Martyrs, deliberately excluded Saint Joseph of Petrograd and many other so-called Josephites from that list?  Where were they when Saint Basil of Kineshma was quietly removed from the Church calendar in 2012? At the time, the Soviet Moscow Patriarchate declared: “We have a new, corrected Church calendar.  If we are Church people and understand what the Church hierarchy is, then we need to perceive this new calendar as a Church document that guides us,” adding that the removal had “been confirmed and blessed by Patriarch Kirill.”5

Where was the voice of this Synod over all these years, as their Tobacco Patriarch continued to glorify the memory of the Christ-betrayer Sergius?  In a recent video, Kirill of Moscow—also known by his KGB codename, Mikhailov—declares in a homily:

Patriarch Sergius was able to carry our church out of that difficult and crisis-ridden position which manifested itself in an open conflict between the church and the state.  The conditions of the political system that existed in our country, such an open conflict, could not end in anything prosperous for the church.  It was necessary to look for paths to exit out of this conflict.  And so, holy Patriarch Sergius, found these exits. Some did not like this, especially those who lived far away [ROCOR], outside of our fatherland, who did not risk anything, took a different position, but that he created a direct contact with the highest authorities of our country, at that time, having a salvific significance for the existence of our church.6

Where was the Synod every time the Christ-denier Sergius was promoted as a holy patriarch who "saved" the Church—as if the Church of Christ required saving through his capitulation to the Jewish Bolsheviks?  This Synod of Bishops has, for seventeen years, been flaccid, decadent, indulgent, and weak since entering Eucharistic communion with the Soviet-created leviathan.

They have utterly ignored the legacy of their own forebears, who, in October 1943, declared as a Synod: “The election of Metropolitan Sergius to the See of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia is an act not only uncanonical, but also non-ecclesiastical and purely political—driven by the interests of the Soviet Communist government and its leader, dictator Stalin, who, facing a grave crisis during the war, sought the help of the Orthodox Church, which they had hated and openly persecuted until recently.”7

They have also turned a deaf ear to their own saintly First Hierarch, Metropolitan Philaret of New York, who spoke forcefully and unambiguously concerning the Christ-betrayer Sergius and the Soviet false church, stating:

Moreover, when this shameful declaration was issued, the catacomb, true Orthodox Church separated from the official Soviet false church, and going underground, it anathematized the Soviet official church once again.  Consequently, this “church” has been anathematized twice by the legitimate Church authority.  We are taught by the Apostle Paul and the Church in general that the Church is the Body of Christ, that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and His grace and Truth, who are in Him and with Him, reside in the Church.  And tell me, can a believing mind and a believing heart admit that Christ is in this organization that cooperates with his besotted enemies, praises them, blesses them, and even goes hand in hand with them?  Of course, this is impossible.  Therefore, I think that our Church, I’d say, has never expressed this in the form of global discussion and condemnation, but I am convinced that there is no grace and cannot be in this very Soviet false church, because it has retreated from faithfulness to Christ, and Christ the Savior is not there and cannot be there.  This is my earnest conviction.  I’m not imposing it on anyone, but I’m speaking frankly, as I think.8

And what did they do to honor the memory of Saint Philaret? Was it to promote his memory, his patristic teachings, or to proclaim the miracle of his incorrupt relics to the faithful?  No—of course not. It was under the agenda of Metropolitan Laurus that news of his incorrupt relics was suppressed.  Rather than venerate him openly, they chose to hide this holy revelation from the faithful, betraying his legacy entirely.  His sacred vestments were sent, not to his spiritual heirs, but to those who venerate Sergius, Stalin, and Lenin.9  So now we must ask: what are they going to do, beyond writing an obscure encyclical that claims to raise their voices and to "call on all to recognize their authentic history, both outside of Russia and within it?”10  Will they break communion with the Sergianist Moscow Patriarchate—the very institution that dragged them into Sergianism, into the pan-heresy of Ecumenism, and into the World Council of Churches?

Will they apologize to the countless clergy and laity they betrayed—those who refused to participate in their demonic false union with the Soviet-created false church, who rejected the thirty pieces of silver that these bishops so willingly accepted?  Will there be retractions, acts of repentance, and public confessions for the blasphemous slander of the true Russian Church Abroad?  For those faithful, some of whom lived their entire lives in ROCOR, standing firm in truth, only to be branded “schismatics” on May 17th, 2007, the day the Synod signed a deal with the devil?  Sadly, we all know the likely answer.  The spirit of confession, the courage to stand in the face of adversity, was extinguished in these bishops as early as 2001—when they betrayed yet another confessor of the faith, Saint Vitaly (Ustinov).

Can I be wrong?  I hope so.  I pray that the clergy of ROCOR-MP awaken—that they open their eyes and see what the Soviet-created Moscow Patriarchate truly is, and what their Synod has entangled them in every Sunday when they commemorate their atheist, KGB agent, and tobacco merchant patriarch.  And to the laity: may you heed the apostolic command of Saint Paul, who said, “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us.” (2 Thessalonians 3:6, KJV)
 

Victory Day: glorifying those who slaughtered the Saints
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv6Gn3yIRmQ
"...sons of those who murdered the Prophets" Sergianism and Communism Resurgence in Russia 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r52-Y9GURw

 References
[1]. “Statement by the Synod of Bishops on the renewal of 20th-century ideologies in Russia,” The Official Website of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, accessed June 5th, 2025, https://synod.com/synod/eng2025/20250605_ensynodstatement.html
[2]. Ibid.
[3]. Ibid.
[4]. Ibid.
[5]. Dr. Karin Hyldal Christensen, The Making of the New Martyrs of Russia: Soviet Repression in Orthodox Memory (London: Routledge, 2018), 89-90.
[6]. “The Patriarch of Moscow just said this…” YouTube: Death to Compromise, accessed June 5th, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caQ6JKCI1lY
[7]. “ROCOR's 1943 Synodal Condemnation of the Pseudo-Patriarch Sergius of Moscow,” Orthodox Traditionalist Publications, accessed June 5th, 2025, https://www.orthodoxtraditionalist.com/post/rocor-s-1943-synodal-condemnation-of-the-pseudo-patriarch-sergius-of-moscow
[8] Saint Philaret Voznesensky, Saint Philaret of New York: His Collected Works (Washington DC: Orthodox Traditionalist Publications, 2024), 128.
[9]. “The Vestments and Staff of His Eminence Metropolitan Philaret Are Given to His Holiness Patriarch Alexy,” The Official Website of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, accessed June 5th, 2025, https://web.archive.org/web/20091017090417/https://www.russianorthodoxchurch.ws/synod/eng2006/11enmphilaretvestments.html
[10]. “Statement by the Synod of Bishops on the renewal of 20th-century ideologies in Russia,” The Official Website of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, accessed June 5th, 2025, https://synod.com/synod/eng2025/20250605_ensynodstatement.html

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Lies are Unacceptable in our Faith

Митрополит Агафангел: За кого мы почитаем Христа
http://internetsobor.org/index.php/stati/avtorskaya-kolonka/mitropolit-agafangel-za-kogo-my-pochitaem-khrista
Автор: Митрополит Агафангел. Дата публикации: 01 июня 2025. Категория: Авторская колонка.

В нашей вере недопустима ложь, иначе эта ложь заменяет Истину и искажает облик Христа. Проповедь митрополита Агафангела в Неделю 7-ю по Пасхе, святых отцов I Вселенского Собора. Архангело-Михайловский храм, Одесса, 19 мая/1 июня 2025 года.

Google translation:
In our faith, lies are unacceptable, otherwise these lies replace the Truth and distort the image of Christ. Sermon of Metropolitan Agathangel on the 7th Sunday after Pascha, the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. Archangel Michael Church, Odessa, May 19/June 1, 2025

St. Joseph Petrograd message to his flock

Letter of Metropolitan Joseph to His Spiritual Children

To a soul yearning among the adversities and storms of the present sea of life.

The word of the Lord is not false, He promised to stay with us until the end of time and to preserve His Church undefeated by hell, that is, even on the edge of perdition.  Yes, now we are on the edge of perdition, and many, perhaps, will perish; the Church of Christ will be reduced, perhaps, again to 12, as at the beginning of its foundation.  After all, these words of the Lord cannot fail to be fulfilled:  "When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?"

Everything is done according to the Lord's foreknowledge, people here can neither add nor subtract one iota.  Those who do not want to perish are more secure from perishing, and we can say that hell will be only for those who themselves desire it.  So let this truth be first of all a consolation and encouragement for those who are discouraged by the events of this world.  The deprivation of the churches of God and magnificent Divine Services, we used to have, with numerous worshippers, brilliant hosts of priests, Angelic singing of choirs, etc. — of course, it is sad and worthy of pity, but inner service to God in silence and tenderness, and concentration of the spirit in ourselves is not taken away from us.  Just as the famous Chelyuskins, deprived of their ship, did not die, but managed to create a tolerable life for themselves on the wreckage of a deceptive floating ice floe until they were lifted up on the wings of airplanes from the abyss that threatened to engulf them, in the same way, after the pitiful collapse of our spiritual ships, we should not panic or lose self-control and hope for salvation, but we must calmly begin to adapt to the new environment and refine our prayerful work of serving the Lord and enjoying Him "in psalms and chants and spiritual hymns," as the Apostles and all the first Christians prayed.

And the hermits who have voluntarily spent decades away from the temples of God, do they not deserve our holy envy more than those who live among churches and magnificent Diving services, but have not yet achieved such closeness to God and enjoyment of Him?

You, who have been deprived of the recent joys of prayer in the temples of God, remember — you are not exempt from the obligation to prayerfully arrange your life and are not deprived of the opportunity to do so, in addition to the opportunity to have constant servants of Christ around you and enjoy their spiritual support and care.  Even without them, you should spend your life as is you were your own priests, tempering your life into a sacrifice to the Lord and enduring all sorrows and hardships, with unceasing prayer of he soul to Him, remembering Him with love and gratitude for all His mercies and sorrows and joys, and longing for His salvation, when He send His angels to take your souls from earthly troubles and dangers, and on wings to lift you up to Himself, where there will be "neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor sighing."  And until then, and for that purpose, get all printed and written liturgical and prayer books and "sing to our God," sing intelligently as you can and as much as you can in your prayerful homes and [prayer] corners in specially dedicated time to Him, free from other worries and labors.

Our liturgical books are an inexhaustible source of spiritual consolations, and who does not have the opportunity to use them?  Only the Book of Psalms is worth so much: it permeates, like a canvas,426 all our prayer books and hymns

Do not weaken, do not lose heart, and the grace of God will be with you.  Amen.427

 

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 This reference to Chelyuskins shipwreck dates St. Joseph's letter  1934 – 1937†  ~jh

426  In this context, "канва" (canvas) metaphorically refers to the foundational or underlying structure.  Thus, the phrase suggests that prayer books and hymn serve as the fundamental framework or basis for something, similar to how a canvas serves as the base for a painting.  [Editor's Note]

427  The original letter has not been preserved.  Handwritten copies were kept in the Josephite communities and have survived to our time.

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 pages 371-373 typeset from
St. Joseph of Petrograd is Biography & Writings
ISBN:: 979-833-821-2851
www.orthodoxtraditionalists.com

 

 

download pdf:

https://app.box.com/s/ak2o6hkrgu2i1h9e8bpyypttmhnd6oxu 

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Челюскин» и его судьба. Программа Леонида Млечина
Chelyuskin and its fate. Leonid Mlechin's program
actual film footage documents journey, camp, rescue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BBNJkMN7QE

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Hail Storm

Liberty Tennessee

Nashville US Hwy 70 • junction TN 96

May 8, 2025  afternoon

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https://app.box.com/s/h4031e0b833eaveix0cx70t2eo5ihj3u

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How many hail storms does the average person see in his lifetime?  In the 1950s there was  a hail storm in Hinsdale, Illinois.  My sister and I retrieved some of the ice balls and tried to preserve them in Gramma's deep freezer that was in the basement of the farmhouse on County Line Rd.

 

How grateful I am for my metal roof, the best that money can buy...  standing seam and the thicker option for the metal sheets.   Minimum 70 years guarantee.  Life expectancy 150 years.

 

preview of video:

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Spiritual State of the World, Archimandrite Constantin Ziatsev 1962

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This should be required reading.  Archimandrite Konstatin is hard to understand anyway, but the Russian-to-English translations of his writings are even harder.  I would appreciate any help proof-reading this text and also if you find the original Russian.

Archimandrite Konstantin and Fr. Seraphim Rose were alike in that they both discerned accurately the present times in which they lived, and so therefore could they "predict" the future, — see the direction in which the world is heading — but without being actual prophets.  Fr. Seraphim was able to understand Archimandrite Konstantin original Russian writings with no difficulty.  We, though, likely have difficulty understanding him.  Everyone should try.  Even non-Orthodox can benefit from trying to read this.  Re-read and re-re-read this writing and please send your proof-reader corrections to me.  Let our Church's children be raised for the Church according to the old ROCOR.

Personally I found interesting the Archimandrite's discussion of Our Lady of Fatima.  Never has it made so much sense.  

 

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The Spiritual State of the World and the tasks of the ROCOR

Address to XV Diocese Assembly 1962
Archimandrite Constantine Ziatsev
Orthodox Life magazine 1962 (4)
see Joanna's Shared Library

"We, who are scattered abroad, are being subjected to a fiery test.  Each one of us!

"It is the Orthodox fitness of each one of us that in the final account will determine the worth of Russia on the outside, as a Church.  Modest is the phenomenon of Russia on the outside in the plan of earthly measurements, bit it takes on a different significance when weighed on other scales!  So great is this significance that only a "churchified" conscience is capable of accepting it in humility.  For Russia on the outside bears on her shoulders that greatness, braveness, and holiness which is the essence of Historical Russia;  The Russian Orthodox Church, now voiceless in its homeland is capable of speaking with full voice only in the form of Russia on the outside, which preserves her Orthodox goodness."

"Hence we are compelled to direct an acute fixedness of our attention towards the processes which give evidence of the state of the spiritual health of Russia.  And from here we are compelled to undertake yet another task: the labor over our Orthodox self-consciousness.  Spiritually enlightened should our gazes be; it is in the light of the Church that our reception of reality should take place; acute should remain our Church consciousness.  This does not come free of charge: it demands intense and persistent labour.  The Orthodox way!  One must want to tried it.  One must be able for it.  A spiritually enlightened compass is needed, a sensitive one.  And concentrated should out attention be to the movement of its dial: woe unto us if we happen not to perceive its deflections!  For we can turn out to be carried in that direction in which the favourable wind is bearing the whole world: — towards "Apostasy."

This I wrote 10 years ago, when the general trend of life of the whole world had already been entirely determined.  But it was as if in dotted lines that the forms of that, in which the elements of Apostasy had incarnated themselves, was then designated.  In the course of these 10 years Apostasy took on the character of a distinctly unfolded system of phenomena, not only in concept, but also in organization and encompassing the entire world.  And so now the question is not that of being especially sensitive in the perception of maturing processes, but that of making a decision before facts.  Face to face we are confronted with the question of which we spoke figuratively before; we here are asked individually and together as a whole, in our organized "churchness": with whom are you — with Christ or Antichrist?  Earlier we cautiously groped within our church consciousness in the light of a possible question that we posed before ourselves.  But now this question stands concretely before us.  Of course, the Antichrist did not call himself Antichrist.  This will not be so even when he appears personally.  Otherwise he would not be the Antichrist.  But the connection of the powers of the world in their movement against Christ has become so apparent to those who serve Him in the true Church, that no room remains for doubts and vacillation.

For Apostasy, in its concluding phase, in general is characteristic that the co-called "dark powers," existing immemorial, lose the appearance of separate organizations, each having its wn internal world, its external appearance and, most important — its power, inherent  namely in this organization.  The "dark" activity, from the movement of enthronement of Apostasy, ceases being a conglomerate of endeavours and attempts of influence upon the ruling order, but becomes a realization of a certain program that unifies everyone, and which determines the very "climate" of the world.  We are concerned now not with some kind of underground activity directed against a prevalent system of rule in the world that is irradiated with Heavenly light, but with the liquidating settlement of accounts towards the remnants of this system which has been beaten down to the ground, and simultaneously with the apostatical universal mobilization of a humanity deprived of heavenly protection.  This is carried out in the most varied forms, depending upon who was what in the period when the world yet rested upon its bright firmament.  It is not at all necessary that everywhere and always all the active members of such organizations give clear account to themselves that they are serving the Antichrist.  They may continue to function so-to-say as near-sighted separatists.  But due to the force of the situation all such organizations become drawn towards one another an in this cooperation they continue to increasingly lose their quality as separate entities.  Simultaneously their very membership on a universal scale is becoming more expansive, to a tremendous degree.  Organizations in no way able to be related to the "dark ones," on the basis of their past now, with the rise of Apostasy, lose the former bright coloration of their countenance.  Such organizations assume a special power of temptation for the defenseless man, for they present darkness garbed in vestments of light inherited from the past.  It is in this sense that recently, in the course of a few years, a striking change has occurred.

With the emergence of the epoch of Apostasy, the central position in the world has been occupied by Communism, both by the sign of its power which rules, as well as by the sign of the demonstrated openness of the dark aims that it has set before itself.  At the beginning no one understood communism as being a power that could claim a lengthy duration of existence, but with years they began with ever-increasing precision to recognize this power as having stably entered the world, and, further, as determining the very consistency of the world.  The free world agreed to "co-exist" with communism, dismissing the very idea of a possibility of liberation of involuntarily subjected peoples beneath the yoke of communism.  A further stage advanced to the fore: the free world confirmed itself in the thought of active cohabitation with communism, of cooperating with it. The task of a mutual permeation of the free and communist world has been set forth, and the task of finding a conceptual basis for mutual activity on a word wide scale.  And, finally, — the latest one: the question has been posed of the organization of a world power that would eliminate all "historical" past, wholey adjusting to such a future when the determining significance cannot but be predestined for communism.  In the year just elapsed the world has reached this stage!

The United Nations have experienced a striking change.  Even earlier the mark of Apostasy was upon them, as far as the theory of "co-existence" with communism namely in them received ever-increasing practical application.  There was also something worse: the U. N., in a manner becoming habitual, neutralized any individual activity directed towards active resistance to communism.  With regard to the Congo, something new took place.  For the first time, as a practical decision, corresponding to the desires of the U. N., a coalition was organized in which a communist element turned out to be participating on a basis of equality.  Something yet worse took place: the utilization of punishment expeditions for the suppression of anti-communist tendencies.  This change in the very nature of the  U. N. did not evoke any reaction — the consciousness of free humanity has been made obtuse. . .

With regard tot he Church world, a change yet more outstanding was undergone by the World Counsel of Churches.  The Assembly at New Delhi enthusiastically accepted the Moscow Patriarchy into its membership, styling it as the true Church and conceiving such an enlargement of its body as the desired and most promising envelopment of Orthodoxy by the Ecumenistic movement.  And this also was accepted as something normal.  Everyone maintained the appearance of everything yet continuing to elapse within the framework of the Church.  Even the heated problem of the two Germanys turned out to be passed over lightly: those in the membership of ecumenism, who up until now yet dared to maintain their own point of view, fell with the faces into the mud . . . . Somewhat earlier there was Rhodes — a gathering even more shameful, for the primacy of the Soviets garbed in church vestments was recognized within a free Orthodox milieu.  And through this a question mark arose over all of free Orthodoxy with great regard to its gracefulness, whether it yet remained in Christ or had not already gone over to the Antichrist.

Catholicism has not yet said its final word: the counsel is only in the process of gathering.  But the stamp of apostasy has been denoted upon Catholicism with terrible clarity in the course of the past years.  At the very moment of the rise of Apostasy the Lord reached out to the Catholics in a miraculous manner.  There is no reason for not believing in the Fatima visitation of the Mother of God to the Portuguese children.  Through them was made known to the world, and very soon thereafter, at beforehand exactly determined periods of time, numerous times with ever-increasing power and even miraculously repeated by the Mother of God before all the people the report of that astoundingly-terrible phenomenon that took place in our homeland.  A stern warning was sounded to all non-Russian Christianity: if Russia does not revert, ruin would set in upon the  whole world!  The Mother of God called the whole world to repentance — i.e. establishing a general Christian solidarity of the whole world with Orthodox Russia: the restoration of Historical Russia is the condition necessary for the continuation of the world!  And what came of this!  The miraculous, oft repeatedly miraculous sign was left in silence by the Vatican — in order only later, with the passage of a lengthy period of time, then to be made the object of the whole world's attention, but now in the form of a new, officially confirmed version, radically changed.  The miraculous sign, calling all to repentance and threatening ruin to all, if Russia does not return to Christ, was  transformed into a sign having as its exclusive aim to exalt the pope, whose recognition by Russia was supposedly to have been declared by Heaven to be the condition necessary for the salvation of Russia and of the world!  In such a manner Fatima took on the meaning of a heavenly sign affirming that new face, which was given to Catholicism by Apostasy: a miraculous sign which opened the way for the removal of Apostasy, instead became the very peak of its confirmation!  Apostatic Catholicism manifests itself in a twofold manner: side by side with the original Latin Catholicism stands the new eastern one, which includes all forms of Orthodoxy, and from whom is demanded only that they recognize the pope.  It is namely this ecumenistic Catholicism in its tow-fold significance that should draw up certain totals at the counsel.  In contradistinction to the appeal of the Mother of God, the Vatican demands from Russia not a return to Christ, Who has been renounced by her, i.e. a return to Orthodoxy, but a subjugation to the pope.  A struggle to the finish has been declared not upon communism, but upon Historical Russia.

The anticommunist conception of the world remains sufficiently firm in some influential Catholic circles, however the hatred towards Historical Russia cannot but fail to paralyze the frame of mind even in them.  Therefore it is possible to await from the counsel further success of "ecumenistic consciousness," embracing with well-wishing, as is now well known, also the Soviet Church.  As a result of this, the condolence towards the "Church in silence" will turn out to be nothing but rhetoric. . . .

In general, if one is to speak of Christianity as a whole, then one must with sorrow state that, from historically most indisputable Orthodoxy to sectarianism, Christian only by name, Christianity is becoming increasingly permeated by the consciousness of its "ecumenistic" unity.  If earlier each, no matter on what step of Apostasy he may have stood, regarded himself as the possessor of the real Truth, being faithful to which made up the sense of his life, then now the consciousness of this has become extinguished even in the leaders of contemporary Orthodoxy.  On the contrary, the idea-power, the moving idea has come to be the consciousness of a complete common unification: all must be together in everything.  A feeling of insult arises if one is not allowed to participate in the Eucharistic meal: each "Christian" should be allowed to participate in "inter-communion."  One cannot give theological support for this.  A way out has been found.  Is not the Holy Spirit capable of manifesting Its power at any moment and under any conditions?  It was here that all met . . . .   To the extent that the "ecumenistic consciousness" condolingly embraces also the Soviet Church, so communism turn out to be engulfed by blessed perspectives — chimerical loftiness annuls actual reality . . . .

This cannot delete the elemental instinct of self-preservation.  So far has the spiritual disintegration of the world progressed, that it is now in this sentiment that one detects the entire relation of the free Christian world to communism.  Something unimaginable is taking place before our eyes.  Free Germany has left off its concern or the liberation of its brothers in blood and faith.  In general nobody things of liberating their brother-Christians.  The free Christian world confirmed itself upon the recognition of communism as a power which had irreversibly entered the world reality to stay.  The right of citizenship has been granted to the theory of a new "post-Christian" era that now is entering upon the phase of activity.  Christianity is prepared to view itself as being in a kind of 'ghetto" state.

Christianity is becoming one of the variations — of equal status with the other faiths — of religious consciousness of a humanity radically renovated in its spiritual content.  . . .

A characteristic peculiarity of the "post-Christian" era is a negation of any absolute significance in back of religion.  And though this, ecumenism, by virtue of the force of circumstances, extends beyond the bounds of Christianity, which was designated with special clarity at New Delhi.  Logic leads even further, practically justifying a way that already has been entered upon.  Why does man in his striving to clarify the purpose of life have to be limited to religious beliefs?  Both atheism and materialism and evolutionism can claim an equal status with the other "faiths."  Religion is receiving the significance of a certain quality of human consciousness — and no more.  The world does not demand a God-Creator, and the less so a God-Provider.  Characteristic is the success of a book of one French Jesuit, and which was let out into the world in a memorial edition with a forward by a contemporary propounder of Darwinism, most obviously a godless man.  [Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ~jh]  Characteristic also is that ecumenistic consciousness is prepared to populate the Cosmos now being possessed, with beings of a human form, with the degradation of the Book of Genesis to the level of a religious memorial of earthly "provincialism."  The Kingdom of Heaven, if there is yet to arise any discussion of this, is relegated to a certain infinite future that would be of no interest to anybody.  At the center of attention is something else: the transformation of the post-Christian era into an era of perfection of human nature in space embracing the Cosmos and unlimited in time.  The Cosmos fuses with Man.  [New-Age-ism ~jh]   Inner religious experience finds itself a proper place in his transfigured psyche, but it is not man who sees himself in a God's world, but a God Who finds Himself in the human psyche.

In their earthly "provincialism" churches may also be preserved.  But as far as these churches even at the present allow such a course of ideas — what can they say to their brothers who are wasting away beneath the yoke of communism?  Only one thing: leave off any hope of salvation!  First of all, do not depend upon our help!  do not even hope that in general the period of rule by communism can pass.  The question is of finding a way of living with communism. . . . .

"Russ" under the Tatars lived in the conviction that this yoke was not to be eternal: agreements that were made by the princes included in themselves the invariable reservation: "But, the Horde being passed . . . ." The contemporary free world does not regard in a similar manner the communist yoke that is weighing down heavily upon their brothers in servile subjugation.  Communism hs entered the world to stay forever.  If even it does not "pass," then this will be in a different sense.  Here we approach that which is the most terrible of all.
 

Communism has entered the world to stay

The free Christian world does not want to confess that in its "coexisting" acceptance of communism, it is being impelled by a sentiment of self-loving cowardice.  An ideology is thus born.  Its designation is to become an ennobling coating of the act of selling out one's brothers to be over-run and plundered by the communists.  But simultaneously it reveals an objective internal tie between the western world and communism.  For communism was begotten by the western world and not by us!  And now the west stylizes communism as being an extremity, something disfigured that originally had been good.  One should return communism to that benign essence lying at it basis, towards which the free world also is striving!  A rehabilitation of socialism arises in most different forms and variations.  A particular kind of calling arises for the free world, which is imperatively dictated to it: to work over communism in the closest of connection with itself.  In such a manner the disfiguring extremities of communism will be gotten rid of — and it will finally be enlightened with its original light, and this the more rapidly and completely the more close-knit the cultural association of the USSR with the free world.  And this humanity will mature for a new form of existence, until after becoming increasingly permeated by the ecumenistic consciousness, it does not finally unfold itself in all its varied potentials, including also the comprehension of the Cosmos by Man.  Such is conceived to be the start of blessed common post-Christian co-existence that is to grasp all of humanity . . . . .

This is spoken of with various nuances and in different variations.  Only some speak of this.  But they speak for all.  Why is this so?  For the reason that nobody renounces this.  In this respect New Delhi was characteristic of that.  There the most incredible things were said namely in this sense.  In a tremendous gathering of various peoples — how can such a gathering answer for all that was said there!  But important is that these absurdities were not renounced by anyone.  And for that reason all that sounded not as irresponsible foolishness of casual prattlers, but as something which could not yet have been said outright in the person of the Assembly for various reasons, but which in itself foreshadows a certain future.  These expressions have namely so been left hanging in the air . . . . .The future is with them!

One thing one may say with full certainty: into the makeup of the "ecumenical consciousness" does not enter the conviction that communism is a chastisement from God which with God's permission has seized control of the world, and has to disappear if it is fated for the world to continue its existence.  Into the "ecumenical conscience" also does not enter the conviction that communism cannot be recognized by those who persist in being true Christians.  For such, to liberate their brothers involuntarily captive to the godless-satanists, would be a religiously-imperative task.  If this were in fact the impossible, then they would have had to tirelessly stigmatize the usurpers, calling upon them, satanists, the chastisement of God, and praying with all their heart for the liberation of their brothers from this foulness, which has been allowed buy God to set in upon us for our common sinfulness.  Of this — there is nothing.  And through this all has been said by the free world in the sense of its dechristianization — already confirmed.

The dechristianization of the free world, manifesting itself negatively, simultaneously also receives positive expression: between the free Christians of the world there is increasingly developing a mutual sociableness in the name of bringing to full unity all humanity which, making use of the appellation Christian has strayed from Christ, and further of the whole world in general.  We return to that "starting point," by which all now is brought into motion and to which all returns — to contemporary ecumenism.  Universality, not having any concrete boundaries, since completely directed towards the coming future, and therefore completely denying in principle the entire past — such is the spiritual "climate" of our contemporary world, already having arrived at the point of making the idea of an imminent second Pentecost a truism

Hanging in the air, as a kind of dogma, denying the Christian past in the name of a post-Christian future, such a conception of reality does not merely remain theoretical.  It gives rise to practical effects, namely a systematic annihilation of everything which bears the stamp of the traditional past.  Each organic tie with the past is presently being mercilessly extirpated this transforming humanity into an impersonal mass knowing neither generation nor race.

When we view this in relation to Tibet, or to China in general, as well as to our unfortunate homeland — one may well not become astonished.  But now the very same is taking place everywhere and in the most varied forms.  Who, for instance, is right and wrong in that which is now taking place in France?  This is a special problem.  But under all the prevailing conditions: are we not witnesses of the fact that in its basic core, the French army is being destroyed, that is to say, the real pith of a belligerent nation, which in this respect is an authentic heir to ancient Rome?  And what of the malevolence with which the free world views that improvisation in the form of a dictatorship, which for a time has restored the fallen traditions of the past in Spain and Portugal, thereby making these nations a bulwark against communism!  And that hate with which the free world conceives of the Russian historical past!  And the more tolerant the free world becomes towards communism, the more intolerant does it become towards the memory of Historical Russia.  And more than that! That which now is being conceived by the free world as being valuable, which has been preserved up until now from our past, is being placed by the free world into the foundation of the acceptance of communism as a lawful heir to Russia, the Third Rome!

The hate for the past also is present in the free world, so to say, inwardly: in each form of mutuality it extends forth to all that which happened to arrive at stability in every "state of life" — in general towards all traditional coexistence, be it social, local-social, general-social, church-social, professional-social, national or political — in general towards all possible facets of an "order of life."  Man wants to be reborn.  Man does not want to know any durable ties that obligate him in some way.   Man is becoming incapable of manifesting the most elementary properties of human behavior consciously manifested in the course of time.  Man therefore shuns all responsibility in relation to one's surrounding, towards those "near" to one, towards all possible kind of "nearness."

This theme would demand a separate report — such is the mass of data offered by the press in relation to all the free nations of the free world.  And it is not rarely now that one perceives signs of fright before an avalanche of facts repugnantly one-sided in meaning.  But if one desires to sum up this social reaction, one may say one thing about it: a helpless waving of arms!  Not attempting to grasp the process as a whole, I shall limit myself to several illustrations.  I shall begin from a personal recollection, already having a ten year history.

A house was acquired.  This house was received in a state which, under normal conditions, a dwelling may be if being vacated under threat of personal endangerment to life to such a degree, that all is abandoned as is not having a minute's time even to destroy what is intimate.  A chest of drawers is here.  I started to look through the contents.  Books, albums, photographs, diaries, letters. . . .  Vital life is seen here, extending over several decades.  Other types of faces, other wearing apparel — as if one were reading a historical book that is diversely illustrated.  Church books with ancient book marks — used constantly long ago.  Letters — of a certain great grandmother . . . . . everyday notes of more immediate relatives . . . .  What has become of the proprietors, having left all this to the new owners, even not taking the trouble to do away with all intimately related to the family?  They moved into a new house right here nearby that had been built by them. . . . One can say that they demonstratively shook off the dust of the past, striking it from their consciousness . . . .

This is not something isolated, accidental, local.  This is something general and omnipresent. The family past is being stricken from consciousness.  The feeling of a tie with the place of family settledness — is dying away.  The home — its holiness: do not look for this in the soul of contemporary man.  People live for the present.  The past, yet yesterday accepted as something valuable, giving a real meaning to life, in its sacerdotal succession — has lost significance, it has died.  The family is being denied the remnant manifestations of patriarchalness.  This is now a mechanical compatibility of living, which gives rise to certain manifestations of cooperation that are reduced to a minimum.  The internal bonds are something that is more and more seldom felt in external cohabitation.  The contemporary family emanates a frigidness, and the compatibility of living, not enlightened from within, not infrequently gives rise to the most terrible dramas, which not rarely already are not felt as dramas.

And what about the school!  Does it not undermine the family, shaking the very foundations of family discipline?  Some signs of recovery are observed.  But this is only, so to say, partisan activity.  The general front is drifting in the direction of progressive destruction — ultimately dreadful.  War to the finish has been declared on whom?  On God!  The principle of separation of church and state in the USA is being interpreted in the sense of an exclusion from school of any tinge of religiousness.  And this is not only in the sense of a non-admission of any manifestation of "churchness" in the school — no: the general trend of teaching according to this point of view, is to be liable to strict censure!  God must not be anywhere!  Let us present an example.

We are extracting the following article from one of the last numbers of a well known American edition "U.S. News and World Report."

"A Protestant attack on Catholic Textbooks" — so is it called.  And here is its text:

     "New York — A Protestant study of textbooks used in Catholic schools just published, concludes that some federal aid now going to church schools is unconstitutional.
     The study says that parochial-school courses in mathematics, science and foreign languages are permeated with religious indoctrination.
     Under the National Defense Education Act, church schools are getting loans for equipent to be used in teaching "secular" subjects such as math, science and language.  During the hearings on this Act, Protestant spokesmen say, Congress was assured that no religion is taught by Church-sponsored schools in such courses.
     To test this theory, the study was made for the National Council of Churches, which represents 34 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox communions.  The study's author: George R. La Noue, a doctoral candidate at Yale.
     Mr.  La Noure cites various examples of religious themes used in secular texts.  From a science text: "The Church is opposed ot mercy killing because mercy killing is contrary to Divine Law."  From an arithmetic text: "Ann brought 3 flowers and Jerome brought 2 flowers to put in front of Mother Mary's statue. . . "

The recommendation of Mr. La Noue's 1000-page report: Church schools should get no federal aid of any kind.

This is the voice not of sporadic free-thinkers or organizations of an anti-church nature.  This is the voice of Protestantism which is church-organized.  From all which is not an official teaching of the Law of God — God should be driven out!  The very mention of anything connected with Christianity, the very reference to the Law of God — all this, even in church schools, is anti-constitutional: all this, under the threat of being denied any material aid, must be driven out . . . . This point of view is now receiving predominating weight in judicial consciousness, opening the possibility of establishing namely siuch practice through judicial decisions, obligatory for all.  Such a point of view threatens to become the will of the law-makers, even to the extent of becoming formally proclaimed.  The broadest of perspectives for cultural association with communistic nations in matters of education are being opened.

Let us present yet one more quotation fro characterization of the contemporary school.  Here is what one was able to read in a Russian paper under the heading "Poughkeepsie, May 8":

     "The director of a well known women's college, Vassar, Mrs. Sarah Gibson Blanding, appealed to an audience consisting of 1450 pupils with a speech in which she warned her listeners of the introduction of new rules regarding their behavior.
     "Mrs. Blanding elucidated that 'unallowable sexual relations of the students with their boy-friends,' and likewise 'inordinate use of drinks' in the future would serve as cause for exclusion of such guilty students from the college.
     "Mrs. Blanding added that she recommends such students to voluntarily leave this institution of learning, not awaiting the undertaking of measures on the part of its administration.
     "The speech evoked a turbulent reaction on the part of its listeners, during which 52 percent of the audience favorably greeted the new stand of the college, 40 percent expressed intense protest, and the rest remained neutral.
     "On the part of the opposition, one student spoke who counselled the director to 'officially make known in the catalogue of the college that this institution of learning has been transformed into an institution of Victorian times for the rearing of innocent virgins.'
     "The orator added that in such a manner 'the college will rid itself of a growth in undesirable elements, and youth with contemporary views on life will not be misled and will be able to choose a much more suitable institution of learning.' "

ever-increasing cases of mental illness caused by demons

The problem of "sex" in general is now being freed of idealistic veils.  In this something is being manifested which can not be called otherwise than — a "bestialization" of humanity — which is the more repugnant the more it garbs itself in subtle forms.  But man cannot become "animal."  For that reason the result of this turns out merely to give an opportunity for the demons to become fully roused in free activity.  Only a spiritually-graced gaze would be capable of determining the percent of possession by evil in each case of psychic deterioration.  But the most intimate connection of the ever-increasing cases of mental illness with possession by demons is not to be doubted.  Likewise not to be doubted is that if, as a consequence of treatment, there is a weakening in the external manifestations of mental illness, then it not infrequently is accompanied by a deepening in the deterioration process from a spiritual aspect.  The horrible problem of disfigurement of human nature is opening before us, as evidence of apostatic maturation of humanity.  Clearly pathological manifestations are to be seen in the background of the common alteration of the human psyche.

The human being is losing the capacity for remaining alone with oneself.

The human being is losing the capacity for remaining alone with oneself.  Here it is impossible not to note the exclusive harmfulness of television and radio.  The home, in its closeness, giving place to such life activity that remains daily elevated and daily comes nearer to God, is being undermined.  Ten years ago someone sent me a collection of leaflets, edited by one Protestant centre, with the aim of forewarning the faithful of the ruinous role of television in the like of the human.  I recall that one of these appeals started approximately in this manner:

— Well, I am passing, writes one pastor, through New York and observe — where the mark of the Antichrist is above the houses, the television receptor?  Almost everywhere.  When the Antichrist comes, — it is namely this instrument that he will utilize to rule over humanity . . . .    In these leaflets it was described, incidentally, also to what degree the possibility of "at home" seeing and hearing the church service was breaking the living tie with the place of worship, the pastor, the Church.  In general it is difficult to evaluate the harmfulness of the very possibility of make church  prayer an object of widespread external common use.  I recall how in Harbin one whom I happened ot meet said to me: "Can you imagine what I have just experienced?  In a Chinese barbershop I was shaved amidst the sound of a Liturgy that was being performed. . . ."  Yet more terrible is the approach to prayer as a a phenomenon capable of being protocoled for later practical utilization.  This already is an endeavor upon the spiritual effectiveness of prayer, that is to say upon its very essence.  

Psychiatry kills the soul of man as far as it proceed from the conception that the psyche of man consists of nothing but mental phenomena, with the denial of spiritual life in man.  But how is one to term the practical effect of mechanized prayer upon the soul of man?  This is not a diverting denial of spirit, but a most apparent profanation of it . . . .  A human being hurries in the morning or evening — why not set a phonograph or turn on a radio — with the "morning and evening prayers," and to carry out domestic tasks under it accompaniment.  Is it not horrible to imagine that?  But this possibility is not to be excluded.  I had occasion to hear from one venerated priest how once in a home a deceased person was being serviced by a "pannikhida" that was repeated on a record that was continually replayed. . . . .

Let such shocking perversions be merely cases of exception.  How then is one to explain that now the carrying out of morning (especially) and even prayers remains a relative rarity for people, even for regular church members?  Is this not linked with the reduction to nil of intimate home life?  Leisure!  How is it being occupied?  It is not only for prayer, but for reading to any degree serious that presently there is no time to be found.  And how much of it is wasted upon television?  But the most frightful part of it is not so much that time is being wasted.  How is it being wasted?  Who controls it.  What is the consciousness of people being occupied by?  Thus the comparison made above by the quoted pastor is not at all wild.  The power of darkness is climbing into the soul of man with it entire crude paws, and then starts to dispose of matters as a master.  Just try to extricate yourself from it now!  For attraction by television turns out to be the very same type of possession as narcotic addiction.  Especial mercy of God is necessary in order to become capable of liberating oneself from the filthy paws that have become accustomed to operate over our receiving antennae.   Theoretically at the present time many understand the harmfulness of television, but do the calls for its renunciation have any effect?  I think not . . . . And, incidentally, this is imperatively being dictated by the feeling of self-preservation both in relation to oneself and especially in respect to children.  If the movement for the benefit of an actual "churchification" of our church people were to be actually realized — its first action ought to be the exclusion of television from use at home . . . .

for churchification" of our people, the first action ought to be to exclude television from our homes.

 Many other methods of mass influence upon the psychology  of the individual are being utilized — the movies, the daily press which give us reason to propose — have they posed before themselves the specific aim of bemiring the mind of the human; numerous and various types of diversions and methods of occupying one's leisure.  Everything is functioning in the very same direction.  The very tempo of life leads up to such a condition that usually a person gets "home" in such a state of exhaustion that, in essence, home life is transformed into a short let up from the converyor for the fulfillment of most necessary needs — in order them again to be included in this conveyor  . . . . .

One of the most outstanding manifestations of a radical alteration in human nature is the incapacity of modern man to conceive that which was a source of peace and consolation for his most immediate ancestors.  The question of simplification and facilitation of the church service is presently being acutely posed —  in the direction of a removal of its excessive "heavenliness."  It is not only the "heavenly" sermon, i.e. satiated with the word of God, that wearies and bores — new hymns are being demanded in place of the old ones!  And not considered as a disorder by accepted as an actual necessity is the wild idea concerning the modernization of church services to the extent of allowing a jazz orchestra to become a part of the church service.

I am far from the idea of identifying all of humanity with those on whom so apparently is manifested the dread process of the transformation of the human being into an animal undergoing technological perfection.  This is a fore-scene, be that it is a broadly inclusive one.  It is difficult to conceive of this process as to often attaining irreversible control in the souls of even those people who have become its victims.  On the other hand, there is humanity which has not yet been touched by this disease.  This part of humanity does not parade before us — on the contrary, it conceals itself, shut off from sight by he terrible show that is occupying the fore-scene.  But this part of humanity lives.  It namely is that part of humanity whose presence justifies the existence of the world.  To determine the specific weight of this part of of humanity does not appear possible.  Here probably consoling surprises are in waiting for us.  But one thing may be said with certainty: humanity that in secret is yet preserved is incapable of overthrowing the fore-scene with its own powers.  And yet it is namely this fore-scene that is making history, producing its ruinous effects upon humanity yet preserved.

Our gazes are naturally turned to the East — will no the Light come from there toward a salvation of the world?  This is the hope in Christ!  Providentially-understandable is the hopelessness in all other directions.  Does not the Lord want to reveal His power in conditions of unavoidable frailty of humanity, and reveal it namely in those who trust only in Him?  And this not in the sense of an ecstatic demand for a turn of live for the better, for in this there would be a certain "covetousness," but in humble faithfulness to Him, with complete surrender of oneself to His providential will.

A Light for the East!   We have come to rely upon that cry in our evaluation of the free world.  There is yet life.  It is difficult to say what the resonating effect would be if the Light of Christ were to shine forth.  Would not scenes arise similar to the elemental rise of "churchness" in those localities that were freed of bolshevism?  For even in the "free" world a milieu remote from true Christ is ruling tyrannically, and this is taking place with especial power — namely within the church framework, within traditionally-lawful forms, with the maintenance of an appearance of Church truthfulness.  Paradoxical as it may sound, yet spiritual freedom now in the free world is felt to be present in the lay society with greater power than the church world . . . .  Therefore, few have the courage or strength of spirit in order to assert themselves in the Church, having gone against the general trend .  . . . . And so it is like this that the "last Christians" are germinating even withing the free world, submerging into a form of catacomb.

A light from the East is needed!  Such is the deduction .  But such also is the presumption!  What has evoked the present state of the world?  Through the disappearance of ὁ κατέχων ("he that hinders, checks, sc. the advent of Antichrist, denotes the one in whom the the power is lodged, the Roman Emperor"*).   And how can Satan again be bound if not by the return of ὁ κατέχων.  And is it not understandable for the Evil spreading in the world to strive as if towards its center, towards satanocracy, which now has enthroned itself in Russia?   Only restoration of the Orthodox Tsardom is capable of altering towards salvation the present status of the world: this is the meaning of "Light from the East"!

Is this not a fantasy?  But the history of humanity — is it not a fantasy?  The enthronement of Christianity — is it not a fantasy?  Why go far?  The enthronement of Lenin in place of Emperor Nicholas II — is this not a fantasy?  In 1917 the "rightists" not rarely voted for Bolshevism in the conviction that their ascendance to power would only hasten their downfall — to such a degree fantastic seemed the idea of their lasting rule over Russia.  And the fall itself of Russia — is this not a fantasy?  Never before had Russia been so powerful as in the moment of her downfall — and further being militarily mobilized for self defense to the utmost degree.  And who was against her?  Nobody!  But it also tuned out that nobody was with the Czar.  Whom had the Providence of God been preserving in Russian?  Not simply a monarch, of which there are many on earth.  The Lord was preserving ὁ κατέχων (the withholding power).  And if the Czar had ceased being so for his government, his bureaucracy, his army, for his people?  Even the Russian Church!  For the Czar had become abandoned by all.  And he fell.  But how did he fall?  He fell as  a sacrifice, with his family, with his Heir — having blessed the vacant throne with martyr blood.  Through this He opened to us the way towards restoration of the Russian Tsardom.  Did he not transform the Czar throne into an altar.  Russian people, in prostrate repentance before this Altar — will not imperial martyrs succeed through prayer in atoning for their pardon?  Only in such a manner can be returned to Russia  Her significance of a sovereign power, serving as the footstool of  ὁ κατέχων  (the withholding power), in her providential mission for being guardian of the true Church — and through this same also of the whole world.

     * Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: copy 1886, Harper


This is the Light from the East . . . .  All the rest — are misguiding fires, diverting us away from the true Light.  Communism is now ready to tinge itself with any colors and to garb itself in any vestments — only to be resonance with the various currents of the free world that is being unified under various standards for meeting the imminent Antichrist.  No forms of government, no social ideal — be it monarchy or republic, socialism or capitalism — by themselves have any meaning in the struggle with bolshevism.  All these are chimeras for the support of which bolsheviks eagerly will offer, in any direction, suitable points of departure: do style the future as it becomes you, only in the present don't touch us, statanists!  And before what could those satanists, who have possessed Russia, be made to trepidate?  Only before the sacerdotal pair — the Czar and the Church.  And by the mercy of God before us is standing, by the very Providence of God set before us, the living incarnation of the Tsardom and the Church, as if waiting for us, in order to lead us on the path towards salvation — the Czar-martyr and our great prophet and miracle worker, tirelessly tutoring us in the spaces of the world, father John of Kronstadt.

The world is ripening for the Last Judgment.  Whence shall we be led by the Heavenly leaders?  To meet Christ-the-Remunerator, or is the return of Russia into her paternal domicile yet possible?

Is Historical Russia yet capable or spiritual rebirth?  This only the Omniscient Lord knows.  But one thing we may say, guiding ourselves with our human understanding.  If Russia is able to arise towards the salvation of herself an of the world — then it has to be now; time now is feverishly working against this possibility.

In times of old, Russia, beneath the burden of the Tatars, underwent spiritual transfiguration.  To consider the epoch of the Tartar yoke as an epoch of sheer darkness, from which Russia came out into the light of God, having there been submerged almost to the level of complete wildness, — only mole-eyed historians, looking at our past through western spectacles, can do.  Holy Russia was born in Kiev and Novgorod, but she was strengthened and took form beneath the yoke of the Tartars, taking on spiritual wings in poverty, sorrows, humiliations, in being layed waste and in ruins.  Here was then our total manner of living became completely permeated through with the Light of the Church of Christ under the leadership of the monasteries — in the everyday "podvig"* of living.  Hardly does this "podvig" yield to the early Christian "podvigs."  But there is a distinction: then there was a dispersed professing of faith, here it was conjoint, embracing all the people, and in such a way creating that indestructible tissue of our religious-national and political, as it were, soldering, which was the strength of Holy Russia for all future times.  It was in such a manner that our Russian "byt"** was created, penetrated by churchness.  Thus Russia became resemblant to a monastery!  So became Russian in its entirety,, as a whole, a nest that nurtured its fledglings in a system of "worlds," potentially unlimited and extending to the very limits of the universe, but retaining the fullness of its "sobor" consciousness on any bit of soil carried away on the souls of its feet, when the Russian man left her . . . . . even when betraying her in his human frailty.

     * An ascetic exploit, undertaken voluntarily or involuntarily imposed, which results in spiritual rise.

     ** An untranslatable word which mean a traditional all-embracing order of life.

The Tartar yoke was an idyl, a plaything, in comparison with the communist yoke.  But if the Tartar yoke, closing us off from the West, created an atmosphere of isolation, saving in the sense of offering a possibility of becoming concentrated in the rearing of an independent spiritual culture, that very same positive role in the same sense was also played by the terrible Communist yoke.  The spiritual decomposition of which we spoke earlier, as being the "climate" of the free world — did not touch Russia.  She suffered material losses — enormous.  She endured losses in people — innumerable.  She endured suffering — exceeding the bounds of human imagination!  She became the victim of moral decomposition, whose degree, in relation to separate individualities, numbered in tremendous figures, of course does not have likeness in the free world.  But — the massive of the Russian people has not been spiritually decomposed by the bolsheviks.  Russian lives beneath their rule, but not with them incomparably greater degree is characteristic  of the Soviet world.    This is not necessarily "the catacombs," in the sense of a hidden true Church distinct from the open church which has fallen under the rule of the bolsheviks.  Such "catacombs" do exist.  These "catacombs" justify Russia in the eyes of God.  This is that holy thread from which Russia is hanging, not falling into infernal darkness.  But each contemporary Russian man in his state of subjugation can lead a double life.  The mysteries of this twofold life are impenetrable.  Once I was told by a priest who was able not only to enter Russia, but even to return from her, having lived there many years, —  that it happened for him to be conveyed at night blindfolded, — somewhere, in order to hear contrite repentances of communists before death, who later wee buried beneath red flags.  Communist Russia from the start was a box with a double bottom.  But now this must be said in a somewhat different sense from which the just presented example gave evidence of.  Then Russia was directed by communists — real communists.  And now?  Is it possible to say with certainty that such communists do exist as a ruling minority in Russia?  They are in the past.  They have fulfilled their task.  This form of communism has been spent.  Presently Russia is being ruled by mercenaries and slaves.  They are doing their job — they will continue to do it.  But these are not convinced communist who carried out the Revolution, but mercenaries and slaves.   They can be all the more wicked and cruel.  But one cannot expect from them faithfulness to the concept of communism.   If they are penetrated by anything, then it is namely by that cloudiness of consciousness, which in its impious neutrality, in its spiritual vacuity, in its cynicism, devours everything living in the free world, opening to it broad ways for cooperation with the communist world.  A certain common language is being put together between contemporary communists who rule Russia, and the free world, which freely is going out to meet Antichrist.  And in this atmosphere a certain new regime is being formed in the USSR, in which together with the official communist doctrinaireship that rules formally, all possible forms of self satisfaction is receiving right of citizenship, not only permitted, but even encouraged by the leaders — self satisfaction, especially captivating in the USSR due to its novelty, and therefore able to buy people so cheaply, which to the free world is even little comprehensible.  Here is that "climate," which promises to unite the whole world, both the free and the communist worlds, and which, in different variations,  is being subjected to a test in different satellites.  The universal bestialization of being implanted namely in such a manner.  And initial communism is preserving its meaning only as a dirty instrument of espionage and terror — and as a determining supreme power.

At the present Russia is yet alive.  The evidence of foreigners, not so much tourists as prisoners, having lived for many years in Russia not artificially shown by really existing, convinces us of this.  Otherwise how is one able to explain their bowing before the moral image of the contemporary Russian man subjugated to the Soviets?   The Russian people preserved moral attraction, disarming anyone who comes into prolonged association with them.  This is a box with a double bottom.  But this already is in a somewhat of a different sense.  Not only is the soul of man split.  It is possible to observe the process of stratification in this mass of humanity as a whole.  There exists a ruling class, neutralized and to a  certain degree already anticommunist (including also the Soviet army).  And then there is the nation, not having experienced that process of "dehumanization" observed in the free world.  Under these conditions the fragility of Soviet despotism reaches its limit:  it now trembles over an abyss.  And the free world not only supports it, by also is threatening the Russian people at the same  time with spiritual death, as far as fusing with it in its own spiritual devastation . . . .

the power which overthrew the Russian Tsardom, is a satanic power

What does our task consist of, while this has not yet come on?  The utilization of all possibilities opened by the regime of freedom for the confession of our faith,  as the Russian Orthodox Church, spiritually at one with the internal catacomb Church, and at the same time being spiritually inseparable from the Russian Orthodox Tsardom.  The free world is unable to understand this.  But its pure souls are capable of understanding something else, and namely, that the power which overthrew the Russian Tsardom, is a satanic power.  And this is the primary fact that we must assert with thundering.  The stamp of  Anathema is upon the Soviet government and upon all who are with it.  This we must state not ony as a fact of the past, of which we tirelessly remind.  But we are the Church, which is called not only to remind of this, but even to proclaim Anathema with full authority during the week of Orthodoxy towards all the the four corners of the world, and this in a manner such that it become clear to all that the Anathema falls on all, no matter who, if only he freely extends his hand to the Soviet government.  Here is the first thing that our life in Christ should evince.  As concerns the positive content of our life in Christ outside of Russia, then as far as it received political colouring, at the present moment it can be revealed only in the from of prayer.  It is in our prayerful consciousness that the 'Tsardom is now being incarnated in the image of the Czar-Martyr.  Our civil-faithfulness is now expressed in prayerful glorification, simultaneously contrite and grateful, of the remembrance of the last Czar and his family.  And the louder sounds this our prayerful voice towards all the four corners of the world in its appeal to the subjugated Russian people, the better shall we fulfill our obligation of civil-faithfulness.

Real help?  From where are we to expect it — if only not from Heaven.  
the Russian Heaven, so profusely inhabited by our new intermediaries for the last decades — here is where our prayerful gaze has to be directed.  The are with us — if we are with them.  Who — "we"?  The entire Russian nation.  It is to it that our voices have to be directed.  And whose name is capable of being a spark enflaming the fire of prayer of the entire nation, together with the name of the last Czar?  This is our all-Russian Priest, father John of Kronstadt.

Now you will not raise Russia with political watch words and political names.  A leader is needed for the struggle with whom?  With Satan!  And here next to the anathema, with all the power of its might falling upon the Soviet satanocracy are these tow names, the Tsar-Martyr and Fr. John, which sounding in our mouths ought to penetrate into the consciousness of the Russian nation.  It is by this at the given moment that our life in Christ is fulfilled, in so far as it is turned to the outer world.  Here is our faithfulness to Russia in her faithfulness to Christ.  And where God will lead us, each one of us and all of us together, only God knows.

Archimandrite Konstantin.

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