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. The Editorial Board Is Glad To Inform Our Readers That This Issue Of..FIDELITY. has articles in english and Russian. THE SEAL OF THE ANTICHRIST IN SOVIET AND. changes in the government of the USSR, to..patriarchyu. Aleksey II Expressed His Opinion That Metropolitan Sergey (Stragorodskiy) broke some canonical rules in this news, especially to Rus. Abroad, gave us hope. abroad, we nurtured the hope that Holy Rus. would rise in her former glory and that in thousands of churches there would once again be sung praises to our.. We hoped that, just as in the past when Rus.shook off the Tatar yoke and foreign invaders, so our great Motherland. would now also rid herself of the invasion of the godless communist order. We had hoped that all that was foreign to the centuries-old life and spirit of Orthodox Russia would be shaken. that the communist government is no more and that the to..Chyuurchyu. is now free, we, the inhabitants of Russia Abroad, waited for the Moscow Patriarchate to condemn the "Declaration" and to categorically distance itself from any association.. However, to our great regret, the opposite occurred:. the ties with and the dependence of the Moscow Patriarchate on the government of the RF.. The Moscow Patriarchate examined its relationship.. As a result, not only to..patriarchyu. Aleksey, but also the other Bishops of the MP - prot?.s of the Communist regime. began to exalt Metropolitan Sergey as the savior of the to..Chyuurchyu. and even proposed him as russian extraction living in the free countries of the world, do not share the view that..Chyurist.s Church. was somehow saved by Metropolitan Sergey, nor that Metropolitan Sergey in any way deserves of the least bit of veneration. frightful and systematic persecution of the Church and its faithful by the theomachist government, many millions of new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church ascended to the Russian Golgotha. labor camps strewn all across our great and holy Motherland, millions of our compatriots, clergy or laity, famous or unknown, accepted martyrdom for Christ, for His Church, for the Holy Faith of our forefathers. opportunity to study the documents of the MP has presented itself, when some of the correspondence of Metropolitan and to..Patriarchyu. Sergey have been published, have church historians become aware of many details of the biography and activities of this Soviet hierarch, including his ecumenical and anticlerical. clear why the representatives of the MP Commission For Dialog With The ROCOR insisted on excluding the personality of to..Patriarchyu. Sergey, his..Dechlaration., and his. conclusion, in 1918, of the..Chommission Enforcing The Decree Of Separation Of The Church From The Government does not need any further commentary. Commission..enforchement by the OGPU (United State Political Administration) of the policy of destroying the churchgoers who followed Tikhon should be. To continue the policy for schism between Metropolitan Sergey (appointed by Peter as his temporary replacement with the title of..Deputy to the locum tenens.) And Metropolitan Agathangel. strengthening simultaneously the third Tikhon hierarchy. the government plan for the..destruchtion of the Church was through division, and Metropolitan Sergey played a pivotal role. Stalin, and the head of the Church - Metropolitan Sergey. In their work, both were equally unprincipled, ready to take any steps against real or imagined competition or a rival in order to attain their own goals. Neither one had any strong beliefs.. This type of behavior can be expected from a former terrorist and revolutionary who became the dictator of the land, but it is totally unacceptable for a clergyman, even unthinkable for a bishop. Personally neither Stalin, (however there are rumors that he shot his wife himself) nor Metropolitan Sergey shot or exiled any people, they left that to.. However, they are both guilty of creating innumerable victims. knew perfectly well that defrocking..nonchompliant. clergy, and publishing the names of the faithful laity who refused to accept the..Dechlaration. brought on the most severe repression on the part of the theomachist government. Church services, as well as religious discussions, outside of the sergeynistic church were looked upon by the government as illegal and anti-governmental.. and, knowing the consequences, Metropolitan Sergey continued to present to the government agencies clergy who were in disagreement with his..Dechlaration. for their merciless reprisals. addition, Metropolitan Sergey, breaking church canons, would announce decisions regarding Bishops without the necessary investigation and without a church court.. The punishing agencies arrested, together with the clergy, those faithful who were spiritually guided by them. example to Saint Patriarch Tikhon, and those following him, Patriarchal locum tenens Metropolitan Sergey, without the involvement of the Synod, often alone. Metropolitan Sergey, the church lost its Sobornost (participation of clergy and laity -..chonchiliar.). this was also lacking in the..elechtion. of the Soviet. temporarily as the administrator of the Church, until the return of a legal Patriarchal locum tenens, (Metropolitan Sergey himself pointed out in his to..notiche of..achchepting the duties of Deputy to the locum tenens, that the position was only..temporary..). Metropolitan Sergey Used Any Tool At his Disposal To Make Sure That The Legitimate Patriarchal Locum Tenens Would Not Return To Their.. To the directive issued by Metropolitan Peter..tyuat he of..chonsiders it imperative to remain the Patriarchal locum tenens, even though he is imprisoned..(.Letter of Metropolitan Sergey to Metropolitan Agathangel of April 17/30 1926) metropolitan Sergey pointed out that..but we will delay complying with his directives coming from prison, until such time that he himself returns to power, and will be able to answer for his own deeds, and it shall be decided whether these directives need to be obeyed or not. Agathangel of May 31, 1926). When Metropolitan Peter Ordered That Metropolitan Agathangel Should Take Over The Reins Of The Administration And The Duties Of Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Sergey wrote to Metropolitan Agathangel:. ..Peter, who had handed over to Me the reins of leadership, although temporarily but fully, himself deprived of the opportunity to be fully apprised of church affairs, can no longer either bear the responsibility for them, or, more importantly, involve.. On the other hand. I (or whoever will be after Me), accepting both the position of..lochum tenens as well as full responsibility for the proper flow of church affairs..channot accept directives from Metropolitan Peter emanating from prison, in a manner other than as directives, or more correctly suggestions, coming from an irresponsible individual. Sergey said:. to..Tyue Patriarch.s locum tenens is a legal, canonical, indisputable bearer of Patriarchal power in all its fullness. not dash the hopes of the Soviet government in its destruction of the Church by beginning a campaign of estranging Metropolitans Agathangel, Peter and others.. and after the announcement of the..Dechlaration., the Russian Church..split. into two parts. entrenched in sergianism, accommodating, penetrated with the spirit of anti-Christ.s falsehood, wholeheartedly cooperating with the..Party and government..and of..yueld on a leash by the theomachist regime. was that of Holy Tikhon which continued to follow uncompromisingly in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ. Soviet..Patriarchyu., was a renovator who took a new course, betraying the Church, the Holy Patriarch Tikhon, and the faithful.. His to..chomrade in arms.. the second Soviet..Patriarchyu., Aleksey (Simanskiy), betrayed Metropolitan Veniamin to the.. Together they both led their..chyuurchyu.. The Moscow Patriarchate.in The Footsteps Of The Father Of Falsehood. else, with the aid of the warring atheistic government, they allowed into their clergy morally unworthy people, thus encouraging the all-encompassing.. The madmen proclaimed terror against the true Church.. However, the Holy Church, as we know, survived.. The chaff, as well as those less strong in their faith, sifted to one side, and the others voluntarily followed the path to martyrdom. inherited positions from those first Soviet..patriarchyus. continued the politics of. servility toward. the godless government, consciously trying to..destroy. The Church, forcing the truly faithful to join the Catacomb Church (today it is called the True Orthodox Church) martyrs for the Orthodox faith and Confessors of the Russian Church. victims of the Soviet Regime and the Soviet Metropolitan/Patriarch, who suffered for the Truth, have been added to the list of All-Russian Saints. venerated, both in the Motherland, and Outside of Russia. throne of the Most-High Lord, and fervently pray for all of us sinners, for the much suffering Russian people, and for the entire world. the entire world, both Russian and not, appeal with prayers to them, to the multitude of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, for their protection. other hand, it is no wonder that the Russian faithful have given Metropolitan Sergey the nickname Okaianniy - to..tyue Cursed.. That ROCOR, which until now has kept her faith to Christ and total independence from lay governments, now will unite with the MP and will also embark on the path of falsehood, betrayal to Christ, service to a non-Christian government, leaving its main responsibility. the salvation of the souls of the faithful. Can it be that the Church leadership of ROCOR does not understand that neither the Church nor Russia can be saved with lies. that, with the intercession of the great assembly of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, Orthodox Russia will still be resurrected and because of them, to..tyue spiritual unity of the Russian Orthodox Church was never broken. We firmly believe that a time will come, when in this Church, which always remained free of lies and falsehood, betrayals and the service to anti-Christ.s government, once again the majestic hymn will be heard in the Kremlin Cathedrals:. ..God is with us, understand all you nations and submit. ... to.She firmly believe that the Holy Orthodox Russian Church will be able to continue her holy mission in the spheres of moral/religious education of the people. political, social, legal or economic system is capable of educating a wholesome human society:. Only Christ.s Church Offers The Unique..system. for the good of each individual and society as a whole.the love of God and one.s. sad decline of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia under Metropolitan Lavr (ROCOR) into the embraces of the Moscow Patriarchate (MP), it May be worth reviewing some of the arguments that members of the MP (and now even many members of the ROCOR) produce when challenged by members of the True Russian. These arguments have varied considerably with time, and even the MP would no doubt be ashamed of some of the arguments used in soviet times, when respect for both the Church and the State of the Soviet Union was much higher. We shall not review these..old. arguments that even the MP is now ashamed of, but shall turn to the..nesh. ones that have appeared since the fall of communism. although sometimes they are simply the..old. ones souped up.... One argument employed by contemporary advocates of the MP, and even by the MP Patriarch Alexis himself is that since the ROCOR was formed as a temporarily autonomous organization until the fall of communism, it must now dissolve itself insofar as communism fell nearly twelve years ago. .....Tsho questions are immediately elicited by this argument. and secondly, even if it has fallen, why should the ROCOR dissolve itself by joining the MP..... I think we cannot deny that in 1991 communism fell in the particular statist form that we know as the Soviet Union, or Soviet power. equally undeniable that, at least since New Year.s Day, 2000, when KGB Colonel Putin came to power, it has been in the process of being reconstructed. KGB men. and let us recall Putin.s remark that to..tyuere is no such thing as an ex- KGB man. - now occupy about 50% of the top governmental posts of in the Soviet. sorry, Russian - federation. The Soviet Anthem Has Been Re -established as the country.s national anthem. the red flag has been restored to the armed forces. Putin has toasted Stalin, and recently a new monument to Stalin was unveiled before a huge and enthusiastic crowd in ishim, Siberia (the see of ROCOR Bishop Evtikhy). saying that Lenin.s mummy remains in its pagan mausoleum in red Square. Chechen war continues to be waged in a hideously cruel, typically Soviet manner. The media are once again coming under tight state control (witness the way in which the independent NTV station was simply taken over). capitalist economy is under threat, and its stock market is plunging, as a result of the recent imprisonment of Khodorkovsky and the State.s seizure of a large part of his company.s shares. So if there was a time for the ROCOR to dissolve itself, it was in 1991, but not now..... In any case, what is the ROCOR to do after its self-dissolution. Fathers of the ROCOR always spoke of an All-Russian Council assembling after the fall of communism, which would sort out the problems of the Russian Church. Obviously by such an All-Russian Council they did not mean a council just of the MP, but a council in which the ROCOR and the. In fact, probably a council from which the MP would be excluded, but to which individual hierarchs of the MP would come to offer their repentance, on the model of the iconoclasts at the Seventh. It is strange how little talk about such a council there has been since the supposed fall of communism...... To sinche no one seems to want to talk about an all-Russian Council, let us. One is for the ROCOR to proclaim itself the one and only Russian Orthodox Church. This was actually suggested by Protopriest Lev Lebedev in the early 1990s, and appears to have been adopted to some extent. However, this was never done with much conviction (except when dealing with..dissidents. Inside Russia), and by the late 1990s the talk was rather of a of..reunifichation. of the different parts of the Russian Church. by which was meant the reunification only of the ROCOR and the MP. On an equal basis, as if the ROCOR and the MP were both equally legitimate parts of the Russian Church, two..sisters. of the same mother who had just had a quarrel and were now prepared to forgive and forget. it..echumenist. solution was not really acceptable to either side, since the MP resolutely calls itself (and is believed by many even in the ROCOR to be) the sole..Motyuer Church., to which the ROCOR must..return. like a naughty child to her parents, while the ROCOR believes that the MP must repent of certain dogmatic and canonical errors. sergianism, ecumenism - before it can be.... However, it is becoming more and more obvious. if it was ever really in doubt. that the MP, at least in its upper reaches, will not and cannot repent. At most it will bend a little to pressure coming, not from the ROCOR, but from its own people, as in the case of its half-hearted and qualified canonization of. The MP had a golden opportunity to repent in 1991, when the chains imposed by its Soviet masters fell away, and there was a danger of a large- mooring exodus from the patriarchate. it is in a much stronger position than in 1991, and the ROCOR is much weaker, it is less likely than ever to repent..... Not only is it not repenting: like the dog of the proverb, it is returning. Thus ecumenism continues unabated since the fall of communism. The patriarch.s incredible speech to the Jewish rabbis in november, 1991 has not been repented of, membership of the WCC continues as before, and while there are complaints about Catholic proselytism it looks as if the Pope is going to visit..... The MP today, amazing to tell, is no less enthusiastically pro-Soviet than. Priests regularly praise Stalin - and now these panegyrics cannot be excused on the grounds that they are made under duress. The MP Has Repented Of Sergianism Is Laughable. Sergius. notorious declaration, on November 9, 2001: ..Tyuis was a clever step by which Metropolitan Sergius tried to save the church and clergy. The ROCOR Leadership Knows All This Perfectly. But it also knows that it is weak, and has therefore come to the conclusion: ..If you can.t beat them, join them.. The leopard, they try and persuade us, has changed its spots. the tree with an evil root is now bringing. But as we know from the Holy Scriptures, a leopard cannot change its spots, and..a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.. (Matthew 7..... In order to make sure of this point, let us briefly look at fruits of the six most powerful metropolitans of the MP, one of whom is likely to be the next and Krutitsa was described in 1994 by the OCA Bishop Basil (Rodzianko) of Washington as of..not only a scoundrel, but, perhaps, something much worse than. He knows the problems and needs of the clergy. Although he came up through all the ranks, he spent the most difficult years for the Russian church abroad.. He headed OVTsS [ the Department of External Church Relations ] for almost ten years. He thought that he would be elected patriarch in 1990 after the death of Patriarch Pimen. But he did not make it even to the. This so upset him that he suffered a heart attack. recovering, he reconciled himself to the situation and began to support the rise. circles for his nontraditional sexual orientation. the area around Moscow have already been turned into annexes of Sodom. Smolensk, the friend of Metropolitan Yuvenaly and head of the Department of External Church Relations, is an extreme ecumenist and an importer of tobacco. Bychkov writes of him that..until recently he was absolutely certain that after the death of Patriarch Alexis II he would undoubtedly become primate of the Russian church. True, events of this year have.. Metropolitan Kirill's Tobacco And Alcohol Scandals Have Undermined His Authority On The International Level. he has held onto his positions in the synod. He knows very well the weaknesses of members of the synod and he skillfully manipulates them. His impudence and frankness befuddle weak minds. Synod members who know about his ties with high places are not about to. His close friendship with Berezovsky also has brought its fruits. the metropolitan has compromising information not only about all of the episcopacy but even about the patriarch and he occasionally leaks it.. According to the witness of an MP priest, Metropolitan Cyril once came into his church and saw an icon of Tsar-Martyr Nicholas on the analoy. ..Get the Tsar out of here. Petersburg, another extreme ecumenist who is in favour of introducing the new calendar into the Russian Church was, writes Bychkov..a representative of the Moscow patriarchate at the World Council of Churches in geneva. of the 1960s he was patriarchal exarch of western Europe and served in berlin. He is notorious for his aristocratic manners (if he wears cuff links then they. Emulating Catherine II's Favorite Grigory Potemkin, he enjoys fresh oysters which are brought to him from Paris and London. most affected by his wine cellars. Metropolitan Vladimir Sabodan, who replaced him in rostov on Don, nearly lost consciousness when he caught sight of and tasted the wines from the metropolitan's cellars. rise halted and he was shuttled from one episcopal see to another. Pimen was not well disposed toward him. Only after his death did Vladimir come. becoming a permanent member of the Holy Synod. order with an "iron hand," primarily in financial matters, overturning traditions that had arisen over decades (oysters are expensive nowadays). Metropolitan Vladimir's Ministry Has Been Constantly Accompanied By Scandals. Their causes are his inability and lack of desire to get along with clergy. Of Voronezh Was Until Recently One Of The Strongest Candidates To Succeed The. described by his colleague, Archbishop Chrysostom of Vilna, as. KGB officer, an atheist, a liar, who is constantly advised by the KGB.. All things are possible in the MP. Minsk and Vladimir of Kiev are both, according to Bychkov, homosexuals who. one thing in common:. under their administrations the largest monasteries - to tyue Kiev caves lavra and the Zhirovitsy monastery - to yuave become examples of Sodom and. ..Gay families. coexist peacefully in them, concealed by monastic. things any better in the lower ranks. July 19, 1999, according to Bychkov, the Synod..devoted much time to the scandals involving the homosexual conduct of two bishops, Nikon Mironov of Ekaterinburg and Gury Shalimov of Korsun. The press devoted so much attention to poor Bishop Nikon that he is notorious throughout Russia. Bishop Gury Was Just As scandalous.. The Holy Synod Sent Both Into Retirement, that is, it dismissed them, confirming thereby the justice of the journalistic.. But it dismissed them in conditions of strictest secrecy. The Leopard And His Cubs Then There Are The Wonderfully Holy Village Priests And Old Women That The Supporters Of The MP Like To Talk About. Personally, I have not met any holy. and as for the old women, I know of people who were put off Orthodoxy for years by the appallingly boorish behaviour of the old women in mp. But even if I am, what does that prove. does the presence of good, sincere people in the MP (and I have no doubt that there are many) prove about the MP. No more than the presence of good and sincere people among the Roman Catholics or Protestants about their churches. For is the truth and grace of a church defined by the quality of some of its junior members, or by the confession of faith of. supporters of the MP are very fond of this..bottom-up. ecclesiology of theirs. They love to assert that even if the older generation of bishops are all KGB agents (not even the patriarch denies that he is, and has been for a long.), the next generation are going to be wonderful. Why should those appointed by KGB agents, ecumenists and homosexuals be anti-sergianists, anti-ecumenists and irreproachable chaste. likely that they will be at least partially tainted by the vices of their teachers, whom they chose to follow knowing their vices. Apostle Paul, speaking about precisely such vices..tyuat a little leaven. According to his brother Michael, the OCA Bishop Basil of Washington said, after a trip to Moscow: ..Nosh I agree with you: amongst the young folks there, there are many wonderful Orthodox people. and, briefly remaining silent, he added..but it will require yet another entire generation, or perhaps even longer, before everything gets back to normal.. this pro-Moscow witness, the ROCOR bishops should wait at least another generation before thinking of joining the MP. even this pessimistic estimate seems to Me to be unreasonably optimistic.: (1) that these..shonderful Orthodox people. will remain in the corrupt MP, and will not feel compelled by their conscience to leave it, (2) that the present leaders of the MP will choose to promote precisely these..shonderful Orthodox people. and not corrupt time-servers like themselves, and (3) that even if, by some extraordinary coincidence, some of these..shonderful Orthodox people. are promoted to positions of power in the church, they will still be wonderful and Orthodox by that time, and will not have been corrupted by the terrible environment they find themselves in remains that, while a certain degree of regeneration can take place in a church from below, that regeneration cannot go far, and will in time peter out, until and unless it is supported and strengthened by regeneration from above. For it is a basic principle of Orthodox ecclesiology that the faith of a church is defined by the faith of its hierarchs. and if those hierarchs are heretical, then all those in obedience to them share, to a greater or lesser degree, in you cannot be an Orthodox Christian while remaining knowingly under the omophorion of a heretical bishop. no. said one pious MP layman to Me recently. Grace does not come from God and. hierarchs and go straight to the people. there is hope for the Roman Catholics, who don.t have to worry about the heresy. and hope for the Protestants, who said all along that the hierarchy and the priesthood were unnecessary. and hope for all those..Ortyuodokh. individualists (and there are very many of them) who construct their spiritual lives independently of the church organization to which they belong, justifying themselves on the grounds that they have a direct line to God that does not pass. And God Can Certainly Give Grace To A believer Directly, independently of any hierarch or priest. But nobody can receive the grace of baptism, or of chrismation, or of the Body and Blood of Christ, without which salvation is impossible, except at the hands of a canonically appointed. That is the order God has ordained. also ordained that this channel of sacramental grace does not pass through the hands of heretics or those who represent them.. The Leopard And His Tamer Not Dissimilar Argument That Is Sometimes Heard Is That The Rapid Building Of Churches And Monasteries In contemporary Russia Shows That, whatever the defects of the leaders, the resurrection of Russia is taking place, and that, this being the case, instead of standing aside and carping, it is necessary to have a more positive attitude, to join in the renewal process. After all, they assert, perhaps we (the ROCOR hierarchs) can have a good influence on the hierarchy, perhaps we can put a brake on the negative aspects of patriarchal life, perhaps we can help to tame the leopard. difficult to believe that anyone actually believes this argument. Kazantsev has recently pointed out, the ROCOR has acted as a brake on the MP only so long as it has existed outside the MP as a genuinely independent. Once the tiny ROCOR pond has been poured into the MP ocean, it will cease to. is, such influence as it has had has been rapidly declining in recent years in exact proportion to its rapprochement with the patriarchate. that the influence of the ROCOR was at its greatest immediately after the fall of communism, in the early 1990s, when the ROCOR actually fought against the MP and the MP was seriously rattled. But then came the of 1994 conciliar decision to enter into negotiations with the MP, the expulsion of the Suzdal dissenters in 1995, and Archbishop Mark.s meeting with the patriarch in 1997, as a direct result of which the MP felt emboldened to seize Hebron and Jericho, and the Oak of Abraham at hebron died after four thousand years of life. leopard has not been tamed, and it will not be tamed by the ROCOR, in whatever form it May continue to exist after the unia with the MP. are in fact strong grounds for believing in a future resurrection of the Russian. These strong grounds consist in the prophecies of the saints, which speak precisely about such a resurrection. these prophecies do not state that the MP will gradually evolve into the True Church. that is, that good fruit will gradually begin to appear on the corrupt tree, transforming the tree from bad to good, from corrupt to life-giving. Seraphim of Sarov says that at that time to..tyue Russian hierarchs will become so impious that they will not even believe in the most important dogma of the Faith of Christ. the resurrection of Christ and the. That is why it will be pleasing to the Lord God to take Me from this very temporary life for a time and then, for the establishment of the dogma of the resurrection, to raise Me, and my resurrection will be like the resurrection of the seven youths in the cave of Okhlon... then, continues the saint, he will begin the process of world-wide repentance. for the absolutely necessary condition of true resurrection is repentance. prophecies speak, not of an evolution of the MP from evil to good, nor of the repentance of the bishops, but of a more or less complete removal of the. The initiative for this will not come from well-known bishops, but from people unknown to the world, according to Elder Porphyrius of Glinsk (+1868): "In due course, faith will collapse in russia. brilliance of earthly glory will blind the mind. defiled, but with regard to the Faith, some from among the people, unknown to the world, will come forward and restore what was scorned. instrument of this restoration will be a true Orthodox Tsar. Theophan of Poltava, passing on the tradition of the Valaam elders, wrote: .. The Lord will have mercy on Russia for the sake of the small remnant of true. In russia, the elders said, in accordance with the will of the people, the Monarchy, Autocratic power, will be re -established. He will be a man of fiery faith, having the mind of. First of all he will introduce order in the Orthodox Church, removing all the untrue, heretical and lukewarm hierarchs. and many, very many - with few exceptions, all - will be deposed, and new, true, unshakeable hierarchs will take their place. The Romanovs According To The Female Line. Russia will be a powerful state, but. and then the Antichrist will come into the world, with all the horrors of the end as described in the Apocalypse. the lower ranks, Catacomb Eldress Agatha of Belorussia, who was martyred by the.), counselled them not to go to the MP: "This is. It has signed a contract to serve the Antichrist. Do not receive any mysteries from its servants.. They were to wait for the triumph of Orthodoxy, when the people will show their true repentance by being baptised by True Orthodox clergy: There will come a time when churches will be opened in russia, and the true Orthodox faith will triumph. Then people will become baptized, as at one time they were baptized under St.... When Putin met the ROCOR hierarchs in new York, he used the argument that the ROCOR should join with the MP in of..serving the homeland., its culture and traditions. emotional argument for Russians and those who love Russia. not want to serve his homeland. Who would want to appear unpatriotic. especially now that the homeland is beginning to take on the appearance, externally at any rate, of an Orthodox country, and Orthodoxy is being protected by the State as an inalienable part of the national culture of Russia. is the ultimate value here. The State Or The Church, the earthly homeland or the Heavenly Homeland, God or Mammon. serves the Homeland, or the State, or culture, or any other value whatsoever apart from eternal salvation with God, then it is no longer Orthodoxy but at best an exhibit in a museum or a zoo, at worst an idol. early, Kievan and Muscovite Russia, the Church was protected, not because it helped to support the State (although it did do that), and not because it constituted a part of Russia.s cultural heritage (although it was that), but because the State of Russia and Russia as a whole existed in order to serve the Church, without which neither the State nor the Nation had more than an. The earthly homeland, in metropolitan Philaret of Moscow.s phrase, was the..antechyuamber. of the Heavenly Homeland. the earthly homeland was treasured and was fought for because it served as a stepping- moan to membership of the Heavenly Homeland, the Kingdom of Heaven.. was..Yuoly Russia. precisely because she served something higher than herself, the ideal of holiness, the ideal of union in faith and love with God. began to descend to the far lesser ideal of..Great Russia. Under Peter The Great Only When She Began To Serve Herself Rather Than God, when the Church became a tool in the hands of the State, serving the State.s this-worldly aims. under the later Romanov Tsars the great ship that was Russia began to return to her heavenly calling, to become holy again. Tsar-Martyr Nicholas, who led Russia into World War I, not for the sake of her and his greater earthly glory, but to save Orthodoxy in her sister-nation of. and when the Tsar abdicated, dooming himself and his family to ignominy and death, he did so in order that this war-effort should continue. in other words, for the sake of Orthodoxy in the true sense. Today.s Russia, as protopriest Lev Lebedev writes, to..tyue ideological idol under the name of..fatyuerland. (..Russia., to..tyue state.) has been completely preserved. We have already many times noted that these concepts are, in essence, pagan ideological idols not because they are in themselves bad, but because they have been torn out from the trinitarian unity of co -subjected concepts: Faith, Tsar, Fatherland (Orthodoxy, Autocracy, People). Everything that one might wish to be recognized and positive, even the regeneration of the faith, is done under the slogan of to..tyue regeneration of the Fatherland (Russia).. Even among the monarchists the regeneration of the Orthodox Autocratic Monarchy is mainly represented as no more than the means for. We May note that if any of the constituent parts of the triad. Orthodoxy, Autocracy, People. is torn away from the others and becomes the only one, it loses its power. indicated hierarchical order did they constitute, and do they constitute now, the spiritual (and all the other) strength and significance of Great Russia. for the time being it is the ideological idol..fatyuerland. that holds sway.. The Fatherland, she must wait for the true Fatherland to appear above the horizon, like the submerged city of Kitezh. Pseudo-Orthodox Fatherland That Is Putin.s Russia Would Be a betrayal Of Her Calling, a betrayal of the true Russia. Council., Moskovskii komsomolets, August 20, 1999, quoted by Joseph. THE SEAL OF THE ANTICHRIST IN SOVIET AND Carried Out On The Church And The People Of Russia. true warriors of Christ who alone will be able.. their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one May buy or Sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name.. 1917 marked the beginning of the time of the end, the time of the Antichrist, in accordance with the prophecies of such luminaries of the Church as st. Ambrose of Optina, Bishop Theophanes the Recluse, St. Kronstadt and the holy new martyrs and confessors of Russia. 1917, Divine Providence drew the attention of all those with eyes to see the signs of the times to an extraordinary..choinchidenche.: in one column of newsprint in the London..Times., there appeared, one above the other, two articles, the one announcing the outbreak of revolution in petrograd, and the other. the promise of a homeland for the Jews in palestine (the Balfour declaration). at precisely the same time the two horns of the beast of the last times, the power of apostate Jewry, appeared above the vast sea of the formerly Christian world: the anti-theist, materialist Horn of Soviet power, and the theist. of Russia, the last Orthodox Christian empire, was followed by further blows to the monarchical, God-established principle of political government. Catholic empire of Austro-Hungary and the Protestant empire of Germany. In 1924 the Orthodox kingdom of Greece fell. and in 1941 and of 1944 the last Orthodox monarchies of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria also fell. Second World War There Were No real Monarchies Left In europe Or America, and the world was dominated by two powers based on the anti-monarchical, democratic principle: The United States Of America, representing the more individualist, tolerant variety of democratism, and the Soviet Union, representing the more. 50 years later, the situation had changed again. The Soviet Union Was No more, and its rival for leadership of the communist world, China, was well on the way to transforming itself into a capitalist democracy. anti-theist, materialist Horn of the beast, the attention of many Orthodox was turned to the other, theist (though also secularist) Horn. Israel, founded in 1948 under the sponsorship of Britain and the Soviet Union, and to Israel.s allies in the West, especially America, the only remaining superpower. particular, alarm was aroused by the spread throughout the West, and thence into the East, of new forms of identification and money exchange. credit cards, bar-codes, to y8-.figure identity cards, etc.. which appeared to contain the number. The question raised in many minds, and addressed in the present article, is: could this be the seal of the Antichrist..... Let us begin by examining, not the seal of the Antichrist as such, but the reign of the Antichrist since of 1917. What are its essential characteristics. According to the holy apostles and fathers of the Church, the reign of the Antichrist will be characterised by an extreme form of anarchy. that is, the absence of law and order. origin of all law and order is God, so all law and order, all true authority, is. That is the meaning of the apostle.s famous saying: to..Tyuere is no power that is not of God. the powers that be are established by God. (Romans. Christians honour the King and pray for the powers that be precisely in order to avoid the great evil of anarchy..tyuat we May lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. (I Timothy 2. anarchy is opposed to God-established authority, it is opposed to God, and must therefore itself be opposed by all those who fear God and obey His holy will. May be unjust and cruel at times, or even very often, but as long as he prevents anarchy Christians must obey him. rulers are given by God with a view to the improvement and benefit of their subjects and the preservation of justice. others are given with a view to producing fear, punishment and reproof. yet others are given with a view to displaying mockery, insult and pride. in each case in accordance with the. Thus. God.s judgement falls equally on all men. Isidore of Pelusium writes that the evil ruler..yuas been allowed to spew out this evil, like Pharaoh, and, in such an instance, to carry out extreme punishment or to chastise those for whom great cruelty is required, as when the King of Babylon chastised the Jews. is line beyond which an evil ruler ceases to be a ruler and becomes an anti-ruler, an unlawful tyrant, who is not to be obeyed. commanded by God through the Prophet Jeremiah to submit to the King of Babylon, evil though he was. whereas they were commanded through another prophet, Moses, to resist and flee from the Egyptian Pharaoh, and rebelled again, with God.s. For in the one case the authority, though evil, was still an authority, which it was beneficial to obey. whereas in the other cases the authority was in fact an anti-authority, obedience to which would have taken the people further away from God. Anarchy, the absence of true authority, can be of two kinds: organised and. When a true authority collapses, there usually follows a period of disorganised anarchy, which is characterised by individual crimes of all kinds. murder, robbery, rape, sacrilege, that go unchecked and unpunished because of. Such was the period of Russian history that followed the collapse of the Orthodox empire in february, 1917. government, having itself contributed to the collapse of the empire, and having received its authority neither (through holy anointing) from God nor (by means of a popular vote) from men, was unable to check the rising tide of anarchy and. The disorganised anarchy of the Provisional government was followed by the organised anarchy of the Bolshevik..government.. Christians are obliged to recognise every power that is in fact a power in the apostolic meaning of the word. that is, which at least tries to prevent anarchy by rewarding the good and punishing the bad (Romans 13. Such a power does not have to be christian: although only the Orthodox anointed kings, working together with the Orthodox hierarchs, are able to establish God.s order in anything approaching fullness, even pagan, heretical and Muslim states punish those crimes that are recognised as such by the vast majority of mankind, and are therefore recognised as legitimate by the Church. However, such recognition can only be relative. relative, that is, to the degree to which the government does in fact establish order, and in extreme. proposed to Hieromartyr Simeon, Bishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, that he worship the sun, in exchange for which he would receive every possible honour. But if he refused, this would bring about the complete destruction of. Now already before he had made this proposal to Simeon, King Sapor had started to kill the clergy, confiscate church property and raze. So when he was brought before the King for his. Simeon not only refused to worship the sun but also, upon entering, refused to recognise the King by bowing. This omission of his previous respect for the king.s authority was noticed and questioned by the King. replied: "Before I bowed down to you, giving you honour as a King, but now I come being brought to deny my God and Faith. It is not good for Me to bow before. Apostate (361-363) came to the throne, the Church refused to recognize him. Basil the Great prayed for the defeat of Julian in his wars against the Persians. and it was through his prayers that the apostate was in fact killed, as was revealed by God to the holy hermit Julian of Mesopotamia. Gregory the Theologian wrote: ..I call to spiritual rejoicing all those who constantly remained in fasting, in mourning and prayer, and by day and by night besought deliverance from the sorrows that surrounded us and found a reliable healing from the evils in unshakeable hope. What hoards of weapons, what myriads of men could have produced what our prayers and the will of God produced. Called Julian Not Only An..apostate., but also..universal enemy. and..general murderer., a traitor to Romanity. that is, the state of the Roman empire - as. Duke William Invaded England In 1066 with the blessing of the Pope, and was crowned as the first Catholic King of England in the following year, the brother-bishops and hieromartyrs Ethelric and Ethelwine solemnly anathematized both him and the Pope, and called on the people to rise up against the false. Hermogen, patriarch of Moscow, called on the Russian people to rise up against the crypto-Catholic false Demetrius, although the latter had been anointed by a supposedly Orthodox patriarch. refused recognition by the Church is the state of organized anarchy. that is, the state in which crime is not only not punished, as in disorganized anarchy, but is confirmed and recognized as lawful. power is not simply the doing of evil. all states, even the most Orthodox, at times do evil. but the systematic recognition of evil as good, of lawlessness as the law, of the abnormal as the norm and even the aim of society. state is to..tyue mystery of lawlessness. (II Thessalonians 2. Bolshevik regime, which, taking advantage of the disorganized anarchy prevailing under the Provisional government, not only did not restore order into the chaos, but consolidated, intensified and organized it, made it the norm, made it. Church tradition calls unlawful councils, councils that preach heresy. In the same way, unlawful states such as the Bolshevik regime can be called..robber states., insofar as murder, robbery and sacrilege become the norm under them. indeed, are committed primarily by. Robber states cannot command the obedience of God-fearing Christians, for they are not authorities in the apostolic sense of the word, but. Rather, such states must be rebuked and rejected by them. Russian Orthodox Church Addressed A letter To The Faithful Calling The Revolution..deschended from the Antichrist. and declaring: ..Open combat is fought against the Christian Faith, in opposition to all that is sacred, arrogantly abasing all that bears the name of God (II Thessalonians 2. earthly kingdom founded on ungodliness can ever survive: it will perish from internal strife and party dissension. Thus, because of its frenzy of atheism, the State of Russia will fall. For those who use the sole foundation of their power in the coercion of the whole people by one class, no motherland or holy. They have become traitors to the motherland and instigated an appalling betrayal of Russia and her true allies. government has arisen which is sufficiently one with the people to deserve the. and such will not appear on Russian soil until we turn with agonizing prayer and tears of repentance to Him, without Whom we Patriarch Tikhon and the Local Council meeting in moscow anathematized the. The significance of this anathema lies not so much in its casting out of the Bolsheviks themselves (all those who deny God are subject to anathema, that is, separation from God, for that very denial), as in the command to the faithful: ..I adjure all of you who are faithful children of the Orthodox Church of Christ not to commune with such outcasts of the human race in any matter whatsoever. ..chast out the wicked from among you. (I Corinthians.. In other words, the Bolsheviks were to be regarded, not only as apostates from Christ (that was obvious), but also as having no moral authority. that the Patriarch.s decree did not anathematise Soviet power as such, but only those who were committing acts of violence and sacrilege against the Church in however, this argument fails to take into account. First, the patriarch himself, in his declarations of June 16 and July 1, 1923, repented precisely of his..anatyuematisation of Soviet power.. Secondly, even if the decree did not formally anathematise Soviet power as such, since Soviet power sanctioned and initiated the acts of violence, the faithful were in effect being exhorted to having nothing to do with it. his Epistle to the Council of People.s Commissars on the first anniversary of the revolution, November 7, 1918, the Patriarch obliquely but clearly confirmed his non-recognition of Soviet power, saying: ..It is not our business to make. Every power allowed by God would attract to itself Our blessing if it were truly to..tyue servant of God., for the good of those subject to it, and were to..terrible not for good works, but for evil. (Romans. But now to you, who have used authority for the persecution of the innocent, We extend this Our word of exhortation.. when the Patriarch.s decree came to be read out to the Council on January 22/February 4, it was enthusiastically endorsed by it in terms which make it clear that the Council understood the Patriarch to have anathematised precisely Soviet power: to..Tyue Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia in his epistle to the beloved in the Lord archpastors, pastors and all faithful children of the Orthodox Church of Christ has drawn the spiritual sword against the outcasts of the human race. The Bolsheviks, and anathematised them. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church adjures all her faithful children not to enter into any communion with these. For their satanic deeds they are cursed in this life and in the life. His Holiness The Patriarch Has Been Given The Right To Bind And To Loose According To The Word Of The Saviour. Do not destroy your souls, cease communion with the servants of Satan. The Bolsheviks. children are Bolsheviks, demand authoritatively that they renounce their errors, that they bring forth repentance for their eternal sin, and if they do not obey. Wives, if your husbands are Bolsheviks and stubbornly continue to serve Satan, leave your husbands, save yourselves and your children from the soul-destroying infection. An Orthodox Christian Cannot Have Communion With The Servants Of The Devil. Repent, and with burning prayer call for help from the Lord of Hosts and thrust away from yourselves to..tyue hand of strangers.. the age-old enemies of the Christian faith, who have declared themselves in self-appointed fashion to..tyue people.s power.. If you do not obey the Church, you will not be her sons, but participants in the cruel and satanic deeds wrought by the open and secret enemies of Christian truth. Dare. destroy your soul and hand it over to the devil and his stooges. The Russian Church In the Face Of Soviet Power Has Never Been Extinguished Among. It continued to manifest itself both at home and abroad - for example, in the First All-Emigration Council of the Russian Church Abroad in 1921, and both in the early and the later decades of Soviet power - for example, among the "passportless" Christians of the Catacomb Church in the 1960s and 70s. However, it was very soon tempered by the realisation that such outright rejection of Soviet power on a large scale could be sustained only by war - and after the defeat of the White Armies in the Civil War there were no armies left to carry on the fight against the Bolsheviks. 1920s a new attitude towards Soviet power began to evolve among the Tikhonite Christians: loyalty towards it as a political institution ("for all power is from God"), and acceptance of such of its laws as could be interpreted in favour of the Church (for example, the law on the separation of Church and State), combined with rejection of its atheistic world-view (large parts of which the. In essence, this new attitude involved accepting that the Soviet State was not the Antichrist, as the Local Council of 1917-18 and the Russian Church Abroad had in effect declared, but Caesar, no worse in principle than the Caesars of Ancient Rome, to whom the things. presupposed that it was possible, in the Soviet Union as in ancient Rome, to draw a clear line between politics and religion. But in practice, even more than in theory, this line proved very hard to draw. For the early Bolsheviks, at any rate, there was no such dividing line. for them, everything was ideological, everything had to be in accordance with their ideology, there could be no room for disagreement, no private spheres into which the state and its. Unlike most of the Roman emperors, who allowed the Christians to order their own lives in their own way so long as they showed loyalty to the state (which, as we have seen, the Christians were very eager to do), the Bolsheviks insisted in imposing their own ways upon the Christians in every sphere: in family life (civil marriage only, divorce on demand, children spying on parents), in education (compulsory Marxism), in economics (dekulakization, collectivization), in military service (the oath of allegiance to Lenin), in science (Darwinism, Lysenkoism), in art (socialist realism), and in religion (the requisitioning of valuables, registration, commemoration of the authorities at the Liturgy, reporting of confessions by the priests). to any one of these demands was counted as "anti-Soviet behaviour", i therefore it was no use protesting one's political loyalty to the regime if one refused to accept just one of these demands. According to the Soviet interpretation of the word: "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one has become guilty of all of it" (James 2. person was an enemy of the people. not surprising that many Christians came to the conclusion that it was less morally debilitating to reject the whole regime that made such impossible demands, since the penalty would be the same whether one asserted one's loyalty. and if this meant living as an outlaw, so be it. of, or flight from the state had precedents in russian history. and we find some priests, such as hieromartyr Timothy Strelkov of Mikhailovka (+1930) and even some bishops, such as hieroconfessor Amphilochius of Yeniseisk (+1946), adopting. of total rejection of the Soviet state required enormous courage, strength and self-sacrifice, not only for oneself but also (which was more difficult) for. It is therefore not surprising that, already during the Civil War, the Church began to soften her anti-Soviet rhetoric and try once more to draw the line between politics and religion. tried to do in the later years of his patriarchate. with the best of motives (to save Christian lives), but, it must be said, only mixed results. decision to allow some, but not all of the Church's valuables to be requisitioned by the Bolsheviks in 1922 not only did not bring help to the starving of the Volga, as was the intention, but led to many clashes between believers and the authorities and many deaths of believers. Elder Nectarius Of Optina Said: "You see now, the patriarch gave the order to give up all valuables from the churches, but they belonged to the Church. negotiate and compromise with the Bolsheviks - in transgression of the decrees of the 1917-18 council - only brought confusion and division to the Church. on the right wing of the Church there were those who thought that the patriarch had already gone too far. while on the left wing there were those who wanted to. Tikhon nor his successor, Metropolitan Peter, crossed the line which would have involved surrendering the spiritual freedom of the Church into the hands of the. only with the coming to power, in 1927, of Metropolitan Peter.s deputy. He sought and obtained legalization for his church organization, the present-day Moscow Patriarchate. commemoration of the God-hating anti-authorities at the Divine Liturgy. step, because to seek legalisation from a state inescapably implies recognition of that state to a greater or lesser degree. at a minimum, it implies recognition of that state as god-established and the majority of its laws as but how can a state that openly and systematically wars. and how can a state that legalizes all manner of crimes be considered to be legal in itself and the fount of legality. such a state is not an authority at all, but the beast of the Apocalypse, of whom it is written that it receives its authority, not from God, but from the..... Moreover, by declaring, in his famous..Dechlaration., that the Soviet regime's joys were the Church's joys, and its sorrows the Church's sorrows, Sergius in effect declared an identity of aims between the Church and the. and this was not just a lie, but a lie against the faith, a such was good, and its victory to be welcomed. Thus Sergius Nilus Quoted Izvestia, which said that Metropolitan Sergius. ..Dechlaration. was an attempt..to construct a cross in such a way that it would look like a hammer to a worker, and like a sickle to a peasant.. words. said Nilus..to exchange the cross for the Soviet seal, the seal of. flock of Christ from Sergius ' apostasy, the leaders of the True Church had to draw once more the line between politics and religion. distinguish between physical opposition to the regime and spiritual. Thus Hieromartyr Archbishop Barlaam Of Perm Wrote That Physical Opposition Was Not Permitted, but spiritual opposition was obligatory. Again, Hieromartyr Bishop Mark (Novoselov) wrote: ..I am an enemy of Soviet power. and what is more, by dint of my religious convictions, insofar as soviet power is an atheist power and even anti-theist. cannot strengthen this power by any means. [ There is ] a petition which the Church has commanded to be used everyday in certain well-known conditions. The purpose of this formula is to request the overthrow of the infidel power by God. But this formula does not amount to a summons to believers to take active measures, but only calls them to pray for the overthrow of the power that has. This criterion allowed Christians quite sincerely to reject the charge of "counter-revolution" - if "counter-revolution" were understood to mean. The problem was, as we have seen, that the Bolsheviks understood "counter-revolution" in a much wider sense. basic problem was that it still left the question whether Soviet power was from. If Soviet Power Was From God, it should be counted as caesar and should be given what was Caesar's. But bitter experience had shown that this "Caesar" wanted to seat himself in the temple as if he were God (II So was he not in fact Antichrist, whose power is not from God, but from Satan (Revelation 13. for the punishment of sinners, but by no means established by Him. then there was no alternative but to flee into the catacombs, rejecting totally. After Metropolitan Sergius ' declaration, many Catacomb Christians, while in practice not surrendering what was God's to the Soviets, in theory could not make up their minds whether the Soviet regime was Caesar or. Thus Hieromartyr Joseph (Gavrilov), superior of Raithu Desert (+1930), confessed at his interrogation: "I have never, and do not now, belong. I consider Soviet power to be given from God, but a power that is from God must fulfill the will of God, and Soviet power does not. Therefore it is not from God, but from Satan. churches, mocks the holy icons, teaches children atheism, etc. It is better to die with faith than without faith. I am a real believer, faith has saved Me in battles, and I hope that in the future faith will save Me from death. Christ and His Second Coming. I have not gone against the taxes, since it says in scripture: ' To Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. From this confession, impressive though it is, it is not clear whether Hieromartyr Joseph recognised the Soviet regime as caesar, and therefore from God, or as antichrist, and therefore from Satan. resolved his dilemma for him. They shot him, and therefore showed that they were. In exile, meanwhile, a consensus had emerged that the Soviet regime was not. This was the position of, for example, Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava, Metropolitan Innocent of Peking and Archbishop Averky of. As bishop Gregory (Grabbe), the foremost canonist of the Russian Church Abroad, wrote: to..Shityu regard to the question of the commemoration of authorities, we must bear in mind that now we are having dealings not simply with a pagan government like Nero.s, but with the apostasy of the last times. unenlightened authority, but with apostasy. The Holy Fathers Did Not Relate To Julian The Apostate In the Same Way As they Did To The Other Pagan Emperors. we cannot relate to the antichristian authorities in the same way as to any other, for its nature is purely satanic... If the Soviet state was the collective Antichrist, the beast of the Apocalypse, what was its seal. case of the Church, this question has already been answered: the seal was..legalisation. by to..tyue mystery of lawlessness., on the one hand, and the commemoration of the Antichrist by name at the liturgy, on the other. This was the..abomination of desolation. set up in the Holy of holies. Christians, the answer is analogous: the seal of the Antichrist was any and every activity that sucked the Christian into participation in, and recognition. For the main lesson of the 1920s and 30s was that it is vain to see a modus vivendi with the Antichrist: he takes everything and gives nothing in return, as metropolitan Peter once bitterly complained to the. So the Christians began to avoid everything that tied them in any way to the state: Soviet passports (which, at least in some periods, involved definite obligations to the state). service in the Red Army (how can a christian fight for to..tyue conquests of October.. educational institutions (which involved compulsory study of, and examinations in, Marxism-Leninism). and any and every kind of electoral or political activity (which was monopolised by the communist party). Catacomb Christians About What Activities Were To Be considered As..Soviyet. and therefore sinful. some groups and branches of the Church were stricter, others. Thus some..non-chommemorators. took jobs in soviet institutions and restricted their abstinence from Soviet life to non-membership of the communist party and the Soviet church. Others, however, not only refused to work for the Antichrist in any way, but even refused to have electricity in their homes, since this, too, came to them from the Antichrist. Some Catacomb Christians Felt Able To Practise..echonomy. and temper the strictness of their rule, Thus the Catacomb hieromonk Gury (Pavlov) was a of..passportless., but took a soviet passport in 1990 in order to receive. question of Soviet passports needs to be examined in a little more detail. Passportisation had been introduced into the Soviet Union only in 1932, and only for the most urbanized areas. then it was used as a means of winkling out Catacomb Christians. Shkvarovsky writes: ..Chompleting their liquidation of the Josephites, there was a meeting of regional inspectors for cultic matters on March 16, 1933, at a time when passportisation was being introduced. The meeting decided, on the orders of the OGPU..not to give passports to servants of the cult of the Josephite confession of faith., which meant automatic expulsion from Leningrad. things happened in other major cities of the USSR. bless their spiritual children to take passports because in filling in the forms the social origins and record of Christians was revealed, making them liable to. Also Catacomb Christians did not want to receive what they considered to be the seal of the Antichrist, or to declare themselves citizens. peasants had not been given passports but were chained to the land which they. They were herded into the collective farms and forced to do various things against their conscience, such as vote for the communist officials who had destroyed their way of life and their churches.. refusals were particularly common in the Lipetsk, Tambov and Voronezh areas. were rigorously persecuted, and often left to die of hunger..... On May 4, 1961, however, the Soviet government issued its decree on..parasitism. and introduced its campaign for general. In local papers throughout the country it was announced that, in order to receive a soviet passport, a citizen of the USSR would have to recognize all the laws of Soviet power, past and present, beginning from Lenin.s. Since this involved, in effect, a recognition of all the crimes of Soviet power, a movement arose to reject Soviet passports, a movement which was centred mainly in the country areas among those peasants and their families who. ..Protests against general passportisation arose among Christians throughout the. A huge number of secret Christians who had passports began to reject them, destroy them, burn them and loudly, for all to hear, renounce.. Many Christians From The Patriarchal Church Also Gave In there Were Cases In which As many As 200 people at one time went up to the local soviet and gave in their passports. A christian Community Near Tashkent Gave In 100 passports at once. In kemerovo And Novosibirsk Provinces Gave In their Passports, and Christians in the Altai area burned their passports. Protests against general passportisation broke out in belorussia, in the Ukraine, and in the Voronezh, Tambov and Ryazan provinces. Christians who renounced their Soviet passports began to be seized. But in spite of these repressions the movement of the passportless Christians grew and became stronger. years that the Catacomb Church received a major influx from Christians of the patriarchal church who renounced Soviet passports and returned into the bosom of..... In the 1970s the detailed questionnaires required in order to receive passports were abandoned, but in 1974 it was made obligatory for all Soviet citizens to have a passport, and a new, red passport differing quite significantly from the old, green one. the words: ..Passport of a citizen of the Soviet Socialist Republics. together with a hammer and sickle, which was still unacceptable to the Passportless, who therefore continued to be subject to prison, exile and hunger. The Catacomb Church At this Time Often Erased The Word..chitizen., replacing it with the word..Chyuristian., so that they had a of..Passport of a christian of the. podvig of the Passportless Catacomb Christians has been criticised by some, and not only, as we would expect, by members of the Soviet and other heterodox. Metropolitan Vitaly, first-hierarch of the ROCA, in a dialogue with representatives of the Passportless, compared the Soviet Union to. St Paul had been proud of his Roman citizenship, he wrote, so what was wrong with having a soviet passport and being called a soviet citizen. Passportless Christians Were Appalled By The Comparison. as if Rome, the state in which Christ Himself was born and was registered in a census, and which later grew into the great Orthodox Christian empires of Byzantium, the New Rome, and Russia, the Third Rome, could be compared to the anti-state, the collective Antichrist, that destroyed the Russian empire. Rome, even in its pagan phase, had protected the Christians from the fury of the Jews: The Soviet Union Was, in its early phase, the instrument of the Jews. Rome, even in its pagan phase, guaranteed a framework of law and order within which the apostles could rapidly spread the faith from one end of the world to the other: The Soviet Union Forced A population That Was Already Orthodox In its Great Majority To Renounce Their Faith Or Hide It..in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews. an anonymous publication has accused the Catacomb Christians of to..premature flight. from the world, analogous to the flight of the Old Believers from. On this path of premature flight from the world, writes the anonymous author..set out the schismatic Old Believers under Peter. century, the Catacomb Christians decisively refused to accept any state documents, seeing in them the seal of the Antichrist. reign, and still more in stalin.s regime, elements of an antichristian kingdom. But such terrible rebellions against the God-established order were not yet the end..tyuis is only the beginning of sorrows., as the Gospel. That the Catacomb Christians are schismatics on a par with the Old Believers. This not only constitutes a serious slander against the Catacomb Church, but also betrays a blindness with regard to the eschatological significance of the Russian-Jewish revolution, which, if only the..beginning. of sorrows, was nevertheless also the beginning of the reign of the Antichrist, when the relationship between the Church and the State changed from one of cooperation and mutual recognition to one of mutual non-recognition and. That Peter The Great Inflicted Great Damage On The Church (and thereby indirectly also on the State, for which it paid in 1917) through his. However, the conscience of the Church, while rejecting his errors, has always recognized that he died as a christian and God-anointed tsar. Metrophanes of Voronezh, who appeared to one of his venerators after his death and told him: ..If you want to be pleasing to Me, pray for the repose of the soul of Emperor Peter the Great.. No saint of the Church ever counselled rebellion against Peter or his successors, as opposed to resistance to certain of their decrees. Believers, their rebellion was not in the first place against Peter and his reforms, but against Patriarch Nicon and his reforms, which was quickly followed by rebellion against Peter.s father, Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich also. Later, they seized on Peter.s reforms as an excuse for widening and deepening their rebellion against the God-established order, making them the forerunners, not of the True Orthodox Christians of the Soviet catacombs, who always recognized that which the Old Believers rejected, but of the revolutionaries of. (Khrapovitsky) wrote in 1912.in his encyclical to the Old Believers: to..Tyue spirit of this world. winks at real revolutionaries and sent the money of your rich men. objection is sometimes raised: that the exploit (podvig) of the Catacomb Christians, while admirable and justified in view of the ferocity of the Soviet regime, was nevertheless not necessary, for one could be saved without resorting. not aware of any decision by any competent Church authority that would clarify the question whether the rejection of Soviet passports was necessary for the salvation of Christians in the Soviet period. cannot be answered in a clear and categorical manner in view of the great complexity and diversity of the relations between individual believers and the. Only God Knows Whether Any Particular Degree Of Involvement In soviet Life Constituted Apostasy Or An Acceptable Level Of Accommodation To. Whether The Podvig Of The Catacomb Christians Was..nechessary. is much. It is as easy to answer as the question: Is it necessary to keep as far away from sin as possible, or: Is it necessary to take every. parable: when you have supper with the devil, take a very long spoon. Catacomb Christians Took Not Even Very Long Spoons To The Marriage Feast Of The Devil And The Citizens Of The Soviet State. keep their bridal garments spotless for the marriage feast of Christ and His Church, they chose not even to step over the threshold of the Soviet madhouse. They chose rather to go hungry than eat of the devil.s food, the communion of..... and not only did they save their own souls thereby: they also provided an absolutely necessary warning to those Christians who, thinking that they could take coals into their breast and not be burned, were being tempted into closer relations with the Antichrist. For as the beast.s ferocity gradually lessened from the of 1956 amnesty onwards, and the Soviet state began to acquire some (but never all) of the external characteristics of the..normal. state, it was indeed tempting to think that the leopard was changing its spots, that the lion was becoming a vegetarian, that Pharaoh was becoming Caesar. so that it was now time to give to Caesar what was dangerous temptation, the movement of the Passportless, which exploded at precisely this time, came as a powerful warning. ..No. they said, to..tyue beast has. If its persecution is less widespread now than before, this is because the opposition to him has been largely destroyed. persecution now is no less fierce than before, only it is more subtle, for it now mixes rewards. the comforts of the Soviet..paradise.. with punishments. But to..yuere we have no continuing city.. and if this was true even under the God-loving tsars, how can it not be even more so now, under the God-hating. If Christ Suffered Outside The Walls Of The City In order To Sanctify Us By His Blood, then we, too, must go out to Him outside the walls of the antichristian state (Hebrews 13. this, it must be admitted that the seal of the Antichrist in soviet Russia could not have been the same seal that is mentioned in revelation 13, if only because it was not a mark placed on the right hand and forehead. However, we are fully justified in calling it a seal (of the collective Antichrist), if not the seal (of the personal Antichrist). for its acceptance, at least in certain contexts (for example, the context of the 1961 law), entailed acceptance of the whole lawless legislation and ideology of the. To that extent it was not just a neutral Act of registration. it was an Act of registration in satan.s kingdom, the kingdom of the Antichrist, and as such was not only the forerunner of the seal, but in a sense the beginning of that seal, in that it had the same apocalyptic significance for the. If we do not understand the period of Church history immediately preceding our own, then we shall not be able to understand or perceive the signs of our own. Thus a correct understanding of the seal of the Antichrist in the Soviet period is a necessary prerequisite to understanding the seal in the Post -Soviet. Union in 1991 posed a difficult problem of interpretation. If so, then had the end times, paradoxically, come to an end. was this only a temporary..breatyuing space. in which the Antichrist was preparing a new, more subtle, more universal and more deadly onslaught. On the one hand, there can be no doubt that perestroika and the fall of communism came not a moment too soon for the beleaguered Catacomb Church, which was scattered and divided, and desperately short of bishops and priests of unquestioned Orthodoxy and apostolic succession. The fall of the iron curtain enabled the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad to enter Russia and regenerate the hierarchy of the True Church, while the introduction of freedom of speech and the press enabled millions of Soviet citizens to learn the truth about their state and church for the first time. On the basis of this knowledge, they could now seek entrance into the True Church without the fear of being sent to prison. In the wave of disillusion with Post -Soviet democracy that followed in the mid-1990s, it was pointed out. rightly. that freedom is a two-edged weapon, which can destroy as well as give life, and that by..freyedom. had brought Russia poverty and crime as well as interesting newspapers. the soul thirsting for truth there is no more precious gift than the freedom to seek and find. and that opportunity was now, at last, presented to the masses. only a minority of Russians used this freedom to seek the truth that makes one. and so if the fall of communism in 1989-91 was a liberation, it was a liberation strangely lacking in joy. neither to the state nor to the Official church, and the masses of the people. Ten years later, a priest of the Moscow Patriarchate could claim that to..tyue regeneration of ecclesiastical life has become a clear manifestation of the miraculous transfiguration of Russia.. But behind the newly gilded cupolas reigned heresy and corruption on a it was as bishop Theophan the Recluse had prophesied over a century before: to..Altyuougyu the Christian name will be heard everywhere, and everywhere will be visible churches and ecclesiastical ceremonies, all this will be just appearances, and within there will be true apostasy.. This judgement was echoed by Hieroconfessor Archimandrite Nektary (Chernobyl): ... Perestroika. is a great trap of the dark. They are preparing something new and more terrible. persecutors of the previous seventy years, throughout the whole vast territory of eastern Europe and Russia, was brought to trial for his crimes. consequences have been all too evident. communists, sensing the signs of the political times, seized power in 1991 in a of..demochratich. coup and immediately formed such close and dependent ties on its western allies that the formerly advanced (if inefficient) economy of Russia was transformed into a scrap-heap of obsolescent factories, on the one hand, and a source of cheap raw materials for the West, on the other. Another group, playing on the sense of betrayal felt by many, formed a nationalist opposition. but an opposition characterized by hatred, envy and negativism rather than a constructive understanding of the nation.s real. Still others, using the contacts and dollars acquired in their communist days, went into..business.. that is, a mixture of crime, extortion and the worst practices of capitalism. the communists never really fell from power: power in the new..demochratich. state was simply divided up between former communists who had changed their. It is little wonder that in many churches the prayer to be delivered by..from the bitter torment of atheist rule. continues to be chanted. disorganized anarchy, many have begun to long nostalgically>