An Interpretation of the Apocalypse of St. John the
Theologian
Vladimir Moss
© Vladimir Moss, 2005
So,
be warned, my friend. I have given you the signs of the antichrist.
Do not merely store them in your memory. Pass them on to everyone without
stint. If you have a child after the flesh, teach them to him forthwith.
And if you have become a godparent, forewarn your godchild, lest he should
take the false christ for the True. For the mystery of lawlessness doth
already work."
St. Cyril of Jerusalem
CONTENTS
Prologue
.
.
.5
The Study of the Book The Signs of the End
The Time of the End Attitudes to the End - The Nature of Prophetic Visions
The Interpretation of the Book The Sources of the Interpretation
I. The First Vision: The Seven Churches of
Asia, or: The Church in Time
.
..
.20
Introduction:
The First and the Last
.
.
..21
1.
The Church of Ephesus
.
...
..
...42
2.
The Church of Smyrna
...
.
..
...48
3.
The Church of Pergamum
..
...
..
.54
4.
The Church of Thyateira
...
..
...
.
.58
5.
The Church of Sardis
...
.
66
6.
The Church of Philadelphia
..
...
.72
7.
The Church of Laodicea
...
...
..84
II. The Second
Vision: The Seven Seals, or: The Church at the End of
Time
.
..94
1.
The Twenty-Four Elders and the Four Living Creatures
95
2.
The Lamb of God
...
.102
3.
The First Six Seals
..
107
4.
The Sealing of the Servants of God
..
..
123
5.
The Seventh Seal: The First Six Trumpets
.
.
..129
6.
The Seventh Seal: The Mighty Angel
..
..142
7.
The Seventh Seal: The Two Witnesses
..
.
160
III. The Third Vision: The Seven Days of
Creation, or: The Church Sub Specie Aeternitatis
.
.
.175
1.
The Woman Clothed with the Sun and the Red Dragon
..
.176
2.
The First Beast
.
..188
3.
The False Prophet
.
..
202
4.
The Seven Plagues
....
..220
5.
The Whore of Babylon
....
..
..233
6.
The Beast and the Whore
...
.243
7.
The Triumph of Orthodoxy: (i) The Fall of the West
.....260
8.
The Triumph of Orthodoxy: (ii) The Liberation of the East
.
..277
9.
The Triumph of Orthodoxy: (iii) The Millenium and the Last Judgement
283
Conclusion:
The Eighth Day
.
.
307
Appendix 1: Genetics, UFOs and the Birth of the Antichrist .321
Appendix 2: The
Seal of the Antichrist in Soviet and Post-Soviet
Russia
332
PROLOGUE
Close the words, and seal the book to the time of
the end;
until many are taught and knowledge is increased.
Daniel
12.4.
The
Apocalypse has as many mysteries as words.
Blessed
Jerome, Epistle 53.
The book of Revelation the
Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian has remained a sealed book until the
beginning of our most apocalyptic of epochs. Its glorious and terrifying images
have impressed themselves on the minds of generations of Christians, and its
triumphant hope of the ultimate victory of good over evil has comforted the
hearts of many fighters for the truth. Alone, however, among the books of the
New Testament, it has no generally accepted interpretation, no exegetical
consensus of the Fathers. In fact, it is the only part of the New Testament
that is not read publicly at some time in the liturgical year of the One, Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic Church.[1] It
is sealed in the sense that it is not read in church, and also in the sense
that its meaning remains shrouded in mystery.[2]
And yet the book itself beckons us,
encouraging us to penetrate the mystery. Blessed
is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep
those things which are written therein; for the time is at hand (1.3). And
again: Behold, I come quickly: blessed
is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book... Seal not the
sayings of the prophecy of this book; for the time is at hand (22.7, 10).
Shortly before the Russian revolution, St.
Barsonuphius of Optina wrote: In the Apocalypse it is said: Blessed is he that readeth the words of
this book. If this is written, it means that it is really so, for the words
of the Sacred Scripture are the words of the Holy Spirit. But in what does this
blessedness consist? The more so, in that people may object that we do not
understand anything of what is written. Perhaps it consists in the consolation
to be gained from reading the Divine words. One can also think as follows: that
which is not understood by us now will become understandable when the time
described comes to pass.[3]
Judge for yourselves. Who reads the Apocalypse now? Almost exclusively those
who live in monasteries and in theological academies and seminaries they have
to. But in the world hardly anyone reads it. Hence it is clear that he who will
read the Apocalypse before the end of the world will be truly blessed, for he
will understand what is taking place. And in understanding he will prepare
himself. In reading he will see in the events described in the Apocalypse one
or other of the events contemporary with him.[4]
Again, at the beginning of the revolution
the Church writer Lev Alexandrovich Tikhomirov wrote: The general opinion of
all interpreters of the Apocalypse is that the events revealed in it are
becoming clearer the closer we come to the time of their realization. At the
present time, when much of that which was announced then has already been
realized and the world is coming nearer and nearer to the end of the promises,
it is of course easier than before to catch the consequentiality of events. But
this easiness is very relative. The history of the world is revealed in the
Apocalypse in a very interwoven and complicated picture. The book presents a
series of separate visions which encompass now one and now another aspect of
the events, sometimes returning again to one and the same event, sometimes
speaking earlier about an event that is chronologically later. For some visions
there is no chronology at all, since they do not depict the earthly flow of
affairs, but the condition of things. Many visions do not touch events here,
but the struggle of heavenly and hellish forces. All this is so complicated and
difficult for the mind that has not been enlightened by the same spiritual
vision [as the seer himself] that one could completely renounce the hope of
penetrating into the mysteries of this greatest of visions. But the Saviour
Himself commanded that we should be attentive to the signs of the times so as
not to be caught unawares by them. And in the Apocalypse it is said: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of
the prophecy of this book. It is impossible to keep without understanding
what we are required to keep. Therefore, in spite of all difficulties, we must
try to understand everything that now, according to the will of God, may turn
out to be accessible to our understanding.[5]
Thus blessed is he that reads this book,
not in isolation, but in conjunction with the
signs of the times, which the Lord commanded us to discern with care: ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of
the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? (Matthew
16.3). We must, with Gods help and
in all humility, at least attempt to discern the signs of the times by
comparing them with this, the most significant of books for our time. For, as
Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow writes, None of the mysteries of the most
secret wisdom of God ought to appear alien or altogether transcendent to us,
but in all humility we must apply our spirit to the contemplation of Divine
things.[6]
Moreover, as Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava writes, everybody who loves the
Truth must not only take note of the signs of the times, but also follow these
observations to their logical conclusion.[7]
And these signs are indeed apocalyptic. Wars and rumours of wars, especially of
a nuclear and biochemical Armageddon threatening the extinction of the whole of
humanity; famines and pestilences, and
earthquakes, in divers places, including the inexorably increasing
pollution of the planet; the many false
prophets; the persecution of the Faith, the falling away of many, the
increase of iniquity and especially the
cooling of love even among those who are called Christians all this must
convince the discerning Christian that he is at least at the beginning of sorrows, and that only he that shall endure to the end.. shall be saved (Matthew
24.6-13).
Other signs of the end are the
extraordinary growth of science, the return of the Jews to Israel, the
unprecedented apostasy from, and persecution of, the Christian faith, and the
appearance of false Christs and antichristian religions in bewildering
abundance. As Fr. Seraphim Rose writes in his translators introduction to
Archbishop Averkys commentary: We do seem, indeed, to be living in the last
times of this worlds existence, when the prophecies of the Apocalypse relating
to the end of the world are beginning to be fulfilled. The time is surely ripe
especially in view of the numerous false interpretations of this book which
fill the contemporary air.[8]
One of the passages from the Apocalypse
that has found an almost exact fulfilment in our time is the description of the
star called Wormwood Chernobyl
in Ukrainian which falls from heaven and poisons the waters (8.10-11). Even
the most hardened sceptics have been forced to admit that this is a quite
remarkable foreshadowing of the nuclear catastrophe that took place at
Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986, which has contaminated the water supply of
the region. Again, the advances in modern computer and laser technology have
thrown unexpected light on the possible meaning of the number 666 (Revelation
13) in terms of bar-codes and microchips implanted under the skin, and how it
might form part of a world-wide food distribution system controlled by the
Antichrist.
Thus the Christian must see that he
refuses not Him that speaks both through the Divine Scriptures of the
Apocalypse and through contemporary events. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more
shall we not escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven: Whose
voice then shook the heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the
removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that
those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we, receiving a
Kingdom that cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God
acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire...
(Hebrews 12.25-29).
But one may object: does not all this
speculation about the end time contradict the words of the Saviour Himself, Who
said that of that day or hour knoweth no
man, no, not the Angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
Take ye heed and pray: for you know not when the time is (Mark
13.32-33)? After all, even such a holy man as the Romanian St. Callinicus of
Cernica erred in expecting the end of the world to come in 1848. St. Nicholas
and St. George appeared to him and told him that he still had time to build the
monastery of Cernica
However, Saints Nicholas and George did
not rebuke St. Callinicus for speculating about the time of the end. And the
Lord even helped him in his speculations by unfurling a radiant scroll in the
heavens on which ws written: 7500 years from Adam. In other words, the end
would come not before the year 1992 or 2000 (depending on whether we follow the
Constantinopolitan Church in dating Christs birth to 5508 B.C., or the
Antiochian in dating it to 5500 B.C.).[9]
In
any case, we are not speculating about the exact time of the end, which,
as the Lord says, is known to no man, and not even to the Son as man,
but only to God. As Lev Tikhomirov writes: Without doubt, the precise time is
hidden from men, in accordance with the task of Providence. The Christian
period has as its mission to choose out of humanity everything that it can give
birth to for the Kingdom of God. In the task of salvation Providence helps men,
while the opponent of God, the devil, hinders. But men must also act with their
own independent efforts. Mankind decides with its own free will whether to go
towards God or reject Him. While there are among men those who wish to be with
God and this is always known to God the end of the world will not come. The
stronger the pressure of evil, the more possible, by contrast, is the proximity
of the end. In history there have been times when the pressure of evil has been
so strong that it seemed that there was no further reason for the world to
exist, and if the anti-God mood had become finally entrenched then the end of
the world would have come. The multitude of small potential antichrists, of
whom the Apostle John already spoke, would immediately have promoted from their
midst someone capable of growing into the real Antichrist. Such epochs, of
which ours is one, in their character truly constitute the last times. But are they chronologically the last? We cannot
know that, because if the free will of men, amazed by the disgusting sight of the abomination of desolation in the
holy place, strives again towards God, the Antichrist, already ready to enter
the world, will again be cast into the abyss until conditions more favourable
for him arise, while the Lord will again lengthen the term of life of the world
so that new members should be prepared for the Kingdom of God. The Lord knows
the term of the life of the world, but He does not reveal it to men in order
that our free will should not be bound by the thoughts: if its not soon or
its all the same its already late, for our work for the Kingdom of God
must not be conditioned by such applied considerations, but by the free search
for good or evil, by the free desire to work for the Lord or reject Him. In
accordance with this, man does not need the numerical calculation of terms, but
only the discernment of the spiritual-moral maturity of good or the pressure of
evil, so that he can in a purposeful and directed manner struggle against evil
and do the work of God.
However, if the exact terms of the life
of the world and its final dιnouement are hidden from men, this is nevertheless
not so in an absolute sense. Eschatalogical Revelations give us the possibility
of see the consequentiality of future events, that is, not the existence of a
series of epochs in which we gradually approach the completion of the cycle of
evolution. In giving us the possibility of noticing them, Revelation
undoubtedly was aiming to support the faith of people in the reality of the promises. When we observe the
condition of the world and see that that which was foretold by Daniel or John
the Theologian many centuries before has really taken place in it, then, of
course, we are more strongly established in faith and and with this support we
work more energetically for the creation of good, for the struggle against
evil.
Such a support of faith becomes the more
necessary the further we go from the times of the Saviour, without seeing His
Second Coming. The Apostle Peter says that in the last times there will appear
people who will say: Where is the
promise of His Coming? For since the time our fathers began to die, from the
beginning of creation, everything remains the same (II Peter 3.4).
At the present time such doubts are already extremely widespread, and one can say
that nothing more powerfully undermines Christianity than its teaching on the
end of the world, because this end has begun to appear improbable. The same
doubt in the coming of the Messiah, Who has been awaited fruitlessly for so
long, has given birth among the Jews to the thought that this idea must be
understood in the sense of the coming of the dominion of Israel itself. Among
the Moslems (in Ismailitism) the vain expectation of the Mahdi has also led
them to the idea of the metaphorical understanding of this coming, to the
thought that in reality it means only the spreading of the spirit of Mahdi
among people. All this is, of course, very natural, for there is no fiercer
temptation for faith than the non-fulfilment of the promises. But the whole essence of Christianity lies in the
Gospel of the Kingdom and the Second Coming of Christ. If we have hope on Christ only in this life, says the Apostle Paul,
then we are of all men the most
miserable
When I fought with wild beasts in Ephesus, what use was it to me if
the dead do not rise? Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die! (I
Corinthians 15.19; 19.32). Prince S. Trubetskoy is absolutely right in
pointing to the fact that Christianity cannot renounce its faith in Godmanhood
and the Kingdom of God without renouncing itself
Is the world process
beginningless, endless, aimless, a purely elemental process, or does it have a
rational final end? Does such an im or absolute good (that is, God) exist, and
is this good realizable in everything
(the Kingdom of heaven God in all), or does nature present an eternal limit for its realization and is
it in itself only a subjective, chimerical ideal? For Christianity there can be
only one reply to this, a reply that
requires the fulfilment of the eschatological promises.
But for that reason it is important if,
in answer to the question: where is the
promise of His Coming?, we can indicate in the prophecies of Revelation
concerning the future destinies of the world much that has already been
fulfilled
Especially important, of course, are all the indications that the
course of world events foretold thousands of years before followed precisely
that path which was sketched in the visions of Revelation.
Thus both the ignorance of the exact time of the end of the world process and a
certain knowledge of the course of
separate phases in it have one and the same aim, that is: to support faith in
people, to strengthen their work in the building up of Gods work and in the
constant preservation of their readiness to appear at the last judgement.[10]
It should also be pointed out that the
Lord Himself has reserved to Himself the right to change the times of the
fulfilment of the prophecies in accordance with the way in which men respond to
His words. Thus He changed the time of the destruction of Nineveh, as conveyed
through the Prophet Jonah. And through the Prophet Jeremiah He says: The
instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to
pull down, and to destroy it, If that nation against whom I have spoken turns
from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it.
And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build
and to plant it, If it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice,
then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it. (Jeremiah
18.7-10).
Now catastrophic events, the fall of
empires and the destruction of the old order, fill the worldly man who has
pinned his hopes on this order with gloom and despondency. He has no abiding
city which cannot be moved, no treasure which cannot be broken into and stolen.
And so the Day of the Lord must come upon him as a thief in the night (I Thessalonians 5.2), as darkness and not as light (Amos
5.18).
It is not so with the Christian. His
conversation is in heaven, so his thoughts will not perish with the earth (cf. Psalm
145.3-4). He rejoices in the spoiling of his goods, for he knows that he has in heaven a better and an enduring
substance (Hebrews 10.34). He rejoices even in the death of his
body, for he knows that if our earthly
house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly
desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven (II
Corinthians 5.1-2).
And in general we may say that that which
is a cause of sorrow for the carnal mind is a cause of rejoicing for the
Christian, and vice-versa. For, as the Lord said: When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your
heads; for your redemption draweth nigh (Luke 21.28). And again: Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye
shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful,
but your sorrow shall be turned into joy (John 17.20).
This is not to say, of course, that the
Christian in no way participates in the suffering of the world. But he
evaluates both his and the worlds suffering from a different, other-worldly
point of view, discerning its significance in the context of Divine Providence
and Judgement, as opening up or cutting off the path of salvation for men. For
he sees that if men accept their suffering as just, and as a cross sent from
God for the purification of their sins, then by faith and repentance they can
use their cross to enter, with the good thief, into the Kingdom of heaven. But
if, on the other hand, they see no sense in their suffering and add to their
other sins the sins of murmuring and blasphemy, then, with the bad thief, they
will go down to hell. In this way the Cross is, as the kontakion of the
Cross says, a balance-beam of righteousness. And the Christian, in
contemplating it, humbles himself with a godly sorrow for his own and other
mens sins, and escapes through this purifying sorrow into the joy of the age
to come.
Thanks to the crushing of earthly hopes,
wrote Prince Eugene Troubetskoy at the beginning of the Russian revolution,
the greatest shift takes place in the spiritual life: human thoughts, wishes
and hopes are transferred from one plane of existence to another. And in this
shift there appear the greatest creative forces. It is precisely in
catastrophic epochs that the human heart gives its best to the world... For
those chosen souls who become tempered in trials, not only trials, but also
offences can be useful. But woe to those through whom offences come...[11]
Some epochs have a particular significance
for the life of the Church. Thus the triumph of St. Constantine brought the
Church out of the catacombs and opened a vast new field to her missionary
endeavours. And, in the opposite direction, the Russian revolution sent the
Church back into the catacombs and threatened her complete annihilation. For just
as Constantines victory ushered in a kind of resurrection before the General
Resurrection, so Russias defeat has been a judgement before the Last Judgement
for judgement must begin at the House
of God (I Peter 4.17).
St. Theophylactus of Nicomedia writes:
The prophets receive prophecies from God, but not as they want, but as the
Spirit of God works; they would be fully conscious of, and understood, the
prophetic word sent down to them, but they did not give explanations.[12]
Consequently, prophecies in general, and the prophecies in the book of the
Apocalypse in particular are exceptionally difficult to understand.
Lev Tikhomirov explains the main reason
for this difficulty as follows: The basic aim of contemplation and revelation
consists, not in the communication to us of information about the future, but about that which is hidden in general.
This hidden content consists in everything that is supernatural, in everything
in which our link with the spiritual and divine world is discovered. Of course,
when the contemplative sees himself or humanity before his spiritual gaze in
this material and tangible link with spheres of another order, this can give
him insight also into the future, but in the same degree as into the past and
the present. Before him there opens up not this or that particular time, but
the very link between man and the
spiritual and divine world, on which his destiny depends to a much greater
degree than on the material world, and which in his usual condition he can in
no wise feel and which he therefore does not take into account in his guesses
and calculations. Such is the essence of revelation and contemplation, which
are sometimes even given to a man not for communication to other people, but
for him personally, as a consequence of his lofty spiritual life and as a help
for it and strengthening of it in the future. But we, it goes without saying,
come to know only those revelations which are given not for the contemplative
personally but for communication to others. Here, too, however, the
contemplation and revelation that is given to people is aimed, for the greater
part, at giving a representation of the mysteriously close link between our
life here and all its events with the actions and aims of the powers of a
different world a spiritual or divine world. This needs to be known only by
him who desires to maintain this link consciously, to conform himself with it,
to struggle with some of the powers revealed to him, and enter into union with
others. In this case the question of the future, whatever it may be, is hardly
relevant. This union or this struggle is not necessary for the future, but constantly, as a means towards a healthy
spiritual life. Sometimes, perhaps, it may even seem more important to the
contemplative to know about the past, about which he through ignorance or evil
will has taken an incorrect position in regard to the power of the spiritual or
divine world that needs correction.
These are the main reasons why prophetic
contemplations and revelations are not clear. They are supplemented by
secondary reasons which depend on the character of the condition in which the
contemplation is received, and on the difficulty of expressing it in usual
human language, if it does not have as its main aim the giving of a positive
message to people.
A prophecy is completely clear if it has
as its aim the communication to people of a demand of the definitive Will of
God or a warning to them to keep away from mistaken acts in this or that
particular case. Thus the Prophet Jeremiah in the name of God insistently
advised the Jewish people and King Zedekiah not to wage war with Nebuchadnezzar
and submit to him without a fight. Thus the Saviour foretold the destruction of
Jerusalem, giving the direct advice to flee and hide when the signs of the time
of the destruction appeared. Thanks to this the Christians were saved in the
year of the desolation of Judaea. But when the prophecy touches the general
destinies of the world or its general condition, the prophetic contemplation is
only in exceptional cases completely clear, as it was, for example, with Daniel
in relation to the times of the coming of the Messiah. But generally speaking
the link between humanity and the supernatural world makes it inevitable that
prophetic revelations should be obscure.
That which takes place in the
supernatural spheres cannot be expressed clearly in human language. When the
Apostle Paul was speaking about his ascension to the third heaven he directly
declared that what he had heard there could not be expressed in our language.
When we read the Apostle Johns description of what takes place in the heavens,
we see images which it is evidently impossible to understand literally: he
speaks about lampstands, about altars, about the exterior appearance of angels,
their wings, etc. But it is understood that nothing of the sort exists in the
heavens, but that which does exist there, that which the seer really did see,
is such as can be conveyed only symbolically, in a certain likeness to material
objects.
Thus symbolism
is an inevitable form of such contemplation and revelation. The seer as it were
translates into material language that which exists in reality not in material,
but in some completely different forms.
It goes without saying that this
symbolism which requires interpretation makes the seers communications
unclear, especially for people who have not personally experienced the
condition of the contemplative
Therefore if Revelation is given to
enlighten the destinies of the world, it is of necessity symbolic. Moreover,
the symbol sometimes remains incomprehensible even for the contemplative
himself: I was amazed at my vision,
says Daniel, and did not understand it
(Daniel 8. 27). And so its significance is sometimes explained to the prophet in the course of the vision
itself, but not always.
Therefore in the reading of apocalyptic
prophecies a multitude of perplexities and contradictions arise in the attempt
to understand them, although, generally speaking, the understanding of the
symbolism of contemplative images is made easier by the fact that the prophets
had very many symbolic visions, and so by putting them together we can receive
some idea of the significance of the symbols.[13]
The Interpretation of the Book
The book of the Apocalypse presents a
synoptic view of this most basic, fundamental and supreme struggle in the form
of the interaction of several symbolic figures. The main protagonists are, on
the one hand, the Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the woman clothed
with the sun, His Holy Church; and on the other hand, the devil and his evil
minions the first beast, the false prophet and the whore of Babylon. The
focus switches from earth to heaven, from deepest antiquity to the age to come.
However, the chief emphasis, according to
our interpretation, is on Europe, the Middle East and Russia in the twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries, when, as Elder Nectarius of Optina put it,
the world will be girded with iron and paper the iron curtain of Soviet
communism and the paper deals of Western capitalism and ecumenism. It is the
age in which the true Church flees into the wilderness of obscurity and
suffering, and in which evil of the most radical kind sprawls triumphantly on
the former capitals of Christian piety. But this is also the age, according to
the prophecies of the saints, in which the most complete reversal will take
place, not by might, nor by power, but
by My Spirit, saith the Lord (Zechariah 4.6), when the beast of
communism (severely wounded now, but still alive), the false prophet of
scientific materialism and evolutionism and the whore of Judaeo-Masonic
ecumenism will all be destroyed in the mighty conflagration of the Third World
War. Then the Church will arise, and the
Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world. And then shall the end come (Matthew
24.14): during the apostasy of the final, Laodicean period of Church history,
the personal Antichrist, the false messiah and king of the Jews, will take
power and initiate the most universal and cruellest persecution of the Church,
which will be cut short only by the Second Coming of Christ, the General
Resurrection from the dead and the Last and Most Terrible Judgement.
This last period in the history of the
world is divided, according to our interpretation, into three parts: (i) the
reign of the collective Antichrist of Soviet power, which has not yet come
to an end, (ii) the triumph of Orthodoxy and the preaching of the Gospel
throughout the world, which will come after a Third World War, and (iii) the
reign of the personal Antichrist, followed by the Second Coming of Christ, the
Last Judgement and the General Resurrection from the dead. This general
schema is most succinctly revealed in the words of the holy Russian New Martyr
Jacob Fyodorovich Arkatov (+1991), who said: All the prophecies speak not
about only one time for the reign of the Antichrist, but about three sections
of the last time: the first period is called the beginning of sorrows,
according to the prophetic words of the Saviour, or the apostasy,
according to the Apostle Paul, while in the Apocalypse of the Apostle John it
is marked as the coming out and reigning of the beast from the sea with his
head-followers. The second section of the last time is the beast was and is
not or the time of the preaching of the Gospel throughout the world. And
finally, the third period is really the time of the reign of the Antichrist.
The Saviour calls it the end, the beginning of which is the placing of the
abomination of desolation. The Apostle John calls it the coming out of the
beast from the abyss, which is the eighth in the dynasty of the beasts and
is of the number of the seven, while the Apostle Paul calls it the appearance
of the man of sin.[14]
Concerning the question of literal versus
symbolical meanings, Fr. Seraphim Rose notes that many would-be interpreters
of Scripture go astray precisely on this point, whether by a too-literal
understanding (as in the case of the Protestant Fundamentalists who come close
to believing that everything in the
Bible is literally true) or a too-free interpretation (as in the case of the
liberals who dismiss everything difficult to believe as symbolic or allegorical).
In the Orthodox interpretation of Scripture these two levels of meaning, the
literal and symbolical, are often intertwined...
The visions of the Apocalypse
sometimes
present heavenly realities in forms adapted to the understanding of the seer
(the vision of Christ in chapter 1; of heaven in chs. 4-7; of the future age in
chs. 21-22); sometimes they present allegorical pictures of the Church and her
life (the woman clothed with the sun
in ch. 12, the thousand years of the
Churchs existence in ch. 20), or of specific beings that war against the
Church (the dragon in ch. 12, the two beasts of ch. 13), or of future events,
whether general (the four horsemen of ch. 6) or specific (the seven last
plagues of ch. 15).[15]
At this point we should consider the
objection that the Apocalypse is not a truly prophetic book, but simply
non-historical allegory; that in this book, in the words of Fr. Alexander
Kolesnikov, there is no foretelling of events and processes in Church and
world history, but there is represented in symbols the inner struggle of the
soul of the individual Christian between good and evil, God and Satan.[16]
This appears to have been the view of, for example, Metropolitan Anthony
(Khrapovitsky) of Kiev, first president of the Russian Church Abroad, who said
that the Apocalypse contains in itself, not a foretelling of definite events,
as is usually thought, but instruction for the Christians, exhorting them to
martyrdom. It depicts the struggle between good and evil, which takes places in
all generations of human history and usually leads to the triumph of evil on
earth.[17]
Now this is certainly part of the meaning of the book. But that definite prophecies of
future events are also contained in it is made clear at the very beginning,
where the seer is told: Write the things
which thou has seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be
hereafter (1.19). And again: Come up
hither, and I will thee things which must be hereafter (4.1). And: The Lord God sent His angel to show unto
His servants the things which must be shortly hereafter (22.6).
This is no realized eschatology, but a
clear reference to future events. And if it be objected that the end of the
world and the last judgement did not come shortly
thereafter, the fulfilment of the prophecy did, nevertheless, begin in St. Johns time and in any
case, in the eyes of God one day is as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (II Peter 3.8).
Therefore the whole period between the First and Second Comings of Christ may
indeed be called a short period in eschatological terms.
Like other prophecies of the Old and New
Testaments, the Apocalypse refers to events in both the near and the distant
future, both what was shortly to happen in the Church towards the end of the
first century A.D., and what is to come to pass at the end of the world and
even after the last and most terrible judgement.
Sometimes a single prophecy refers simultaneously to near and far events.
For example, the Lords prophecies in Matthew 24 refer, according to St.
Ephraim the Syrian, to the punishment of Jerusalem and at the same time to the
end of the world.[18]
Again, just as Daniels famous prophecy of the
abomination of desolation (Daniel 9.27) refers simultaneously to the
Romans desecration of the Jewish Temple in 70 A.D., and to the enthronement of
the Antichrist at the end of the world, and perhaps also to other acts of
apostasy in world history.
Similarly, it is the profound conviction
of the True Orthodox Christians of Russia that since 1917 we are living in the
times of the Apocalypse and that the prophecies concerning the woman fleeing
into the wilderness, the two beasts, the whore of Babylon, etc. can be
interpreted as referring to different aspects of life under the Soviet
(collective) Antichrist. At the same time these prophecies may be fulfilled
again, and still more precisely, under the Jewish (personal) Antichrist, who
will be enthroned in Jerusalem seven years before the end of the world. One purpose
of the present work is to acquaint the general reader with the remarkable
prophecies and interpretations of the holy Fathers and Martyrs of the Russian
Church during the last two centuries. For it is the Russian Church which has
both borne the chief brunt of antichristian persecution in this period and
given birth to the greatest number of prophets capable of interpreting the
signs of the times. These include Saints Seraphim of Sarov, Ambrose of Optina,
John of Kronstadt and many of the holy new martyrs and confessors.
Thus, as Tikhomirov writes, besides the
usual symbolism, we must bear in mind that various events in the world are
so-called types of other events which
follow them. In the type, which has an exceptionally great significance in Christian
exegesis, we come across one of the most mysterious of the worlds phenomena.[19]
Having said that, there is no doubt that
the dogmatic content of the
Apocalypse is hardly less important that its prophetic, eschatological content.
Thus in it we find very valuable witnesses to the dogmas of the Holy Trinity,
the Divinity of Christ and especially the dogma of the One, Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church. For in our present age, when all the Christian dogmas are
under ferocious attack, the witness of the Apocalypse to the nature of the
relationship between Christ and His Church is especially valuable. Thus here we
see Christ exhorting, praising, warning and comforting local Churches,
promising eternal life to some and threatening others with excommunication. And
here, too, we find many references to the liturgical life of the early Church,
to the Eucharistic Sacrifice, to candles and vestments and incense, to the
prayers of the Saints and the intimate interpenetration of the Heavenly and
Earthly Churches. In all this we find confirmation of the Faith and practice of
the Orthodox Church and refutation of the heresies of Catholicism and
Protestantism.
Moreover, we see in the Apocalypse that
the Church is One, united through the One Faith under a single Head, Christ;
and that those who fall away into various sects and heresies are not part of
the One Church but cut off from both her and her Head. This is a valuable
witness against the chief heresy of our time, ecumenism, which denies the dogma
of the One Church. Finally, we are given a vision of the Church in glory beyond
space and time, which, in our age, when the vision of the Church has become so
trivialised, is not the least of the books many treasures.
Again, the prophetic and dogmatic content
of the Apocalypse is intimately connected with its pastoral content. Since we live in the last times, in constant
peril of being at any moment cut off from Christ and His Holy Church, the Chief
Shepherd addresses us with words charged with pastoral love and concern. He
exhorts us to flee the moral laxity and indifference to the truth of the false
religions and culture of our time, symbolized by the figure of the whore of
Babylon, and to stand firm against the attempts of the false political and scientific
structures of our time, symbolized by the two beasts, to accept the seal of the
Antichrist.
He fills us with a godly fear by depicting
the torments that await the impious, but strengthens us with hope in the
eventual complete triumph of truth over falsehood and the indescribable joy of
the life of the age to come. The choice is set before us in the starkest
possible terms. But lest we grow faint-hearted at the enormity of the
challenge, He shows us that He and the whole might of the Heavenly Church are
ready to help us at any moment.
Some words on the structure of the work.
With this question are bound up many basic problems of interpretation. For it
is precisely with the understanding of the plan of the Apocalypse that the
difficulties begin. The basic question comes down to: are the events foretold
in the Apocalypse ordered in one consequential series, or are we dealing with
several repeated series of events in which the same events are enlightened from
various sides (the theory of recapitulation).[20]
I believe that the Apocalypse most
naturally divides into three major prophecies, each of which ends with the end
of the world or, in the case of the third prophecy, the life of the age to
come. The first prophecy, The Seven Churches of Asia, relates in the first
place to the spiritual life of the Seven Local Churches of Asia Minor at the
end of the first century A.D. According to an interpretation of Archbishop
Averky which I shall develop in detail, the prophecy also refers to seven
phases in the life of the Church as a whole from the first century to the
Antichrist. The second prophecy, The Seven Seals, describes, according to the
present interpretation, the history of the Church in the last times, from 1914
to the Second Coming of Christ. The third prophecy, The Seven Vials, is the
least historical, or, to put it another way, the most meta-historical; for the
main figures symbolize the True Church, the False Church, False Politics and
False Science in all ages and places. At the same time, they clearly relate to
historical events of the last times described in the two earlier prophecies,
but in a more generalized way. Thus the woman fleeing into the wilderness,
while referring to the True Church in all ages fleeing from the world, also
recalls more specifically the Philadelphian Church of chapter three and her
sufferings. Again, the beast who destroys the whore and is in turn destroyed by
Christ is clearly the same Antichrist against which the two witnesses prophesy
in chapter ten.
I agree with Tikhomirov that a
chronological succession of events seems to be noticeable in three parts of the
Apocalypse: 1) in the instruction to the seven churches of Asia, 2) in the
breaking of the seals, 3) in the seven trumpet voices and the seven vials of
the wrath of God.[21]
Accordingly, I have given an historical interpretation to each of these three
parts. The extremely complex symbols of this prophecy may be seen as describing
the struggle between the mystery of
godliness (I Timothy 3.16) and the
mystery of iniquity (II Thessalonians 2.7) from before the beginning
of the visible creation to beyond its end as we know it. For the Apocalypse
ultimately goes beyond time and into eternity, the Eighth Day. It is the Revelation of Jesus Christ (1.1), the Word Who was in the beginning (John
1.1) and of Whose knowledge there will be no end (John 21.25). That is
why, although the passing of time and the emergence of new signs of the times
has to some degree increased our knowledge, the Apocalypse remains, for all
those still clothed in flesh and blood, a sealed book.
The Apocalypse constitutes as it were a
great river formed out of rivers and streams of Old Testament prophecy united
into one and falling into the sea of eternity itself.[22]
In the following interpretation, therefore, my main source has been Old and New
Testament prophecy. In addition, on the principle that the Spirit that speaks
through the prophets is one, I have made extensive use of many prophecies of
Orthodox saints, and especially of recent saints of the Russian Catacomb
Church, which seem to me to illumine passages from the Apocalypse when set next
to them. Several of these prophecies refer to a Third World War and a period of
peace and plenty immediately after the war but before the reign of the personal
Antichrist. I admit that the conjunction of these prophecies with the
Apocalypse is speculative; only time, and the fulfilment of the prophecies
themselves, will tell whether it has been successful; and I ask the readers
forgiveness if it turns out to be mistaken in any given case.
As regards commentaries on the Scripture,
I have made extensive use of the writings of the holy Fathers and Teachers of
the Orthodox Church, including the well-known commentaries of St. Hippolytus,
Pope of Rome (about 230) and St. Andrew, Archbishop of Caesarea (fifth
century). However, the meaning of the Apocalypse is only partly explained by
the interpretations of holy Fathers who lived many centuries before our time.
If they had lived in our time, when many of the prophecies are being fulfilled
before our eyes, they would undoubtedly have wanted to modify and add to their
interpretations to accord with their understanding of contemporary events. For,
as Fr. Seraphim Rose notes, as history proceeds to its end, the meaning of
some of the images will become clearer. Archbishop Averky himself notes that
some of the image simply cannot be understood yet, while of others (for
example, the locusts and horses of ch. 9) he hazards
interpretations based on the 20th-century experience of warfare.[23]
In addition, therefore, to the writings of
the early Fathers, I have made use of many articles and observations by
contemporary or near-contemporary Church writers who have illumined, as it
seems to me, certain passages. Among these I have made extensive use of the
commentaries of Bishop Peter of Tomsk, St. John of Kronstadt (+1908),
Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava (+1940) and Archbishop Averky of Jordanville
(+1976).
East House, Beech Hill, Mayford, Woking,
Surrey. United Kingdom.
February 24 / March 9, 2005.
Finding of the Head of the Holy Prophet, Forerunner
and Baptist John.
I. THE FIRST VISION: THE SEVEN CHURCHES
Introduction. The First and the Last
1.1. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave
unto Him, to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass.
St.
John of Kronstadt writes: "The name
Apocalypse, i.e. the Revelation of
Jesus Christ, signifies the declaration of the mysteries of the future
judgement and recompense [and] renovation of the world, which must shortly come to pass. Shortly, however, in this sense, as St. Andrew of Caesarea says,
that something of what is predicted in the Revelation is, so to speak, at hand.
But even that which relates to the end of time is not very distant, for a
thousand years before God are as yesterday."[24]
One
day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (II
Peter 3.8).
As Nicholas Vasileiades writes, "just
as the first book of Holy Scripture, Genesis, is concerned with the creation of the world, so the last, the Apocalypse,
is concerned with the consummation of all
things.[25]
The authority for this prophecy is Jesus Christ, Who received it from God
the Father; for I do nothing of Myself;
but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things (John 8.28).
All prophecy comes from the Father, in the
Son, and through the Holy Spirit. It is not given to human nature,
unenlightened by the Grace of God, to know the future. That is why the Lord in His manhood said of His Second
Coming: Of that day and that hour
knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but
the Father (Mark 13.32), while in
His Divinity He certainly knew both the day and the hour.
For, as St. Athanasius the Great points
out, "after saying neither the Son
He relates to the disciples the things which will precede that day, and says
that this and that will happen, and then the end. Now He that speaks of what
will precede that day also has full knowledge of that day which will come after
the events foretold. And if He had not known the hour, He would not have
pointed to the events preceding it, not knowing when that hour would be...
Certainly, then, it is evident that as the Word He knows the hour and the end
of all things, although as man He is ignorant of it; for ignorance is proper to
man, and especially in these matters."[26]
1.1-2. And He sent and signified it by His angel
unto His servant John: who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony
of Jesus Christ, and of all things that He saw.
The
Revelation was transmitted through an angel to God's servant John the
Apostle and Evangelist, who then recorded it for posterity. Such is the mark of
all true knowledge. It comes to us from God, through the mediation of His holy
servants - angels, apostles and prophets.
Thus St. Ambrose of Optina writes:
"All that relates to the creation of the world, the destinies of peoples
and the salvation of men has been revealed by the Almighty Lord to chosen holy
men, prophets and apostles, who were enlightened by the light of His Divine
knowledge, and by whom all this was handed down and written in the Bible, that
is, in the books of the Old and New Testaments."[27]
However, in the Holy Scriptures there are some things hard to understand, which they
that are unlearned and unstable wrest... unto their own destruction (II
Peter 3.16). Especially is this true of prophecy, which is why no prophecy is of any private
interpretation (II Peter 1.20). Thus "everything in the Bible
which is hidden and unclear has been explained to other holy men chosen by God,
pastors and teachers of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church" (St.
Ambrose).
And yet even the saints trembled on
approaching the interpretation of the Apocalypse. For, as St. Hippolytus of
Rome writes, "if the blessed prophets who preceded us did not choose to
proclaim these things, though they knew them, openly and boldly, lest they
should disquiet the souls of men, but recounted them mystically in parables and
dark sayings, speaking thus, Here is the
mind that hath wisdom (17.9), how much greater risk shall we run in
venturing to declare openly things spoken by them in obscure terms!"[28]
But out of love for their fellow men they did approach the interpretation of
this mysterious work, lest Christians should be deprived of the enormous
spiritual riches contained within it.
Thus every individual Christian on
approaching the Scriptures, and a fortiori the Apocalypse, is in the
position of the Ethiopian eunuch, who, on being asked whether he understood
what he was reading, replied: How can I,
unless some man should guide me? (Acts 8.31). So he has recourse to
the pastors and teachers of the Church, from whom he receives the true
understanding of Scripture, the interpretation that has been handed down in the
Church from the earliest Christian generations. Every succeeding generation of
Christian teachers builds on this sacred deposit of inspired scriptural
interpretation, making clear "what is hidden and unclear in the Bible, not
according to their own understanding, but as it is explained in the books of
men inspired by God and enlightened with the light of Divine knowledge,... the
books of the holy and God-inspired Fathers of the Orthodox Church" (St.
Ambrose).
It is on the basis of this "consensus
of the Fathers" that we know that the writer of the Apocalypse was the
Apostle John. Thus Archbishop Averky writes: "The writer of the Apocalypse
calls himself John (1.1, 4.9). In
the common belief of the Church, this was the holy Apostle John, the beloved
disciple of Christ, who for the height of his teaching concerning God the Word
received the distinctive title of 'Theologian'. To his inspired pen belongs
also the fourth canonical Gospel and the three Catholic Epistles. This belief
of the Church is justified both by facts indicated in the Apocalypse itself,
and by many internal and external signs.
"1) The writer of the Apocalypse calls
himself John at the very beginning,
saying that to him was given the Revelation of Jesus Christ (1.1). Further,
greeting the seven churches of Asia Minor, he again calls himself John (1.4). Later he again calls himself
John, saying that he was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the
word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ (1.9). From the history
of the apostles it is known that it is precisely St. John the Theologian who
was subjected to exile on the island of Patmos. And finally, at the end of the
Apocalypse, the writer again calls himself John
(22.8). In the second verse of the first chapter, he calls himself an
eyewitness of Jesus Christ (cf. I John 1.3).
"The opinion that the Apocalypse was
written by a certain 'Presbyter John' is totally without foundation. The very
existence of this 'Presbyter John' as a person separate from the Apostle John
is rather dubious. The only testimony which gives reason to speak about
'Presbyter John' is a passage from a work of Papias which has been preserved by
the historian Eusebius. It is extremely indefinite and give opportunity only
for guesses and suppositions which contradict each other. Likewise the opinion
is totally without foundation that ascribes the writing of the Apocalypse to
John Mark, that is, the Evangelist Mark. Even more absurd is the opinion of the
Roman presbyter Gaius (3rd century) that the Apocalypse was written by the
heretic Cerinthus.
"2) The second proof that the
Apocalypse belongs to the Apostle John the Theologian is its similarity to the
Gospel and Epistles of John, not only in spirit but also in style, and
especially in several characteristic expressions. Thus, for example, the
apostolic preaching is called here testimony
or witness (1.2, 9; 20.4; cf. John
1.7; 3.11; 21.24; I John 5.9-10). The Lord Jesus Christ is called the Word (19.13; cf. John
1.1-14; I John 1.1) as well as the
Lamb (5.6; 17.14; cf. John 1.36). The prophetic words of Zechariah, And they shall look on Him Whom they
pierced (12.10), are cited identically both in the Gospel and in the
Apocalypse in accordance with the translation of the Seventy (1.7 and John
19.37).
"Some have found that the language of
the Apocalypse is supposedly to be distinguished from the language of the other
writings of the Apostle John. This difference is easily explained, both by the
difference of content and by the conditions in which the writings of the holy
Apostle had their origin. Although the holy apostle knew Greek well, still, finding
himself in exile far from the living conversational language, he naturally
placed in the Apocalypse the seal of the powerful influence of the Hebrew
language, being himself a Jew by birth. For the objective reader of the
Apocalypse there is no doubt that on its whole content there lies the seal of
the great spirit of the apostle of love and contemplation.
"3) All the ancient as well as the
later patristic testimonies acknowledge St. John the Theologian to be the
author of the Apocalypse. His disciple, Papias of Hierapolis, calls the writer
of the Apocalypse 'Presbyter John', a name which the holy apostle gives to
himself in his own Epistles (II John 1, III John 1).
"The testimony of St. Justin the
Martyr is also important. Before his conversion to Christianity he lived for a
long time in Ephesus, the city where the great apostle himself lived for a long
time and reposed.
"Furthermore, many holy Fathers cite
passages from the Apocalypse as from a Divinely inspired book belonging to St.
John the Theologian. Such quotations are to be found in the works of St.
Irenaeus of Lyons, the disciple of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, who himself was a
disciple of St. John the Theologian; St. Hippolytus, Pope of Rome and disciple
of Irenaeus, who even wrote an apology on the Apocalypse; Clement of
Alexandria, Tertullian and Origen likewise acknowledge the holy Apostle John as
the writer of the Apocalypse. In the same way Ephraim the Syrian, Epiphanius,
Basil the Great, Hilary, Athanasius the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Didymus,
Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome were convinced of this. The thirty-third canon of
the Council of Carthage, ascribing the Apocalypse to St. John the Theologian,
places it in the rank of the other canonical books."(Archbishop Averky)
1.3. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear
the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein;
for the time is at hand.
"The book of the Apocalypse has,
consequently, not only a prophetic, but also a moral significance. The meaning
of these words is as follows: Blessed is he who, on reading this book, will
prepare himself by his life and deeds of piety for eternity; for the
translation to eternity is near for each one of us." (Archbishop Averky)
St. Barsanuphius of Optina wrote: "In
the Apocalypse it is said: Blessed is he
that readeth the words of this book. If this is written, it means that it
is really so, for the words of the Sacred Scripture are the words of the Holy
Spirit. But in what does this blessedness consist? The more so, in that people
may object that we do not understand anything of what is written. Perhaps it
consists in the consolation to be gained from reading the Divine words. One can
also think as follows: that which is not understood by us now will become
understandable when the time described comes to pass. Judge for yourselves. Who
reads the Apocalypse now? Almost exclusively those who live in monasteries and
in theological academies and seminaries - they have to. But in the world hardly
anyone reads it. Clearly, then, he who reads the Apocalypse before the end of
the world will be truly blessed, for he will understand what is taking place.
And in understanding he will prepare himself. In reading he will see in the
events described in the Apocalypse one or other of the events contemporary with
him."[29]
New Hieromartyr Bishop Mark (Novoselov)
writes: "Blessed is he that
readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy concerning the
future destinies of the Church and keep
those things that are written therein, cries the holy seer of her great and
wondrous destinies! Blessed is he who, attending to the Lord's revelation
concerning the destiny of the Church of God, does not doubt in the truth of her
triumph over her enemies or in the final, complete victory of her Founder and
supreme Master over the ancient serpent, the age-old slayer of man, who rose up
against the Kingdom of God and never ceases to arm himself against Him with all
the powers and resources of hell! Blessed is he who hopes on the almighty power
of the meek Lamb, slain for the salvation of the world, and who does not fall
away from Him amidst the terrible temptations that have befallen the Church,
but rather takes inspiration from his participation in her universal triumph, which
will be revealed at the end of the age!"[30]
1.4. John to the seven churches which are in Asia.
"The number seven is usually taken as
an expression of fulness. St. John addresses here only the seven churches with
which he, as one who lived in Ephesus, was in especially close and frequent
contact. But in these seven he addresses at the same time the Christian Church
as a whole." (Archbishop Averky)
St. Cyprian of Carthage writes: "In
the New Testament seven sons signify seven churches. For. Paul also wrote to
seven Churches (Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae and
Thessalonica), and in the Apocalypse (1.4) seven churches are mentioned
The
days of Genesis are seven, and the angels who are before the face of God
are seven, according to the words of the Angel Raphael in the book of Tobit
(12.15). And the lampstand in the tabernacle has seven lamps (Exodus
25.31), and God's eyes watching over the world are seven. And Zechariah's stone
has seven facets (Zechariah 3.9), and the spirits are seven, and the
pillars on which, according to Solomon, Wisdom has built her house, are
seven!"[31]
Samson, according to St. Ephraim the
Syrian, "carried seven cedars as an image of seven-rayed grace."[32]
And Delilah cut off seven locks of his hair, in which consisted his
extraordinary strength (Judges 16.14-19).[33]
By these seven churches, says the
Venerable Bede, he writes to every church, for universality is usually denoted
by the number seven, in that the whole time of this age is evolved from seven
days.[34]
For those numbers which the divine Scripture more eminently commends, as the
seventh, or tenth, or twelfth [signify], for the most part, either the whole
course of time, or the perfection of anything..., as seven times in a day I sing praise unto Thee (Psalm 98.164),
is nothing else than, His praise was
ever in my mouth (Psalm 32.2). And they are of the same value also
when they are multiplied either by ten, as seventy and seven hundred, in which
case, the seventy years of Jerusalem may be taken spiritually for the whole
time during which the Church is among aliens; or by themselves, as ten by ten
is a hundred, and twelve by twelve is a hundred and forty-four, by which number
the whole body of the saints is denoted in the Apocalypse.[35]
Lev
Tikhomirov writes: In the person [of the Asian churches] the Saviour addresses
the whole Universal Church in seven manfestations and moments of her
existence.[36]
If the number seven is an expression of
fullness, then the seven Churches express the fullness of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic
Church, which is, as it were, the Eighth, Universal Church dwelling in each of
the seven local ones.[37]
Again, St. Gregory Palamas points out
there are seven resurrections from the dead recorded in Holy Scripture before
the Lord's own (III Kings 17.22; IV Kings 4; IV Kings 13; Luke
7; Mark 5 and Luke 8; John 11 and Matthew
27.52-52). The number seven is to be honoured, he says, because it leads to the
number eight, which signifies eternity. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of the
Church, rose on the eighth day and His resurrection was the eighth in Holy
Scripture.[38]
1.4. Grace unto you, from Him Who is, and Who was,
and Who is to come.
St. Andrew of Caesarea writes: "Grace
to you and peace from the Tri-Personal Divinity. The phrase Who is signifies the Father, Who said
to Moses: I AM HE WHO IS (Exodus
3.14). The expression Who was
signifies the Word, Who was in the
beginning with God (John 1.2). The phrase Who is to come indicates the Comforter, Who always descends upon
the Church's children in Holy Baptism and is to descend in all fullness in the
future age (Acts 2)."[39]
The Venerable Bede writes: Grace he
desires from us, and peace from God, the eternal Father, and from the sevenfold
Spirit, and from Jesus Christ, Who gave testimony to the Father in His
Incarnation. He names the Son in the third place, as he was to speak further of
Him. He names Him also the last in order, as He is the first and the last.
Grace descended upon the assembled Church
at Pentecost, revealing to them for the first time with full clarity the dogma
of the One God in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is therefore
fitting that the first mention of the Holy Trinity in the Apocalypse should be
linked with the first mention of the Church. For the Church is the pillar and ground of the Truth (I
Timothy 3.15), and the many-personed reflection of the Trihypostatic
Divinity.
1.4. And from the seven spirits which are before
His throne.
"By these seven spirits it is most natural to understand the seven main
angels, who are mentioned in Tobit 12.15. St. Andrew of Caesarea,
however, understands by these the angels ruling the seven churches. But many
interpreters understand by this expression the Holy Spirit Himself, Who reveals
Himself in seven main gifts (cf. Isaiah 11.1-3)." (Archbishop
Averky)
The angels are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth
(Zechariah 4.10). They both intercede on our behalf (Matthew
18.10) and convey our prayers to God. It is not that God needs intermediaries,
nor that there is not only one Mediator between God and man, as being both God
and man, the Lord Jesus Christ (I Timothy 2.5). The mediation of angels
is simply the natural consequence of the living bond of faith and love existing
between the Church in heaven and the Church on earth (Hebrews 12.22-24).
St. Gregory Palamas writes: Saint Basil
says the energies of the Spirit are many. But on this account there are not
many Gods or many Spirits, for these realities are processions, manifestations
and natural energies of the one Spirit, and in each case the Agent is one. When
the heterodox call these creatures, they degrade the Spirit of God to a
creature sevenfold. But let their shame be sevenfold, for a prophet again says
of the energies, These are the seven
eyes that look upon all the earth [Zechariah 4.10]. And it is so
written in Revelation, and clearly demonstrates to the faithful that these are
the Holy Spirit.[40]
1.5. And from Jesus Christ, Who is the faithful
witness, and the first-begotten from the dead, and the prince of the kings of
the earth.
"For, having witnessed before Pontius
Pilate, He was faithful in all His words
(Psalm 144.13)." (St. Andrew of Caesarea)
The Lord came into the world to witness to the truth - the truth,
namely, that He is the Christ, the Son
of God (John 18.37, 20.31). And he proved the truth of His words by
His Resurrection from the dead, becoming the
first-fruits of them that slept (I Corinthians 15.20). Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him, and
given Him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the
earth (Philippians 2.9-11; cf. I Timothy 6.16).
"In the greeting of St. John the
Theologian to the Churches the Trihypostatic Divinity, from Whom grace and
peace are bestowed, is represented symbolically. Thus when John speaks of the
Hypostasis of the Father, He mentions Him Who
is, and Who was, and Who is to come, that is, contains the beginning, the
middle and the end of all that exists. When He speaks of the Holy Spirit, he
mentions the seven spirits which are
before the throne of the Father, and this signifies the gifts of the
life-giving Spirit. But when he speaks of the second Person of the
Trihypostatic Divinity, he calls Him Jesus
Christ, Who is the faithful witness (for He witnessed before the sanhedrin
and Pilate to the fact that He was the true King and Son of God, sitting at the
right hand of the Father and being about to come on the clouds of heaven), the first-begotten from the dead (for
He is the resurrection of life) and the
prince of the kings of the earth (as King
of kings and Lord of lords)." (St. John of Kronstadt)
St. Athanasius writes: "He is said to
be the First-begotten from the dead,
not that He died before us, for we had died first; but because having undergone
death for us and abolished it, He was the first to rise as a man, for our sake
raising His own Body. Henceforth, He
having risen, we, too, from Him and because of Him rise in due course from the
dead."[41]
Prince
of the kings of the earth. A.
Zhdanov writes: This second (closely connected with the first) consequence of
the witness of the cross of Christ in relation to Him is the vesting in the
highest royal power over all the lords of the earth. In the Old Testament
through the lips of the prophets God announced the Messiah: I shall make Him My first-born, higher than
the kings of the earth (Psalm
88.28); I shall give Thee the
nations for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy
possession (Psalm2.8); cf. Daniel
7.14; Isaiah 9.6-7). In the New Testament the Old Testament prophecies
have been fulfilled: Jesus Christ, having brilliantly overthrown the kingdoms
of the world and their glory, offered to Him by the prince of darkness (Matthew
4.8-10), by the all-powerful right hand of God the Father is seated at His
right hand after the resurrection and ascension, far above every dominion and
authority and power and lordship (Ephesians 1.21), as the head of every
authority and power (Colossians 2.10; cf. Philippians 2.8-10),
and, according to the book of Revelation, as the Lord of lords and King of
kings he will war against the rulers that are hostile to Him and opposed to the
power of God and His Christ (Revelation 17.14; 19.16).[42]
1.5-6. Unto Him that loveth us, and washed us from
our sins in His own blood, and hath made us a kingdom and priests unto God and
His Father; to Him be glory and dominion unto the ages of ages. Amen.
In
the Old Testament, God ordained the Hebrews to be a peculiar people above all nations,... a royal priesthood and a holy
nation (Exodus 19.5-6), some from among them being specially set
aside and anointed for a kingly or priestly service. In the same way, in the
New Testament, God has ordained the Church, the Israel of God (Galatians 6.16), composed of both Jews
and Gentiles, to be a chosen generation,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people (I Peter 2.9),
some from among us being in a similar manner specially set aside and ordained
for a kingly or priestly service. And this is accomplished through our life in
the Holy One of Israel, the King and Great High Priest, Jesus Christ. For as
Christ the King showed Himself Victor over death and over him that has the
power of death, the devil (Hebrews 2.14), so we through Him have the
power to conquer the death-dealing passions, and to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy
(Luke 10.19). And as Christ the Great High Priest offered Himself as a
Sacrifice on the Cross for the sins of the world, so we through Him offer both
our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto God (Romans 12.1) and the sacrifice of praise to God continually (Hebrews 13.15).[43]
Because the King of kings and heavenly
Priest united us to His own body by offering Himself for us, there is not one
of the saints who has not spiritually the office of priesthood, in that he is a
member of the eternal Priest. (The Venerable Bede).
Archimandrites Seraphim and Sergius write:
"Independently of this universal priesthood of the people of God, which is
received by each Orthodox Christian in the sacrament of holy chrismation, there
exist special ministries in the Church that are linked with official gifts
received in the sacrament of the priesthood by means of ordination in
accordance with apostolic succession...
"And in the Old Testament God calls
the Israelite people a kingdom of
priests (Exodus 19.6), but only in a general, metaphorical sense,
for the special priesthood serving the temple in Jerusalem was given by God not
to the whole people, but to one of the twelve tribes of Israel - the tribe of
Levi (Numbers 3.6-12; cf. Hebrews 7.11). Consequently, the universal priesthood of the Israelite
people did not at all exclude the necessity of a special priesthood, whose ministry was inaccessible even to royal
personages, as appears from the incident with King Uzziah, who was punished by
God with leprosy for having dared to cense in the temple of the Lord (II
Chronicles 26.19).
"In conformity with this, there
exists also in the New Testament, besides the universal royal priesthood (I Peter 2.9), which consists of the
Orthodox Christians as being the holy
people (in the sense of dedicated to God), a grace-filled, ministerial
priesthood selected from its midst, which does not extend to laymen, who have
not received the special consecration in accordance with the line of apostolic
succession."[44]
Unto the
ages of ages. St. John of Damascus writes: "He
created the ages Who Himself was before the ages, Whom the divine David thus
addresses, From age to age Thou art
(Psalm 89.2). The divine apostles also says, Through Whom He created the ages (Hebrews 1.2).
"It must then be understood that the
word 'age' has various meanings, for it denotes many things. The life of each
man is called an age. Again, a period of a thousand years is called an age.
Again, the whole course of the present life is called an age. Also, the future
life, the immortal life after the resurrection, is spoken of as an age. Again,
the word 'age' is used to denote, not time nor yet a part of time as measured
by the movement and course of the sun, that is to say, composed of days and
nights, but the sort of temporal motion and interval that is co-extensive with
eternity. For age is to things eternal what time is to things temporal.
"Seven ages of this world are spoken
of, from the creation of the heaven and earth till the general consummation and
resurrection of men. For there is a partial consummation, viz., the death of
each man; but there is also a general and complete consummation, when the
general resurrection of men will come to pass. And the eighth age is the age to
come.
"Before the world was formed, when
there was as yet no sun dividing day from night, there was not an age such as
could be measured, but there was the sort of temporal motion and interval that
is co-extensive with eternity. And in this sense there is but one age, and God
is spoken of as aiwnioV
and proaiwnioV,
for the age or aeon itself is His creation. For God, Who alone is without
beginning is Himself the Creator of all things, whether age or any other
existing thing. And when I say God, it is evident that I mean the Father and
His Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and His all-holy Spirit, our one
God.
"But we speak also of ages of ages, inasmuch as the seven
ages of the present world include many ages in the sense of lives of men, and the
one age embraces all ages, and the present and the future are spoken of as ages
of ages. Further, everlasting life and everlasting punishment prove that the
age or aeon to come is unending. For time will not be counted by days and
nights even after the resurrection, but there will rather be one day with no
evening, wherein the Sun of Righteousness will shine brightly on the righteous,
but for the sinful there will be night profound and limitless... Of all the
ages, therefore, the sole creator is God, Who hath also created the universe
and Who was before the ages."[45]
1.7. Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye
shall see Him, and they also who pierced Him; and all kindreds of the earth
shall wail because of Him.
He
Who was concealed when at first He came to be judged, will be manifested when
He shall come to judge (The Venerable Bede).
Patriarch Anthimus of Jerusalem writes:
"The clouds signify the heavenly powers of angels and saints."[46]
"Here is depicted the second glorious
Coming of Christ, in complete agreement with the depiction of this Coming in
the Gospels (Matthew 24.30, 25.31; Mark 13.26; Luke 21.27;
John 19.37). After the greeting (in the first verses of the book), in
this verse the holy apostle immediately speaks of the Second Coming of Christ
and of the Last Judgement in order to signify the chief theme of this book. This is done in order to prepare readers
to accept the great and fearful revelations which he has received about
this." (Archbishop Averky)
1.7-8. Even so, Amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end, saith the Lord, Who is, and Who was, and Who is to
come, the Almighty.
St.
Gregory the Theologian writes: This is clearly spoken of the Son.[47]
By
interposing an Amen, He confirms that that which, by the revelation of God, he
knows will most certainly to come to pass, will undoubtedly take place (The
Venerable Bede).
I am the
First and the Last; besides Me there is no God (Isaiah
44.6; cf. 48.12).
Thou
rulest over all things, O Lord, Thou art the Beginning of every beginning (I
Chronicles 29.12).
Blessed Jerome writes: The apostle
writing to the Ephesians [1.10] teaches that God has purposed in the fullness
of time to sum up and renew in Christ Jesus all things which are in heaven and
in earth. Whence also the Saviour Himself in the Revelation of John says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning
and the End.[48]
He is the beginning Whom no one precedes,
the end Whom no one succeeds in His Kingdom (The Venerable Bede).
"The
Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the Almighty signifies that
in Jesus Christ is the beginning, the middle and the end of everything that
exists." (St. John of Kronstadt)
"To confirm the unchangeableness and
inevitability of the Second Coming and the Last Judgement of God, the holy
apostle adds, on his own part: Even so,
Amen, and then testifies to the truth of this by indicating Him Who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and
the end of everything that exists: the Lord Jesus Christ is the One Who
alone is without beginning and without end, the cause of everything that
exists; He is eternal; He is the end and the aim towards which everything
strives." (Archbishop Averky)
"The Greeks have twenty-four letters,
of which the first is 'alpha' and the last is 'omega', signifying that even
before the creation of the world and after its end God is without beginning and
infinite." (Patriarch Anthimus)
"In verse 4 above the words Which is, and which was, and which is to
come refer to the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity, as explained by St.
Andrew; this is clear because the same sentence continues (in verse 5), and from Jesus Christ. Here, however,
with the addition of the words the
Almighty, the same words refer to One Person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus
Christ, and are used by St. Gregory the Theologian in his treatise 'On the Son'
as a proof that Jesus Christ is truly God (Third Theological Oration,
ch. 17; Eerdmans tr., p. 307). St. Athanasius the Great, in his First
Discourse against the Arians, uses the same quote from the Apocalypse to
prove the same thing (ch. 4, Eerdmans translation, p. 312). Concerning this St.
Andrew says in his commentary (ch. 1), 'The divinely splendid words are fitting
equally for each of the Persons separately and for All together.'"[49]
In these two verses the vast scope and
supreme authority of the Apocalypse is indicated. As in the beginning of St.
John's Gospel, Jesus Christ is unambiguously proclaimed to be no one less than
the Pre-eternal God. So His Revelation is no merely human speculation about the
future, but the product of the Divine omniscience which surveys the whole of
human history from the viewpoint of eternity.
1.9. I John, who also am your brother, and companion
in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the
isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus
Christ.
"As for the means by which he was
given revelations, St. John indicates first of all the place where he was
vouchsafed to receive them. This is the island of Patmos, one of the Sporades
islands in the Aegean Sea, a desert and precipitous place 40 miles in
circumference, located between the island of Icaria and the Cape of Miletus,
little inhabited because of the lack of water, the unhealthy climate and the
barrenness of the earth. In a cave in a certain mountain, even there is
indicated the place where St. John received the revelations. Here there is a
small Greek monastery, called 'the Monastery of the Apocalypse'.
"In the same verse mention is also
made of the time when St. John received
the Apocalypse. This was when St. John was in exile on the island of Patmos, in
his own expression, for the word of God
and for the testimony of Jesus Christ, that is, for his fervent apostolic
preaching of Jesus Christ. The fiercest persecution against Christians in the
first century was under the Emperor Nero. Tradition says that St. John first of
all was thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil, out of which he emerged unharmed
and with renewed strength. The expression in
tribulation, according to the meaning of the original Greek expression,
signifies here the 'suffering' which occurred as a result of persecution and
torment - the same thing as 'martyrdom'.
"However, ancient tradition indicates
for this [the time of writing of the Apocalypse] the end of the first century.
Thus St. Irenaeus writes, 'The Apocalypse appeared not long before this and
almost in our time, at the end of the reign of Domitian' (Against Heresies
5.30). The church historian Eusebius states that the pagan writers contemporary
to him also mention the exile of the holy Apostle John on the island of Patmos
for his testimony of the Divine Word, and they refer this event to the 15th
year of the reign of Domitian, 95 or 96 A.D. Clement of Alexandria, Origen and
Blessed Jerome affirm the same thing...
"Each of the seven Asia Minor
churches which St. John addresses already has its own history and a direction
of religious life which in one way or another has already been defined.
Christianity in them is already not in its first stage of purity and truth;
false Christianity strives to occupy a place in them side by side with true
Christianity. All this presupposes that the activity of the holy Apostle Paul,
who preached for a long time in Ephesus, was something that had occurred in the
distant past. This point of view, founded upon the testimony of St. Irenaeus
and Eusebius, refers the time of writing of the Apocalypse to the years 95-96
A.D." (Archbishop Averky)
Another fact in favour of this date is the
reference, in chapter 2 verse 13, to the Martyr Antipas, Bishop of Pergamum,
who is known to have died in 92 A.D.
1.10. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and
heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet.
"This condition of seeing with
incorporeal eyes and hearing without bodily ears but with one's spiritual
nature, is different from dreaming, for it takes place also when one is awake,
in the struggle of prayer. This is a condition of spiritual contemplation in
which the visible and the invisible supplement each other in one and the same
place, at one and the same time." (St. John of Kronstadt)
"In this verse St. John gives the
very day on which he was vouchsafed the revelations. This was the Lord's day (in Greek, Kuriakh hmera),
which is Sunday. This was the first day of the week, which the Jews called mia Sabbatwn,
that is, the first day after the Sabbath;
but the Christians called it 'the Lord's day' in honour of the Resurrected
Lord. The very existence of such a name already indicates that the Christians
celebrated this day in place of the Old Testament Sabbath." (Archbishop
Averky)[50]
St. Jerome writes: "The Lord's day,
the day of the Resurrection, the day of Christians, is our day. It is called
the Lord's day because on this day the Lord ascended to the Father as Victor;
but when the heathens call it the day of the sun, we are most happy to
acknowledge their title, for today has risen the Sun of righteousness with healing in His wings (Malachi
4.2)."[51]
The Lord's day is also known in Church
Tradition as the eighth day. It signifies the beginning of eternity, as opposed
to the seventh day, which signifies the fullness of time. "The sixth psalm
has the superscription: A Psalm of David
at the end of the hymns, concerning the eighth, which by interpretation
means concerning the eighth day, that is, the general day of the resurrection
and of the coming terrible judgement of God..." (St. Ambrose)
"Having
mentioned the place and time, St. John indicates likewise his own condition, in
which he was vouchsafed the apocalyptic visions. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, he says. In the language of
the Prophets, to be in the Spirit is
to be in the spiritual condition of a man who sees, hears and feels not only
with his bodily organs, but with all his inward being. This is not a dream, for
such a condition occurs also when one is awake.
"In such an extraordinary condition
of his spirit," continues Archbishop Averky, "St. John heard a loud
voice as of a trumpet:
He is first admonished by a voice, that
he may direct his attention to the vision (The Venerable Bede).
1.11. Saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the
First and the Last; and what thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the
seven churches which are in Asia: unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto
Pergamum, and unto Thyateira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto
Laodicea.
"He called Himself, not in Hebrew, but
in Greek: the Alpha and the Omega, the
First and the Last. To the Jews in the Old Testament He revealed Himself
under the name 'Jehovah', which signifies 'He that exists from the beginning'
or 'He Who Is'; but here He calls Himself by the first and last letters of the
Greek alphabet, indicating by this that He contains within Himself, like the
Father, everything that exists in all the manifestations of being from the
beginning to the end. It is characteristic that He declares Himself here as it
were under a new name, and it is a Greek name, the Alpha and the Omega, as if desiring to show that He is the
Messiah for all peoples, who at that time everywhere spoke the Greek language
and used the Greek written language.
"The revelation is given to the seven
churches comprising the metropolia of Ephesus, which St. John the Theologian
then governed, having his permanent dwelling in Ephesus. But of course, in the
person of these seven churches the revelation is also given to the whole
Church. The number seven, moreover, has a mystical meaning, signifying
completeness. Therefore it may be placed here as a symbol of the Ecumenical
Church, to which as a whole the Apocalypse is addressed." (Archbishop
Averky)
The Church of Christ was not at that time
only in these places, but all fulness is comprised in the number seven. Asia,
which is interpreted to mena elevation, denotes the proud exaltation of the
world in which the Church is sojourning, and, as is the method of the divine
mystery, the genus is contained in the species. For the Apostle Paul also
writes to seven churches, but not to the same as St. John. And although these
seven churches are a sevenfold figure of the whole Church, still the things
which he blames, or praises, came to pass in them one by one (The Venerable
Bede).
Pilgrims to the Cave of the Apocalypse on
Patmos are shown a three-pronged crevice in the ceiling of the cave which is
said to have been created when the Lord spoke to St. John.
1.12-16. And I turned to see the voice that spake
with me. And, being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst
of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment
down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and
His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame
of fire. And His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace. And
His voice as the sound of many waters. And He had in His right hand seven
stars. And out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword. And His countenance
was as the sun shining in his strength.
The seven
candlesticks here, which represent the grace-bearing capacity of the New
Testament Church, should be compared with the single candlestick in Zechariah 4, which refers to that of
the Old Testament Church. As David Baron explains: "Often did God in
effect threaten Israel through the prophets to remove His candlestick; but in
His long-suffering for a long time, even after the sceptre, the emblem of governmental power, had
been removed, the candlestick - which is
the emblem of Israel's religious or ecclesiastical position as witness for God
- was not taken away till the cup of his national iniquity was filled up in the
rejection of Him Who is the Light of
light, for the diffusion of which this very candlestick was formed, and in
their final resistance of the Holy Spirit. Then the Kingdom of God was taken
away from them and given to a nation
bringing forth the fruit thereof.
"On the disappearance of the candlestick
from Israel, the seven golden
candlesticks come into view as representing the new people of God, the Church
of this dispensation planted on the earth, that during the period of Israel's
blindness and darkness it might fulfil Israel's mission of shining before the
Lord in His sanctuary, and letting its light stream out into the night of the
world's darkness: the seven as representing the Church, instead of the one as
representing Israel is not without significance.
"The seven Christian ekklhsiai
selected by the Lord out of the many Christian assemblies which already then
existed even in that one pro-consular province of Asia, to be symbolised by the
seven golden lucniai
(lampstands), are meant to represent the
one Church of Christ through all time, and in all places, during the present
dispensation."[52]
This description of Christ is closely
reminiscent of the Ancient of Days (Daniel
7.9-10, 13-14; cf. 10.5-6). The
following elements may be discerned in it according to Archbishop Averky's
interpretation: (i) the Great High Priest clothed in the ephod, a garment of
the Jewish chief priests (Exodus 28.31); (ii) the King girded about the
breast with a golden belt; (iii) the Pre-eternal God of one essence with the
Father, Whose white hair signifies His eternity (Daniel 7.13; cf. Matthew
17.2); (iv) the fearful Judge of the living and the dead, Whose eyes see all
and Whose word is all-penetrating (cf. Hebrews 4.12); (v) the Lord of
the Church, in Whose hand are all Her shepherds ("these seven stars signify
the seven representatives of the churches, or bishops, called here the angels of the churches"). Once
again, the emphasis is on the Divine nature of Christ, which is characteristic
of all of St. John's writings.
"That which was a foreshadowing in
the vision of the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah ch. 6) was contemplated by John
in its fullness, for instead of the Seraphim the Son of Man was surrounded by
seven candlesticks, that is, by the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and in
His right hand were seven stars, that is, the leaders of the Universal Church,
through whom He steered the helm of the great church ark. His being clothed in
a podir has the same significance as the long garment filling the temple
to the edges in the vision of the holy Prophet Isaiah, that is, the fullness of
grace given by the Church. His being girded round the breast with a golden belt
signifies the grace of the two Testaments: the Old and the New, by which the
righteous wrath of God is as it were bound by the promises of clemency for
sinners." (St. John of Kronstadt)
"The Orthodox Church service for the
Meeting of the Lord (Feb. 2) identifies the Ancient of Days with God the Son ('The Ancient of Days appears this
day as a babe'). Thus, in this interpretation, when Daniel beheld the Ancient
of Days and the Son of Man together, it was a vision of the Divine and human
natures of Christ. Some Fathers, however, understand the Ancient of Days to be
God the Father; in this case, the vision if of Two Persons of the Holy Trinity,
and as St. John Chrysostom says in his commentary on Daniel, this prophet 'was
the first and only one (in the Old Testament) to see the Father and the Son, as
if in a vision.' For the devout student of Scripture, of course, there is no
'contradiction' between these two interpretations; in such mystical visions we
do not see a 'literal picture' of the Godhead (such as to believe that God
really is an 'old man', but only a hint of Divine mysteries.) Thus, in his
commentary on the same passage of Daniel, St. John Chrysostom adds: 'Do not
seek clarity in prophecies, where there are shadows and riddles, just as in
lightning you do not seek a constant light, but are satisfied that it only
flashes momentarily.'"[53]
By paps
he here means the two Testaments, with which He feeds the body of the saints in
communion with Himself. For the golden girdle is the choir of the saints, which
cleaves to the Lord in harmonious love, and embraces the Testaments, keeping, as the Apostle says, the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace (Ephesians 4.3). The antiquity and eternity of majesty are
represented by whiteness on the head
The eyes of the Lord are the preachers,
who, with spiritual fire, bring light to the faithful and to the unbelieving a
consuming flame. By the fiery feet
he means the Church of the last times, which is to be searched and proved by
severe afflictions. In the right hand
of Christ is the spiritual Church. On
Thy right hand, he says, stood the
queen in a vesture of gold (Psalm 44.10). And as it stands on His
right hand, He saith, Come, ye blessed
of My Father, receive the Kingdom (Matthew 25.34). (The Venerable
Bede)
1.17. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as
dead.
"The
spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26.41). It is
dust, and for that reason strong tension of the spirit weakens the links of the
flesh which are called nerves, and loss of consciousness may result, as in a
faint or when one is dying. The Prophet Daniel mentions this exhaustion when he
was counted worthy of may mystic visions about the coming events of world
history which had to do with the God's kingdom of glory on earth." (St.
John of Kronstadt)
"From this one may conclude that the
beloved disciple, who had once lain on the breast of Jesus, did not recognize in
the One Who had appeared a single familiar feature. And this is not surprising;
for if the disciples did not easily recognize their Lord after His Resurrection
in His glorified body on earth, all the more difficult would it be to recognize
Him in this resplendent heavenly glory." (Archbishop Averky)
Yea,
though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no
more (II Corinthians 5.16).
1.17-18. And He laid His right and upon Me, saying
unto me, Fear not; I am the First and the Last: I am He that liveth, and was
dead; and behold, I am alive unto the ages of ages, Amen; and I have the keys
of hades and death.
"It
is as if He said: Fear not, John, for I am Life and the source of Life
according to My Divinity, but I have taken on death according to My Humanity,
so as to give eternal life to those who believe in Me, but I have risen by My
Divine power, and I am alive, as you see, and My Life will not be cut off by
death, like those who were resurrected from the dead and again died, but I am
alive to the ages of ages. And I have the power to take out of hell and deliver from death, in accordance
with the prophet: The Lord killeth and
giveth life, He bringeth down into hades and raiseth up again (I Kings
2.6)." (Patriarch Anthimus)
"By this word and touch Christ
strengthened John and made him capable, in spite of his carnal weakness, of
entering the spiritual world and receiving the Revelations, of which the first
was that Christ gives nobody the power to distribute death, but retains the
keys of death and hell for Himself. In this is revealed His special love for
man, for the Judge of the earth gives the right of granting clemency (i.e. the
keys of the Heavenly Kingdom) to His servants, the Apostles, but prudently
retains the keys to the eternal torments for Himself. He, as the uniquely kind
and perfectly merciful Lord and Lover of mankind, is ready to spare those who
turn to Him at the very last moment, when none of His authorised servants is
there to provide clemency." (St. John of Kronstadt)
"From
these words St. John was to understand that the One Who appeared was none other
than the Lord Jesus Christ, and that His appearance could not be fatal for the
apostle, but on the contrary would be lifegiving. To have the keys to something
signified among the Jews to receive authority over something. Thus the keys of hades and death signify
authority over the death of the body and the soul." (Archbishop Averky)
He is the first, because by Him
were all things made (Colossians 1.16; the last, because in Him are all things restored (Ephesians
1.10). Not only, He says, have I conquered death by resurrection, but I have
dominion also over death itself. And this He also bestowed upon the Church by
breathing upon it the Holy Spirit, saying, Whose
sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and the rest (John
20.23). (The Venerable Bede).
1.19. Write the things which thou hast seen, and
the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.
Thus, like all true prophecy, the
Apocalypse is a revelation of the true meaning of events, both present and
future.
1.20. The mystery of the seven stars which thou
sawest in My right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are
the angels of the seven churches; and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest
are the seven churches.
Stars. That is, the rulers of the
Church. For the priest, as Malachi says, is
the angel of the Lord of hosts (Malachi 2.7). (Venerable Bede)
"The seven stars are the Angels, the
guards and defenders of the churches." (Patriarch Anthimus)
Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava writes:
"With regard to ecclesiastical life, in the speeches of the Saviour we are
directed to the fact, as to one of the most striking phenomena of the last
times, that at that time stars will fall from heaven (Matthew
24.29). According to the explanation of the Saviour Himself, the stars are the Angels of the Churches,
that is, bishops."[54]
"Remember the star which led the wise
men to worship the Sun of Righteousness, and the Angel which showed the
shepherds not only the way to Him, but also the signs by which they would
easily find the truth amidst the darkness of the cave (which signifies the
darkness of this world).
"And so the seven stars can be accepted as the sum-total of the highest leaders
of the Church, who are led to the knowledge of the truth directly by the Holy
Spirit or through the mediation of Angel Guardians who are entrusted with care
for the good of the churches. Similarly, earthly kingdoms have their invisible
leaders before the throne of God, who is providentially concerned for the good
of kingdoms and peoples. They petition God for the spiritual enlightenment
especially of those in whom receptivity for the understanding concerning God
and eternal salvation has not yet been erased. We see an example of such cares
of the Angels to whom God has entrusted even whole kingdoms as it were in
guardianship, in the holy Prophet Daniel. He was counted worthy of a revelation
that the Guardian Angel of the Hebrew people was the holy Archangel Michael,
who together with the Archangel Gabriel petitioned at the throne of God for the
return of the Jews from their Persian captivity. But the Angel Guardian of the
Persian kingdom petitioned that the Jews should be left for longer in
captivity, considering, of course, that the stay of believers in the true God
in the midst of the fire-worshippers was useful for the peoples of this vast,
almost universal kingdom, which consisted of 127 regions according to the
number of distinct peoples.
"Also worthy of note is the fact that
the petitioner for the return from captivity of the Jewish people was also the
very ruler of the Persian kingdom, who had ruled the country under Darius and
Cyrus. This ruler was the holy Prophet Daniel, for his superior wisdom had won
for him a place at the very throne of the Persian kings. However, earthly glory
did not dim in Daniel his love for the glory of God, which is why it is just to
call him the Angel of his people, or, better, the Angel of the Old Testament
Church that was contemporary with him, being scattered across the whole of the
world at that time." (St. John of Kronstadt)
"The seven churches are named instead
of the One Universal Church and instead of all Christians, for the revelation
of God is meant for all of them (1.1). The bishops of each church are something
more than simple lampstands, being her representatives and the bearers of her ideals. It is precisely of them that it is
said that the stars are the angels of
the churches. The ancient interpreters (Andrew of Caesarea, Arethas,
Oecumenius) understood by these angels the bodiless spirits - the angel
guardians; the more recent interpreters want to see in them symbolic angels.
But it is best to remain with the present interpretation, according to which by
the angels are understood the bishops, as leaders of the churches (Justin the
Philosopher, Blessed Augustine). Thus, according to the image of the
Apocalypse, the Christian archpastors are always in the hand of God, and God is
for them a constant protector, guide and judge."[55]
Nevertheless, writes A. Zhdanov, it is
possible and necessary to see here at the same time a reference to the
invisible protectors of the churches who were originally, and in the strict
sense, called the angels of the seven churches by the Lord, and who are types
of the bishops. This is how this passage was understood by the great teachers
of the Church Gregory the Theologian and St. Epiphanius. The first says: I believe
that a special angel protects each church: for this is what John teaches me in
the Revelation. Why, in parting from the Constantinopolitan Church, did he
cry: Forgive, On angels, the overseer of this church and also my period her
and departure from here. The latter, basing himself on the same words of the
Apocalypse, calls the angels the guardians of the churches and the guardians of
the altars. No less clear and definite are the words of St. Ambrose, who says
that for the defence of every flock of God the Lord places not only bishop, but
also angels. St. Basil the Great, in consoling the presbyters of Nicopolis, who
were being cast by the Arians out of the church, writes to them: You are
saddened by the fact that you have been expelled from the defence of the walls,
but you dwell under the defence of the God of heaven, and with you remains the
angel that is the guardian of the church (of Nicopolis).[56]
The bishops are held in the hand of
Christ, for He is the Bishop of bishops, the
Shepherd and Bishop of your souls, in St. Peter's words (I Peter
2.25). Thus on his way to martyrdom in Rome, St. Ignatius the Godbearer, Bishop
of Antioch and disciple of St. John, wrote: "Remember in your prayers the
church in Syria, which now, instead of me, has God as her Pastor. Jesus Christ,
with your love, will be her only Bishop."[57]
1. The Church of Ephesus
2.1-7. Unto the angel of the Church of Ephesus
write: These things saith He that holdeth the seven stars in His right hand,
Who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. I know thy works,
and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear those who are
evil; and thou hast tried those who say they are apostles, and are not, and
hast found them liars; and hast borne, and hast patience, and for My name's
sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against
thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence
thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee
quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of its place, unless thou repent.
But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also
hate. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches:
To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the
midst of the paradise of God.
St. Gregory the Theologian writes: Every Church has
its guardian.[58] The
guardian, or angel of the Church of Ephesus addressed here is probably the
Apostle Timothy, who died in the year 93 A.D.
"In the second, as in the third
chapter, are set forth the revelations received by St. John concerning each of
the Seven Churches of Asia Minor, as well as corresponding instructions to
them. These revelations contain praises of their Christian life and faith, a
reproof of their insufficiencies, exhortations and consolations, threats and
promises. The content of these revelations and instructions has the closest
relationship to the condition of church life in the churches of Asia Minor at
the end of the first century. But at the same time it also refers to the whole
Church in general for the whole course of Her existence on earth. Some even see
here an indication of seven periods in the life of the whole Christian Church
from the time of the apostles to the end of the world and the Second Coming of
Christ.
"Thus there exists the opinion that
the seven Churches represent seven periods in the life of the whole Christian
Church from her foundations to the end of the world: 1) the Church of Ephesus
represents the first period in the history of the Ecumenical Church - the
Apostolic Church, which laboured and did not faint while fighting against the
first heretics, the Nicolaitans, but soon abandoned the good custom of doing
good to others - the 'communion of goods' (thy
first love); 2) the Church of Smyrna represents the second period - the
period of persecutions against the Church, of which there were ten; 3) the
Church of Pergamos represents the third period - the epoch of the Ecumenical
Councils and the struggle with the heresies with the sword of the word of God;
4) the Church of Thyateira - the fourth period, or the period of the
flourishing of Christianity amidst the new peoples of Europe; 5) the Church of
Sardis - the epoch of humanism and materialism of the 16th to 18th centuries;
6) the Church of Philadelphia - the last but one period of the life of the
Church of Christ - the epoch contemporary to our own, when the Church truly has little strength in contemporary
humanity and persecutions begin again, when patience is necessary; 7) the
Church of Laodicea - the last, most terrible epoch before the end of the world,
characterized by indifference to the faith and external prosperity."
(Archbishop Averky).
However, writes Lev Tikhomirov, if we can
consider Christian history as divided into seven epochs, not for any of these
parts can we establish precise boundaries which would separate it from the
preceding or succeeding epoch. It could not be otherwise. Each epoch expresses
a certain spirit or type that is predominant at the given time. It does not
arise immediately, does not change immediately and is not in all places at the
same time. While the spirit of an earlier epoch may continue in one country, in
others the beginnings of something else are already appearing.[59]
It follows that the prophecy concerning
the Ephesian Church may be interpreted to refer both to church life at
the end of the first century and to the first epoch in the history of
the whole Church throughout history until the Second Coming of
Christ. The one interpretation is not incompatible with the other; for Holy
Scripture often has more than one correct interpretation or aspect of its
meaning. For, as Archbishop Averky writes, "in the prophetic vision of
events, near and far are sometimes represented as if in one perspective, merged
together, especially if the one, nearer event serves as a figure of the other,
further one."[60]
One cannot help presupposing that the
named Asiatic churches had the typical particularities of those ecclesiastical
conditions which the Church would experience while the Saviour would be walking
in the midst of her manifestations, that is, until the end of the ages.
Therefore the instructions and descriptions given by Him on the one hand
corresponded to what had to be said to them, and on the other hand correspond
to what must be revealed and said to the Universal Church in the future, in her
various manifestations and conditions. But if it is so, then there were
precisely seven future manifestations that the Church was destined to
experience, in seven ages. (Tikhomirov).
And so, according to this interpretation,
"the Church of Ephesus represents the first period in the history of the
Ecumenical Church: the Apostolic Church which laboured and did not faint while
fighting against the first heretics, the Nicolaitans, but soon abandoned the
good custom of doing good to others - the 'communion of goods' (thy first love)...
"The Church of Ephesus is praised for
her first works - her labours, patience and resistance to false teachers. But
at the same time she is condemned for abandoning her first love and hears the
terrible threat that her lampstand will be removed from its place if she does
not repent. However, what is good about the Ephesians is their hatred of the works of the Nicolaitans. The Lord
promises to count the victors over temptations and passions worthy of tasting
of the fruits of the tree of life. Ephesus was a very ancient trading city on
the shore of the Aegean sea which was famed for its wealth and huge population.
The holy Apostle Paul preached there for more than two years, and finally
consecrated his beloved disciple Timothy as Bishop of Ephesus. The holy Apostle
John lived a long time there and died there. Later the Third Ecumenical Council
took place in Ephesus; it confessed that the Most Holy Virgin Mary is the
Birth-Giver of God [Theotokos]. The threat of the removal of her
lampstand from the Ephesian Church was realised. From being a great world
centre Ephesus was soon turned into nothing; from the previous majestic city
there remained only a pile of ruins and a small Muslim village. The great
lampstand of primitive Christianity went out completely. The Nicolaitans who
are mentioned here were heretics who represented a branch of the Gnostics and
were distinguished by their debauchery. They were reproached also by the holy
Apostles Peter and Jude in their epistles (II Peter 2.1 and Jude
4). The beginning of this heresy was laid by the Antiochian proselyte Nicholas,
one of the seven first deacons of Jerusalem (Acts 6.5), who fell away
from the faith. The reward of the victors from amongst the Ephesian Christians
was the partaking of the paradisal tree of life. By this we are to understand
the good things of the future blessed life of the righteous in general, whose
foreshadowing was the tree of life in the original paradise, where our
forefathers lived." (Archbishop Averky)
St. Hippolytus writes: He, as one of the
seven (that were chosen) for the diaconate, was appointed by the apostles. But
Nicholas departed from correct doctrine, and was in the habit of inculcating
indifferency of both life and food. And when the disciples (of Nicholas)
continued to offer insult to the Holy Spirit, John reproved them in the
Apocalypse as fornicators and eaters of things offered unto idols.[61]
The Venerable Bede writes: The
Nicolaitans are named from Nicolas the deacon, of whom Clement writes that,
when he was reproved for his jealousy of a most beautiful wife, he answered
that whoever wanted might take her to wife, and says that, on account of this,
unbelievers taught that the Apostles allowed to all a promiscuous and common
intercourse with women. And the Nicolaitans are reported to have put forth some
fabulous and almost heathen statements concerning the beginning of the world,
and not to have kept their food separate from things offered to idols.
The intolerance of evil which
characterises True Christianity, and which was displayed above all by the holy
apostles (Acts 5.1-11; I Corinthians 5.1-5; Galatians
1.6-9; II John 10; Jude 3-21), helped preserve the red-hot ardour
of the Christians through most of the first century. However, towards the end
of the early apostolic period a cooling of ardour was discernible, allowing the
infiltration of false teachings and heresies. Thus St. Paul said to the
Ephesian presbyters: Take heed therefore
unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Spirit hath made you
overseers, to feed the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own
blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in
among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise,
speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them (Acts
20.28-30).
In general, the Ephesian Church overcame
this temptation, and not long after St. John's repose, the bishop of Antioch,
St. Ignatius, commended the Ephesians for their refusal to allow false teachers
to sow evil doctrine among them.[62]
However, that most characteristic sign of the early Church, the having all
things in common, did not survive the apostolic period. It was not until the
appearance of coenobitic monasticism in the fourth century that this form of
Christian love again received an institutional expression.
"The removal of the candlestick of
the Church is the deprivation of Divine Grace, to which she will be subjected
in agitation and shaking from the spirits of malice and the evil men who help
them. (St. Andrew of Caesarea)
Tikhomirov writes: This threat was
realised in the next, Smyrnaean period, when the believers had to disperse from
the persecutions... All in all, the Ephesian age, the time of the apostolic
preaching, was the age when the forces of both warring sides, that of the
Kingdom of God and that which was against it, were organised. The Church
appeared and began to give birth to children that were courageous in spirit
(that is the explanation of the expression a
man child [in 12.5]), who was to
shepherd all nations with a rod of iron [12.5]. To the help of the
preachers of the truth there appeared the power of Christ Himself. But the
devil, having suffered a defeat, does not humble himself, but enters into the
battle with the Church, stirring up persecutions and thinking up the mystery of iniquity [II
Thessalonians 2.7], which in the end had to raise against God the idea of
the man-god and transfer the worship of people to the devil himself.[63]
He
that hath an ear, let him hear: Every man has a physical ear, but only the
spiritual man acquires a spiritual ear
To such a man, who has overcome the
temptations of the demons, He promises to give to taste of the tree of life,
that is, to make him a participant in the good things of the future age."
(St. Andrew of Caesarea)
St. John of Damascus writes: God planted
the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. The tree of knowledge was for
trial, and proof, and exercise of mans obedience and disobedience. It was
named thus or else it was because to those who partook of it was given power to
know their own nature. Now this is a good thing for those who are mature, but
an evil thing for the immature and those whose appetites are too strong
The
tree of life, on the other hand, was a tree having the energy that is the cause
of life, or to be eaten only by those who deserve to live and are not subject
to death
The tree of life may be understood as that more divine thought that
has its origin in the world of sense, and the ascent through that to the
originating and constructive cause of all. And this was the name He gave to
every tree, implying fullness and indivisibility, and conveying only
participation in what is good. But by the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, we are to understand that sensible and pleasurable food which, sweet
though it seems, in reality brings him who partakes of it into communion with
evil.[64]
2. The Church of Smyrna
2.8-11. And unto the angel of the Church in Smyrna
write: These things saith the First and the Last, Who was dead and is alive: I
know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know
the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews, and are not, but are the
synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold,
the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye
shall have tribulation for ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will
give thee a crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit
saith unto the churches; he that overcometh shall not be hurt by the second
death.
The
angel of the Church of Smyrna addressed here may be St. Bucolus or, less
likely, his successor, St. Polycarp, who was martyred in 155. "The Church
of Smyrna, according to Archbishop Averky, signifies the second period, the
period of persecutions against the Church. And the tribulation for ten days refers,
according to Tikhomirov, the persecutions of: 1) Nero (in 64), 2)
Domitian (91), 3) Trajan (98), 4) Marcus Aurelius (177), 5) Septimius Severus
(202), 6) Decius (250) and Gallus (252), 7) Valerian (257), 8) Aurelianus
(275), 9) Diocletian (303) and 10) Maximian (311). [65]
"Smyrna was also one of the oldest
cities of Asia Minor, being considered enlightened and glorious in pagan antiquity.
Smyrna was no less remarkable in the history of the first age of Christianity,
as being a city that was enlightened very early by the light of Christianity
and as having preserved the deposit of
the faith amidst persecutions. The Church of Smyrna, according to
tradition, was founded by the holy Apostle John the Theologian, and the
latter's disciple, St. Polycarp, who was bishop in the city, glorified it by
his martyric exploit. According to information provided by the ecclesiastical
historian Eusebius, almost immediately after the apocalyptic prediction, there
arose a fierce persecution against the Christians in Asia Minor, during which
St. Polycarp of Smyrna suffered. According to some interpreters, ten days signifies the shortness of the
period of persecutions; according to others, it is the reverse - a certain
considerable period, for the Lord commands the Smyrnaeans to lay up faithfulness unto death, i.e. for some
considerable period. Some understand by this the persecution that took place
under Domitian and lasted for ten years. Others see in it a forecast of all ten
of the persecutions which the Christians suffered from the pagan emperors
during the course of the first three centuries." (Archbishop Averky)
"Christ is the First as God, and the Last
as having become man in the latter times and opened to us eternal life by His
death of three days." (St. Andrew of Caesarea)
The
blasphemy of those who say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of
Satan signifies Talmudic Judaism. For by contrast with the Church of
Christ, the Israel of God, the
apostate Jews constitute the synagogue
of Satan. For he is not a Jew, who
is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh.
But he is a Jew, who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in
the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God (Romans
2.28-29).
The
synagogue of Satan denotes the Jews, whose slanders against the Christians
were the first cause of the persecutions against them, as we read in The
Acts of the Apostles. Moreover, these slanders continued in succeeding
generations until the present day. St. Justin the Martyr refuted these slanders
in his Dialogue with the Jewish Rabbi Tryphon; but they are repeated to
this day in the Babylonian Talmud.
The Jewish persecutions of the Church were
hardly less fierce than the pagan persecutions which they incited. Thus when
the Jews in Palestine rose in revolt against the Roman authorities under Bar
Kochba (died 135), they also attacked the Christians who refused to join them.
Again, in 150, the secret Jewish government-in-exile in Babylon stirred up a
major revolt in Libya, Egypt and Cyprus, in which they killed 350,000 Greeks.[66]
Jewish hatred of Christians and the Roman
empire was expressed in their daily prayer life. Thus Sergius and Tamara Fomin
write: To the prayer birkam za-minim which was read everyday against
heretics and apostates there was added the curse against the proud state
(of Rome) and against all the enemies of Israel, in particular the Christians
[The Christians were also identified with] the scapegoat, on which the sins of
the Jews were laid and which was then driven into the wilderness as a gift to
the devil. According to rabbinic teaching, the goat signified Esau and his
descendants, who at the present time were the Christians.[67]
Another name that the Jews had for the
Christians was Edom, and the Roman Empire was called the kingdom of the
Edomites. Rabbi David Kimchi writes as follows in Obadiam: What the
Prophets foretold about the destruction of Edom in the last days was intended
for Rome, as Isaiah explains (34.1)
For when Rome is destroyed, Israel shall
be redeemed. And Rabbi Abraham in his book Tseror Hammor writes: Immediately
after Rome is destroyed, we shall be redeemed.[68]
The teaching of the Talmud incited the
Jews to terrible crimes against Gentiles, especially Christians. Under
Theodosius II, writes L.A. Tikhomirov, it was discovered that the Jews, on
the day of the feast of the execution of Haman [Purim], had introduced the
practice of burning the Cross. The government had to undertake repressions
against the blasphemy, but the Jews were not pacified. Under the same
Theodosius II, in the city of Imma, the Jews during one of their feasts took
hold of a Christian child, crucified him on a cross and with scourges cut him
into pieces. The disturbed Christians took to arms, and a bloody battle took
place. This incident, as they said, was not unique. The Christian historian
Socrates relates that the Jews more than once crucified Christian children. At
that time it was not a matter of ritual killings, and in such acts only the
hatred of the Jews for Christans and mockery of them was seen. In the given
case Theodosius II executed those guilty of the murder, but at the same time
the government began to take measures to weaken Jewry. Theodosius destroyed the
Jewish patriarchate in Palestine and confiscated the sums collected throughout
Jewry for the patriarchate. But all these repressions did not quickly pacify
the Jews. Under the same Theodosius II there took place in 415 the well-known
brawl in Alexandria elicited by the killing of Christians by the Jews. All this
boldness of the Jews in the face of a power that was evidently incomparably
greater than theirs seems improbable. But we must bear in mind that this was an
age of terrible Messianic fanaticism on the part of the Jews. It often drove
them to acts that were senseless, in which pure psychosis was operating. Here,
for example, is a purely internal incident having no relation to the
Christians. At about the same time, in 432, on the island of Cyprus there took
place an event which shows to what an inflamed condition the Jews of that time
could come. On the island there appeared a man who was evidently mad, called
Moses, the same who had led the people out of Egypt through the Red Sea. He
declared that he now had an order from the Lord to lead the Jews out of Cyprus
into Palestine through the Mediterranean Sea. His preached attracted crowds of
Jews who did not hesitate to follow the prophet. These hordes went to the sea
and, at a sign from Moses, began to hurl themselves from a lofty cliff into the
water. Many crashed against the rocks, others drowned, and only the forcible
intervention of the Christians saved the rest: fishermen dragged them from the
water, while other inhabitants forcibly drove the Jews from the shore. This
mass psychosis shows to what lengths the Jews could go in the name of the idea
of the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel
The [Western] Church had already quite
early, in the sixth century, begun to take measures to protect Christians from
the influence of the Jews. Councils in Orleans in 538 and 545 decreed the
suppression of relations between Christians and Jews and, moreover, forbade the
Jews from publicly showing themselves during the Christian Pascha, doubtless to
cut off the possibility of any blasphemous outrages. But we can understand why
these measures could not be maintained, nor were they systematic, and relations
inevitably continued, having two kinds of consequences: some they spiritually
cut off from Christianity and drew them into heresy, and others they filled
with hatred for the Jews.[69]
In about 520, 4000 Christians were
martyred by the Jewish ruler of the South Arabian land of Omir (or Himyar),
Dϋ-Nuwβs, for their refusal to renounce Christ.[70] Again, in 555, the Jews took part in the Samaritan
rebellion against Byzantium on the Samaritan side in spite of their traditional
disdain for the Samaritans.
During the
Time of Troubles that began for Byzantium with the murder of the Emperor
Maurice in 602, the Jewish anti-Roman consciousness reached a new peak of
frenzy. David Keys writes: The so-called Book
of Zerubabel, written by a rabbi of that name in Persian-ruled Babylon in
the first quarter of the seventh century AD, prophesied the coming of the
Jewish Messiah (and his mother!) and the defeat of the Christian Roman monster
an emperor/pope called Armilus the son of Satan. Furthermore, a Palestinian
Jew called Jacob who had been forcibly baptised by the Romans in Carthage
described the Empire in typically apocalyptic terms as the fourth beast which
was being torn in pieces by the nations, [so] that the ten horns may prevail
and Hermolaus Satan
the Little Horn may come.
The Jews
viewed the apparently imminent collapse of the Roman Empire in the first
quarter of the seventh century as evidence that the beast (the formerly pagan
but now Christian empire) was doomed, that the Devil in the guise of the last
Roman emperor or Christian pope would be killed by the (imminently expected)
Messiah. They saw the Persians (and a few years later, the Arabs) as the agents
who would help destroy the Roman beast. Violent and often Messianic Jewish
revolutionary attitudes had been increasing throughout the second half of the
sixth century and went into overdrive as the Empire began to totter in the
first quarter of the seventh. In Antioch in AD 608, Christian attempts [by the
mad tyrant Phocas] at forced conversion, as the Persians threatened the city,
triggered a major revolt in the Jewish quarter. At first the Jewish rebels were
successful, and their communitys arch-enemy, the citys powerful Christian
patriarch, [St.] Anastasius, was captured, killed and mutilated. But the revolt
was soon put down and the 800-year-old Antiochan Jewish community was almost
totally extinguished.[71]
The
situation was no better in the Holy Land. The Jewish sent an appeal to all the
Jews of Palestine, inviting them to come and join the Persians. Enraged crowds
destroyed the churches of Tiberias, killed the local bishop and 90,000
Christians in one day. When the Persians conquered Jerusalem, most of the
Christians were sent into captivity to Persia. However, the Jews distinguished
themselves at this point with a beastly cruelty unique in the history of the
world. They spared no money to buy many Christians from the Persians with one
purpose only to gain enjoyment in killing them. They say that in this way
they bought and destroyed 80,000 people. The Jewish historian G. Graetz glides
silently over this terrible fact, saying only: Filled with rage, the Jews of
course did not spare the Christians and did not spare the holy things of the
Christians. Graetz reduces the number of Christians killed to 19,000.[72].
The
Persians were defeated by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, who banished the
Jews of Jerusalem to a distance of three miles from the city, and decreed that
all the Jews of the empire should be baptised.
But the
pendulum swung again when the Byzantines were defeated by the new power of the
Arab Muslims. The Jews were delighted. Many of them thought that Muhammed was a
prophet who had come to prepare the way for the Messiah
The
persecution of the Christians by the Jews has continued right up to the present
day, as was most clearly demonstrated in the Russian revolution, when
nine-tenths of the leading commissars at the beginning of the revolution were
Jewish
"From the promises given to the
Churches of Ephesus and Smyrna it is clear that only those who conquer
temptations will inherit the eternal good things. There can be no doubt that
this relates both to external and internal temptations, for both the former and
the latter come, with the permission of God, from the world, the flesh and the
devil, to test faith and hope in God. As a rule, they are permitted for a short
time, as long as one can bear them. For one person is given greater strength to
combat temptation, and another less; but everyone must be a victor. The good
things of the future age are not attained easily, since from everyone is
demanded victory in temptations. But temptations will become stronger at the
end of the world until even the elect will be in great danger of losing the
ability to conquer the subtle craftiness of the evil one. In the last times
Satan skilfully began to cast out of the saving ark of the Church all those who
were not able to resist the false teaching of his hellish servants, the false
prophets of this world." (St. John of Kronstadt)
St. Hippolytus writes: The second death is the lake of fire that
burns.[73]
St. Aphrahat writes: It is right for us
to be afraid of the second death,
that which is full of weeping and gnashing of teeth, and of groanings and
miseries, that which is situated in outer darkness.[74]
"The second death is
the cutting off from God of a sinful soul which
lives in carnal desires, of which the Lord says: Let the dead bury the dead (Matthew 8.22)." (Patriarch
Anthimus)
"By the second death which is to come for unbelievers after the death
of the body is to be understood their condemnation to eternal torments (cf.
21.8; Matthew 10.28). To him that overcomes, that is, to him that
endures all persecutions, is promised a
crown of life, or the inheritance of eternal good things." (Archbishop
Averky)
3. The Church of Pergamum
2.12-16. And to the angel of the Church in Pergamum
write: These things saith He Who hath the sharp sword with two edges: I know
thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is; and thou
holdest fast My name, and hast not denied My faith, even in those days wherein
Antipas was My faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.
But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there those who hold
the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the
children of Israel, to eat things sanctified unto idols, and to commit
fornication. So hast thou also those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans,
which thing I hate. Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will
fight against them with the sword of My mouth.
"The Church of Pergamum signifies the
third period, the epoch of the Ecumenical Councils and the battle with heresies
by the sword of the word of God...
"The Church of Pergamum is praised by
the Lord for keeping His name and not rejecting faith in Him, although it was
situated amidst the extremely corrupt pagan population of the city, which is
signified by the very vivid expression: thou
dwellest even where Satan's seat is, and was subjected to a heavy
persecution, during which the Lord's faithful witness Antipas was killed.
Although many have tried to interpret the name Antipas in a symbolical sense, it is known from the martyrologies
that have come down to us that Antipas was the Bishop of Pergamum and was
burned inside a heated-up brass bull for his zealous confession of the faith of
Christ [in 92]. However, the Lord also points to negative phenomena in the life
of the Church of Pergamum, in particular the fact that the Nicolaitans had
appeared there, making the eating of sacrifices to the idols and every kind of
lustful indecencies lawful. In their time the Israelites had been drawn to such
excesses by Barlaam. Pergamum is situated to the north of Smyrna and in
antiquity it rivalled Smyrna and Ephesus. It had a temple to the pagan divinity
Aesculapius, the protector of doctors. Its priests practised medicine and put
up a strong resistance to the preachers of Christianity." (Archbishop
Averky)
"The sharp sword is the evangelical teaching, which comes out of the
mouth of our Lord. For He cuts off the excesses of this world and pierces the
curtain hindering contemplation of the heavens." (Patriarch Anthimus)
Pergamum was the administrative centre of
Asia, which meant that it was also the centre of the worship of Caesar, to whom
an altar was dedicated. This is the explanation of the phrase Satan's seat. Lenin's mausoleum in
Moscow was constructed on the model of this altar.[75]
Tikhomirov writes: We consider the age of
Pergamum to be the beginning of Christian statehood. Does that mean that the
Church, in entering into union with the state, committed a sin? Of course not.
The state is not in itself satans
institution. Obedience to the authorities is commanded by Christ Himself and
the apostles. But the union with earthly power does create many difficulties
and temptations for the Church.[76]
The epoch of the Seven Ecumenical Councils
spanned over four and a half centuries, from the First Council at Nicaea in
325, at which Arianism was condemned, to the Seventh Council, again at Nicaea,
in 787. This epoch was characterised by, on the one hand, external peace for
the Church through that "symphony" between Church and State first
established by Constantine and later strengthened by his successors Theodosius
and Justinian, and, on the other hand, by great internal upheavals produced by
a series of Trinitarian and Christological heresies. Towards the end of the
period, the internal upheavals threatened to destroy the Church-State
"symphony" completely, the imperial Balaks siding with the heretical
Balaams to persecute the Church, which descended into a semi-underground
existence. In 842, however, with the enthronement of the Orthodox emperors
Michael and Theodora, lasting peace was restored. The Church celebrated the
Triumph of Orthodoxy, and the empire entered into one of the most prosperous
periods of its existence.
However, it was also during this period
that the scourge of Islam overtook most of the East, which had succumbed to the
heresies of Monophysitism and Monothelitism. Evidently the Eastern Christians
failed to heed the warning: Repent; or
else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword
of My mouth. Eventually Islam conquered even the Byzantine Empire after it
had entered into union with the Roman Catholics at the council of Florence in
1439.
2.17. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit saith unto the Churches: To him that overcometh will I give to eat of
the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name
written, which no man knoweth except he that receiveth it.
"This
manna is
the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the bread which came down from heaven and gave Himself for the life
of the world." (Patriarch Anthimus)
We all know that the body is subject to
hunger and thirst and needs food and drink, by which the unpleasant feelings of
hunger and thirst are quenched, the sense of taste is sweetened, strength is
restored and the loss of matter in the make-up of the body is made up. But is
not the spirit also subject to hunger and thirst? Does it not have need of
food? What can nourish it in a manner fitting to it? Do we know as clearly
about the spirit as we do about the body?
The only self-sufficient essence is God,
He is always full and abundant in every good in Himself, never does He
experience want from outside, and consequently He has no need of food. The
spirit of man, as being created and unceasingly dependent on God, is not
self-sufficient, because it is not God; and, not being self-sufficient, it
needs to acquire the sufficiency that is necessary for it, or take food in a
manner that is fitting to it. His will hunger for the good like food; his mind
thirsts for the truth like drink. But he does not have the root of good in
himself, nor the source of truth in himself; it is necessary that these be
given him. In God is the root of good, in God is the source of truth;
consequently, the feeding of the spirit requires, not that which rises from the
earth, but that which descends from heaven manna. Bread that is purely
heavenly not only by its origin but by its nature must not be placed on
the earth before the eyes of the body; the water of life must not be poured
into a vessel made of dead matter; which is why the true food of the spirit is hidden
for the flesh.
The Word of God often speaks of this
food, allowing us to know and feel our essential hunger and acquire saving
food. And the incarnate Wisdom declares: I am the living Bread that came
down from heaven: if anyone eats from this bread, he will live to the ages (John
6.51). And to the Samaritan woman He declares: Whoever drinks of the water
that I will give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will
become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John
4.14). And again: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew 4.4). The apostle describes
the true Christians as having tasted the heavenly gift, and become partakers
of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers
of the age to come (Hebrews 6.4-5).[77]
"The metaphorical expression, a white stone, has its foundation in a
custom of antiquity, according to which the victors at the public games and
contests were given white stone tablets, which they later presented in order to
receive the rewards conferred on them. Among Roman judges it was the custom to
collect votes by means of white and black stones. White signified freedom;
black signified condemnation. In the mouth of the seer of mysteries, John, the
white stone symbolically signified the purity and innocence of Christians for
which they receive a reward in the future age." (Archbishop Averky)
In the Celtic Church, as has been revealed
recently in archaeological excavations on the Isle of Man, white stones were
placed in the graves of believers, probably signifying their hope of
justification in the future life.
According to St. Hippolytus of Rome, the
white stone is the teaching which a bishop imparts to the faithful immediately
after their baptism and which must not be revealed before.[78]
St. Jerome writes: "You shall be
called by a new name (Isaiah 62.2). A new name is deserving of a new son.
So in the Apocalypse, To him that
overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white
stone, and in the stone a new name written (2.17). The new name is that of
Christians."[79]
"To give names to new members of a
kingdom is characteristic of kings and masters. The Heavenly King also will
give to all the chosen sons of His Kingdom new names which will signify their
inward qualities, their designation and service in the Kingdom of glory. But
since no one knoweth the things of a
man, except the spirit of a man which is in him (I Corinthians
2.11), so also the new name given to a man by the All-knowing Master will be
known only to the one who receives this name (cf. Isaiah 62.2)."
(Archbishop Averky)
4. The Church of Thyateira
2.18-20. And unto the angel of the Church in
Thyateira write: These things saith the Son of God, Who hath His eyes like unto
a flame of fire, and His feet are like fine brass; I know thy works, and
charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience; and the last to be more than
the first. Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou
sufferest that woman Jezabel, who calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and
seduce My servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to
idols.
"The Church of Thyateira is the
fourth period, the period of the blossoming of Christianity among the new
peoples of Europe...
"Thyateira was a small city in Lydia,
which was not noted for anything in history, but is known in the history of
Christianity for the fact that from it came Lydia, who was enlightened with the
light of the faith of Christ by the holy Apostle Paul during his second
preaching journey in the city of Philippi." (Archbishop Averky)
The "new peoples" mentioned by
Archbishop Averky are the Slavic peoples of Northern and Eastern Europe, who
began to enter the Orthodox Church from the ninth century onwards. By the end
of the Middle Ages, the Slavs constituted by far the largest and most powerful
part of the Orthodox commonwealth, although the whole of Russia still formed
only one metropolia of the Great Church of Constantinople. Indeed, while the
Great Church herself began to decline from about the eleventh century, her
daughter Churches in Serbia, Russia and Georgia reached perhaps their greatest
peaks in this period, fully justifying the Lord's praise of their works and charity and service and faith and
patience.
Who is Jezabel? "It is known that Jezabel, the daughter of the king
of Sidon, on entering into marriage with King Ahab of Israel, drew him to the
worship of all the abominations of Tyre and Sidon, and was the cause of the
Israelites' fall into idol-worship." (Archbishop Averky) Figuratively
speaking, if the Church of Thyateira is the Orthodox Church from the ninth to
the fifteenth centuries, then it is clear that the prophetess Jezabel can be
none other than the heretical Roman
papacy. Female figures in Holy Scripture usually symbolise false churches
or religions; and the papacy became false when she was anathematised by the
Orthodox Church in 1054. She calls
herself a prophetess because she presumes to speak infallibly, as the mouth
of God; whereas in fact, through her heresies of the Filioque (the
doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son) and the universal, infallible jurisdiction of the
Church of Rome, she has alienated herself from God. For she teaches and seduces the Lord's servants
to commit fornication and to eat things
sacrificed to idols - that is, to participate in her heresy (heresy is
always called fornication and idol-worship in Holy Scripture).
It may be that the Lord is here described
as having eyes like unto a flame of
fire, and feet like unto brass in order to emphasise that He alone is
Almighty and Infallible. The Lord complains that the Church suffers Jezabel - that is, refrains
from subjecting her to the penalty of excommunication and anathema that she
deserves. For even after the Church of Constantinople broke communion with the
papacy in 1009, and anathematised it in 1054, some Eastern Churches continued
to have communion with her.
Jezabel, who was not an Israelite by
birth, dominated her husband, the king of Israel, and in the same way the
papacy, having come under the rule of non-Roman popes who were strangers to the
Romanist tradition of unity with the East Roman State, first brought an end to
that unity and then swallowed up the State in itself.[80]
As Dostoyevsky wrote: "The Western
Church herself distorted the image of Christ, changing herself from a Church
into a Roman State, and again incarnating the State in the form of the
papacy... The Church was destroyed and finally transformed into a State. The
papacy appeared - the continuation of the ancient Roman empire in a new
incarnation."[81]
Tikhomirov writes: One must, of course,
understand this rebuke in a symbolical and spiritual sense, as an adulterous
departure from God towards secular pursuits and, as is evident from history,
towards human autonomy, and also as a transition to the worship of other gods
- like the Chernobog of the Bogomils, the Baphomet of the Templars, the Lucifer
of the satanists, etc. Such actions should be called adultery because people calling themselves Christians fell into
them. All these movements were reduced, metaphorically speaking, to Jezabel, who called herself a
prophetess, and in actual fact went under the banner of supposedly prophetic
inspirations, which are linked by the Apocalypse with the depths of Satan. It is not difficult to recognise these satanic
depths in the antichristian magical teachings.. The word of God threatens them
with punishment, which, of course, overtook them frequently.[82]
2.21-23. And I gave her space to repent of
her fornication; and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and
those that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent
of their deeds. And will kill her children with death; and all the Churches
shall know that I am He Who searches the reins and hearts; and I will give unto
every one of you according to your works.
"I will cast her into a bed could mean
separation from the society of believers by the judgement of the Church; and those that commit adultery with her into
great tribulation - those who secretly sympathize with and protect this
heresy I will shame before all if they do not correct themselves. And all those
who partake in and follow this abomination I
will kill with death - which means complete cutting off from the life and
good things of the Church to the ages...
"Continuing to speak in a figurative
manner, He compares the cunning and deception of the heretics to a harlot,
threatening to strike her with death and afflictions, as well as all who have
defiled themselves with her and committed fornication before God, unless they
return to Him through repentance. This is addressed to the heretics who have
been deceived and who seduce others." (St. Andrew of Caesarea)
For nearly two hundred years after the
death of Pope Nicholas I, who first introduced the papist heresies in the ninth
century, the Lord gave the West time for repentance, time to root out papism
from her midst. During this period successive waves of pagan invaders -
Vikings, Magyars and Saracens - poured into Western Europe, stretching the
people as if on a rack of suffering, and putting the papacy herself in dire
peril. Finally came the schism of 1054: the children of the papacy were killed
with spiritual death.
When all the Churches saw the aggressive
and far from Christian actions of the papacy after her fall from grace in 1054,
they understood that the condemnation of the Roman Church had been just and the
expression of the will of God.
There is much evidence of this. First, the
Pope blessed the Norman invasion of England, which destroyed the traditions of
English Christianity. Secondly, in the Lenten council of 1075 the Pope declared
that he was above all human, and even ecclesiastical judgement, and that all
authorities, both secular and ecclesiastical, were subject to him. Thirdly, he
blessed the crusades against the Orthodox East, in the last of which the
crusaders seized and looted Constantinople, placing a prostitute on the altar
of Hagia Sophia and Latin "bishops" in all the major sees of the
East. Fourthly, he blessed the invasion of Russia by the Teutonic knights - it
was only through the heroic efforts of the Prince of Novgorod, St. Alexander
Nevsky, that the last outpost of Orthodoxy in the North was preserved. Fifthly,
he convened the false councils of Lyons in 1274 and of Florence in 1438-39, in
which he tried, by dint of violence and bribery, to persuade the Orthodox
emperor and patriarchs to accept his heresies and his dominion over them.
Sixthly, he proclaimed the false dogmas of the immaculate conception of the
Virgin in 1854 and of his own infallibility in 1870. And seventhly, in 1841 his
followers, the Croatian Ustasi, murdered 750,000 Orthodox Serbs in Croatia.
Archbishop Averky considers the falling
away of the papacy to have been the first stage in that mystery of iniquity and apostasy
which, according to St. Paul, will precede the coming of the Antichrist (II
Thessalonians 2.3,7). "The first important stage on the path of this apostasy was the falling away from
Orthodoxy of the Latin West, with the papal throne at its head. Was not there
an antichristian principle at the base of the papist pretensions to be the
infallible 'vicar of the Son of God' on earth? Cannot the spirit of Antichrist
be felt in this striving to 'be the vicar' as if 'substituting' itself for
Christ in all those who believe in Him? And is not the spirit of antichristian
pride, so evidently leading people into spiritual deception in the spiritual
life, is not the boundless love of power which thirsts to subject the whole
world to itself - is not all this characteristic of the Antichrist?
"Such a perversion of the spirit of
Christ in western Christianity which had fallen away from Orthodoxy brought in
its train a whole series of false teachings and a terrible moral corruption.
Only the appearance of Christianity was left, its exterior, deprived of the
true spirit of life in Christ..."[83]
"Behold,
I will cast her into a bed. This could refer to the forced inactivity of
the Jesuits in the revolutionary period. The Jesuit adapted themselves no less
skilfully to Socialism, as is evident from the fact that in their sermons they
explain that Christ was a true socialist and that for that reason the
dissatisfied masses of the people should cleave to Him in the person of His
representatives. But at the same time the Freemasons offer to these masses of
the people people's spectacles, mysteries from the life of Christ, about whose
content it is shameful even to speak. You see from what depths of Satan Russia has been delivered, when she did not allow
the leaven of the Jesuits to settle in the midst of the blinded people."
(St. John of Kronstadt)
When the Russian revolution came in 1917,
the Pope welcomed it, trying to use to impose Catholicism on the Russian
people, a design which he has renewed since the apparent demise of Communism in
1989-91. Nor is it possible to say that the heresies of the papacy have somehow
been rectified in modern times. For an official Vatican publication recently
described the Pope as "the ultimate guarantor of the Teaching and Will of
the Divine Founder".[84]
2.24-25. But unto you I say, and unto the rest in
Thyateira, as many as have not this doctrine, and who have not known the depths
of Satan, as they say: I will not put upon you any other burden. But that which
you have already, hold fast until I come.
"To the simple people He says: 'Since
you, in your simplicity, are not able to stand against the cunning and clever,
for, as you affirm, you do not fully know the depths of Satan - therefore I do
not ask you to wage hostile battle in words, but only to preserve the teaching
which you have received, until the time when I shall take you from her.'"
(St. Andrew of Caesarea)
"Such is the mercy of Christ towards
those who are blinded but who have not been torn away from the holy Church of
Christ, which takes upon herself the task of petitioning for the ignorance of
the people before God." (St. John of Kronstadt)
"The
depths of Satan is the name given here to the teaching of the Nicolaitans,
as the forerunners of the Gnostics, who called their false teaching 'the depths
of God'" (Archbishop Averky). But, according to the eschatological
interpretation, the depths of Satan
is the satanic pride of the papacy and the false teaching on papal
infallibility. The Lord calls the Orthodox Christians of the Thyateira period
of Church history to preserve their faith unharmed until His appearance, which
means "either His Second Coming at the end of the ages, or the death of
each one of us" (Patriarch Anthimus).
Tikhomirov writes: The following of the
commandment: that which you have
already, hold fast until I come was particularly evident. Confessional conservatism,
a rejection of religious innovations became a characteristic trait of
Orthodoxy.[85]
I send to you no new doctrine; but keep
that which you have received to the end. (The Venerable Bede)
2.26-27. And he that overcometh, and keepeth My works
unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations; and he shall shepherd
them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to
shivers, even as I received of My Father.
"To
him who does My works will I give power, as promised in the Gospel, over
five or ten cities (Luke 19.17-19). Or else this indicates the judgement
of unbelievers, through which those who have been deceived, being judged by the
believers in Christ, will be crushed as a pot is by the rod: the men of Nineveh shall rise in judgement
with this generation, and shall condemn it (Matthew 12.41). The
words, even as I received of My Father,
are spoken in His human nature, because of His acceptance of flesh." (St.
Andrew of Caesarea)
Another possible interpretation of these
words is that that nation which overcomes the temptation of union with the
heretical papacy will be given power over other nations; for it is precisely
the true faith, Orthodoxy, which overcometh
the world (I John 5.4) - spiritually in the first place, but also,
if God wills it, politically in the form of the Christian Empire.
"This is a consoling promise for all
the Christians of the Eastern Orthodox Church, witnessing that she will remain
until the end rightly dividing the word of Divine truth and a faithful
preserver of the apostolic tradition. As a reward for this unshakeable
faithfulness she is promised power over the pagans" (St. John of
Kronstadt).
Now after the fall of Constantinople in
1453, which followed as a punishment for the betrayal of Orthodoxy at the
council of Florence, the Greeks' power
over the nations, their Empire, came to an end. In the place of the New
Rome, however, came the Third Rome - Moscow, which, having rejected the council
of Florence, began to grow into a world empire from that time, ruling the
nations with a rod of iron.
Thus in 1589 Patriarch Jeremiah of
Constantinople travelled to Moscow to enthrone the Muscovite Metropolitan Job
as his fellow-patriarch and to confirm the ecumenical authority of Tsar
Theodore, writing: "Since the First Rome fell through the Apollinarian
heresy, and the second Rome, which is Constantinople, is held by the infidel
Turks, so thy great Russian kingdom, most pious Tsar
is the Third Rome
and
thou alone under heaven art Christian emperor for all Christians in the
world."[86]
Tikhomirov writes: In the Thyateiran age
there also appeared as a Christian country - Russia, which took a very active
participation in shepherding the pagans with
a rod of iron
In the Constantinopolitan Church, subdued by the infidels,
there was not, of course, any power over the pagans. But the Russian half of
the Greco-Russian Church shepherded the pagans with a rod of iron like few
countries, and by her missionary activity penetrated to the furthest boundaries
of Northern Asia.[87]
A Greek prophecy of the ninth century
predicted this rise of Russia: "After the chosen people of the Jews gave
up their Messiah and Redeemer to torment and a shameful death, they were no
longer counted a chosen people and this honour passed to the Greeks, a second
chosen people.
"The searching and inquisitive mind
of the Ancient Greeks was enlightened by Christianity and penetrated to the
very depths of knowledge. The great Eastern Church Fathers defined the
Christian dogmas and created the harmonious system of Christian teaching. This
is the great merit of the Greek people. However, the Roman [Byzantine] State is
not creative or strong enough to build up a harmonious political and social
life on a solid Christian foundation. The sceptre of the Orthodox Empire will
fall from the weak hands of the Emperors of Constantinople who are unable to
achieve symphony and concord between Church and State.
"For this reason the Lord through His
Providence shall send a third chosen people to succeed the spiritually weakened
Greeks. This people will appear in the North within 100-200 years [these
prophecies were set down in Palestine 150-200 years before the Baptism of the
Russian people], and will become Christian wholeheartedly. They will strive to
live according to the commandments of Christ and will seek first the Kingdom of
God and His Righteousness, as Christ our Saviour showed us. The Lord God will
love this people for their zeal and will add unto them all things - huge
territories, riches, a mighty and glorious State."[88]
2.28-29. And I will give him the morning star.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what
the Spirit saith unto the churches.
Christ is the morning star, Who
promises and reveals to the saints the eternal light of life, when the night of
the world is past. (The Venerable Bede)
"These words have a dual
interpretation. The Prophet Isaiah gives the name morning star to Satan,
who fell from heaven (14.12). In this sense these words refer to the dominion
of the believing Christians over Satan (cf. Luke 10.18-19). On the other
hand, the holy Apostle Peter in his second catholic epistle calls the Lord
Jesus Christ the morning star, which
shines in the hearts of men (1.19). In this sense the true Christian is
promised the enlightenment of his soul with the light of Christ and
participation in the future heavenly glory." (Archbishop Averky)
"St. Andrew says of the morning star, that there is nothing
astonishing in the fact that it could have two opposite interpretations, a
thing which often happens in Holy Scripture. What is important to understand is
the meaning of the image. Here it
means the same thing that victorious Christians have Christ the morning star shining in their hearts,
and to say that they have dominion over satan the morning star through the grace of Christ."[89]
"And
I will give him the morning star. This probably means that the Russian
Church will be given the Light of Christ which enlightens everybody, so as to introduce
it into the countries held in the power of the dragon; not the light of
Jesuitical papism or Protestant apostasy from the holy Church, but the true
Light of Christ, the Light of Eastern Catholic Orthodoxy." (St. John of
Kronstadt)
And indeed, from the sixteenth century
onwards, the Russian Orthodox Empire began to acquire power over vast pagan
territories in East European Russia, Siberia and Central Asia; and the Russian
Church sent missions to convert the pagans of these territories to the True
Faith. This missionary activity produced great fruit in Siberia, Central Asia,
China, Japan and Alaska. It was cut short only by the revolution of 1917.
5. The Church of Sardis
3.1-4. And unto the angel of the Church in Sardis
write: These things saith He that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven
stars: I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.
Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die; for
I have not found thy works perfect before God. If therefore thou shalt not
watch, I will come upon thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I
will come upon thee. Yet thou hast a few names even in Sardis who have not
defiled their garments, and they shall walk with Me in white; for they are
worthy.
He reproves this angel, that is, the bishop, for
not being sufficiently diligent in correcting the bad. He commends him,
however, in that he has some who walk in white, and the name Sardis agrees
with these, as being the name of a precious stone. To you yourself, indeed, you
seem to be alive. But if you art not watchful in the correction of the wicked,
you will from now on be numbered among the dead. He said not a few, but a few names. For He
calleth His own sheep by name,
Who knew Moses by name, and Who writes the names of the saints in heaven. (The
Venerable Bede)
"The Lord orders the Angel of the
Church of Sardis to write more in reproach than in consolation: this Church
contains only the name of living faith, but in actual fact she is spiritually
dead. The Lord threatens the Sardian Christians with sudden catastrophe if they
do not repent. There are, however, a very few who have not defiled their garments. Those who overcome (the passions)
the Lord promises to clothe in white garments, and their names will not be
erased from the book of life, but they will be confessed by the Lord before His
Heavenly Father..." (Archbishop Averky)
For whosoever
shall confess in Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father Who is
in heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before
My Father Who is in heaven (Matthew 10.32-33; cf. Mark 8.38).
"In antiquity Sardis was a large and
rich city, the capital of the province of Lydia, but now it is the poor little
Turkish village of Sard... Under Julian the Apostate the spiritual deadness of
this city was clearly revealed: it quickly returned to idol-worship, for which
it was struck by the wrath of God - it was destroyed to its foundations.
"The Church of Sardis is the epoch of
humanism and materialism of the 16th to 18th centuries." (Archbishop
Averky)
This definition might be modified to read:
"of the 16th to early 20th centuries"; for the humanist and
materialist influences upon the Orthodox Church continued and became stronger
right up to the First World War.
After the fall of Constantinople in 1453,
which took place only five and a half months after the name of the Pope was
commemorated for the first time in Hagia Sophia, many Greek scholars and
artists fled to the West, where their knowledge of pagan classical culture
served as an important impetus to the development of humanism, and then - of
Protestantism. Later, the pagan ideals of Humanism spread to the Orthodox East,
especially Russia (the Greek and Balkan lands were to a certain degree
protected from western influence by the Turkish yoke). This influence
constantly undermined the foundations of Orthodox piety and led, in the end, to
the logical conclusion of the Western "Renaissance" and the most
terrible expression of the wrath of God - the Russian revolution of 1917.
"[Protestantism] is a deadening of
the spirit that denies the visible expression of piety in anything, whether it
be a bow or the sign of the cross, or the rest of that which has been preserved
from the apostolic institutions concerning the performance of the holy
sacraments and the sacred rites. This heresy probably developed also in Sardis,
which is why this church turns out to be dead for good works." (St. John
of Kronstadt)
The humanism, materialism and
Protestantism of the Sardis epoch in the history of the Church were a reaction
to the perverted Christianity of the medieval papacy. It therefore constituted,
according to Archbishop Averky, the second stage of the apostasy - "the
epoch of the 'Renaissance', which appeared as a reaction to the perverted
Christianity of the West, but which was in essence a denial of Christianity and
a return to the ideals of paganism. It proclaimed the cult of a strong, healthy,
beautiful human flesh, and to the spirit of Christian humility it opposed the
spirit of self-opinion, self-reliance, and the deification of human 'reason'.
"As a protest against perverted
Christianity, on the soil of the same humanistic ideal that recognised 'reason'
as the highest criterion of life, there appeared in the West a religious
movement which received the name of 'Protestantism'. Protestantism with its
countless branches of all kinds of sects not only radically distorted the whole
teaching of true Christianity, but also rejected the very dogma of the Church,
placing man himself as his own highest authority, and even going so far as to
deny faith in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, the Founder of the Church.
"Puffed-up human pride finally falls
completely away from God, and begins boldly to deny even the very existence of
God, and man proclaims himself to be as it were a god. Seized with pride,
self-opinion and reliance on his own limitless powers, possibilities and
capacities, man brought up on the ideals of the 'Renaissance' no longer sees
any obligation for himself to strive for the spiritual perfection enjoined by
the Gospel, and by a natural progression descends deeper and deeper into the
abyss of spiritual fall and moral corruption. Into the foreground there steps
the service of the flesh, as a consequence of which spiritual demands are more
and more stifled, suppressed and, finally, so as once and for all to finish
with the unpleasant voice of conscience which lives in the spirit of man, the
spirit itself is declared to be non-existent.
"In this way, there appears
'materialism' - a natural child of 'humanism', a natural and logical
development of its idea. The ideal of the full stomach, covered by the raucous
'doctrine' going by the name of 'the ideal of social justice', 'social
righteousness', became the highest ideal of humanity which had denied Christ.
And this is understandable! The so-called 'social question' could not have
taken hold if people had remained faithful to true Christianity incarnate in
life.
"On the soil of materialism, in its
turn, there naturally grew, as a strictly logical consequence, the doctrines of
'Socialism' and 'Marxism-Communism'. Humanism and materialism, having denied
the spiritual principle in man, proclaimed man himself to be a 'god' and
legitimised human pride and animal egoism as self-sacrificing, and came to the
conclusion that savage struggle should be made the law of human life, on the
soil of the constant conflict of interests of egoistical human beings. As a
result of this so-called 'struggle for existence', stronger, cleverer, craftier
people would naturally begin to constrain and oppress the less strong, less
clever and less crafty. The law of Christ, which commands us to bear one another's burdens (Galatians
6.2), and not to please ourselves (Acts
15.29), but to love one's neighbour as
oneself (Matthew 22.39), was expelled from life. And so so-called
'social evil' and 'social injustices' began to increase and multiply, together
with the 'social ulcers' of society. And since life was made more and more
intolerable, as a consequence of the ever-increasing egoism and violence of
people towards each other, there was naturally some reason to think about
establishing for all a single tolerable and acceptable order of life. Hence
'Socialism', and then its extreme expression, 'Communism', became fashionable
doctrines, which promised people deliverance from all 'social injustices' and
the establishment on earth of a peaceful and serenely paradisal life, in which
everyone would be happy and content. But these teachings determined to cure the
ulcers of human society by unsuitable means. They did not see that the evil of
contemporary life is rooted in the depths of the human soul which has fallen
away from the uniquely salvific Gospel teaching, and naively thought that it
would be enough to change the imperfect, in their opinion, structure of
political and social life for there to be immediately born on earth prosperity
for all, and life would become paradise. For this inevitable, as they affirmed,
and beneficial change, the more extreme Socialists, as, for example, the
Communists, even proposed violent measures, going so far as the shedding of
blood and the physical annihilation of people who did not agree with them. In
other words: they thought to conquer evil by evil, this evil being still more
bitter and unjust because of their cruelty and mercilessness.
"'The Great French Revolution', which
shed whole rivers of human blood, was the first of their attempts. It clearly
demonstrated that men are powerless to build their life on earth without God,
and to what terrible consequences man is drawn by his apostasy from Christ and
His saving teaching.
"But there was no looking back: the process
of apostasy (II Thessalonians
2.3) had already gone too far..."[90]
A characteristic feature of the Sardis
period in the history of the Church, which reflected the decline of Orthodox
Christianity and its increasing conformity to the world, was the subservient
position of the Orthodox Churches to the secular powers.
Thus the Patriarch of Constantinople,
having been appointed the secular as well as the religious head of all Orthodox
Christians in the Ottoman empire, was forced to bribe the Sultan with
ever-increasing sums of money in order to obtain his office - a system that led
to numerous abuses. Nor did the successful Greek War of Independence, which was
inspired more by the ideals of the French Revolution than those of the Gospel
of Christ, bring an immediate amelioration of the situation. Thus Maurer's 1833
Protestant Constitution for the Church of Greece entailed no less a
subordination of the Church to the State than had existed under the Sultans,
which soon led to a drastic reduction in the number of functioning monasteries.
In Russia, too, a Protestant, synodal type
of Church government was imposed upon the Church by Peter the Great, while he
and his successors introduced general westernization and oppressed the
monasteries.
"Sardis stood on [an] impregnable
lookout 457.5 metres - 1500 feet - above the plain. Cyrus's men climbed the
cliff face at night when the guards where asleep. They came like a thief in the
night."[91]
Therefore be watchful. In the
same way, the seemingly impregnable position of the Orthodox Church in the
Sardis period of Church history came to a sudden end with the Russian
revolution, which caught many Christians spiritually asleep.
3.4-6. He that overcometh, the same shall be
clothed in white raiment. And I will not blot out his name from out of the book
of life. And I will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches.
"The words defiled garments metaphorically depict pollutions of the soul. So
those who have not defiled their
garments are those whose minds remained untainted by heretical false
teachings, whose life was not stained by passions and vices. By the words white garments are to be understood the
wedding garments in which will be clothed the guests at the wedding feast of
the son of the king, under which image the Lord parabolically represented the
future blessedness of the righteous in His Heavenly Kingdom. These garments,
which will be like the garments of the Saviour during the Transfiguration, have
been made white as light (Matthew
17.2). God's decrees concerning the destinies of people are symbolically
represented under the image of a book in which the Lord as the all-knowing and
all-righteous Judge writes down all their deeds. This symbolic image is often
used in the Sacred Scriptures (Psalm 68.29; Psalm 138.16; Isaiah
4.3; Daniel 7.10; Malachi 3.16; Exodus 32.32-33; Luke
10.20; Philippians 4.3). In accordance with this representation, he who
lives worthy of the higher calling is as it were inscribed in the book of life,
while he who lives unworthily is as it were erased from this book, thereby
depriving himself of the right to eternal life. Therefore the promise to him
who conquers sin not to erase his name from the book of life is equivalent to
the promised not to deprive him of the heavenly good things prepared in the
future life for the righteous. And I
will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels - this is the
same as that which the Lord promised to His true followers during His life on
earth (Matthew 10.32), that is, I will recognise and pronounce him to be
My faithful disciple." (Archbishop Averky)
Amidst the general corruption of Church
life in the Sardis period some saints shone like stars. These included the holy
new martyrs of the Turkish yoke in Greece and the Balkans, and such saints as
Tikhon of Zadonsk and Seraphim of Sarov in Russia. This shows that even in
conditions of spiritual decline God preserves His faithful witnesses, and that the gates of hell will never prevail
over His Church (Matthew 16.18). "They not only acquired the grace
of Holy Baptism and the gifts of the Holy Spirit themselves, but also, in
preaching the word of truth, they kept the apostolic tradition, and not human
wisdom, which does not give knowledge of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and I
will reject the understanding of the prudent (Isaiah 29.14). From
this we can conclude that several people in Sardis were praised because they
did not defile their preaching with the unruliness of an unrestrained mind, as
has happened everywhere that the religion of knowledge, like a hellish flame,
has begun to break out of the bowels of the earth and singe the faith both of
the people who are going blind in their hearts and, no less, of the young who
are going blind in the theological and secular nurseries of knowledge. One must
not be surprised that in all only a few people were found who rightly divided
the word of truth, for the apostle says: though
you have thousands of instructors in Christ, you have few fathers (I
Corinthians 4.15)." (St. John of Kronstadt)
Tikhomirov writes: The Sardian epoch is
already essentially dead, and of course creates material for the Laodicean
church
But beside this, all those whom Christ in the Sardian epoch calls to
repentance and who wear white garments
by their spiritual enthusiasm give a beginning to the Philadelphian Church.[92]
6. The Church of Philadelphia
3.7. And to the angel of the Church in Philadelphia
write:
The
angel of the Church of Philadelphia addressed here was Demetrius, whom St. John
contrasted with the unrighteous Diotrephes (III John 12).
Philadelphia is interpreted brotherly
love, and to it is the door of the Kingdom opened, and the promise made of
being beloved by the Lord. (The Venerable Bede)
"Philadelphia is the second large
city in Lydia, being named thus after its founder, Attalus Philadelphus, the
king of Pergamum. This city was the only one of all the cities of Asia Minor
which did not give in for a long time to the Turks... The Turks call
Philadelphia 'Allah-Sher', that is, 'the city of God', and this name
involuntarily recalls the promise of the Lord: I shall write on him who conquers the name of My God and the name of
the city of My God (v. 12)...
"The Church of Philadelphia is the
next-to-last period in the life of the Church of Christ, the epoch contemporary
to us, when the Church will in fact have little
strength in contemporary humanity and new persecutions will begin, when
patience will be required." (Archbishop Averky)
There is a striking contrast between the
Churches of Sardis and Philadelphia. The former is prosperous externally but
poor internally. The latter is few in numbers and under great pressure from
enemies, but receives the most unqualified praise of all the Churches.
Such is the difference in the condition of
the Orthodox Church before and after the watershed years 1914-24.
In 1914 the Church stood at the highest
peak of Her power from an external point of view. Although the Middle East was
still under the Moslem yoke, the Orthodox Balkan States had been liberated
after centuries of Turkish domination; and the mighty Russian empire spread
from the Baltic to the Pacific with important Church missions in Persia,
Central Asia, China, Japan and America. Fifteen years later, the situation had
completely changed. The Russian empire was gone, her peoples crushed by war,
famine and the fanatical persecution of a small band of militant atheists; and
the missions abroad, though swelled by many emigrιs, were rent by schisms and
difficulties of various kinds. In 1924, moreover, the Ecumenical Patriarchate,
together with the State Church of Greece and the Church of Romania, had fallen
into the schism of the new calendar, which heralded a devastating new heresy -
"the heresy of heresies" - ecumenism.
However, in the midst of all this turmoil,
the faith of many hitherto lukewarm Christians was renewed; a new age of
martyrdom fully comparable to that of the first three centuries began. For
although, writes Tikhomirov, the Philadelphian Church will be numerically
small and will not have an external position like that of the Sardian or
Laodicean Churches, it will be morally so powerful that she will attract the
Jews to herself.[93]
And so a promise was given to the
faithful:
3.7. These things saith He that is holy, He that is
true, He that hath the key of David, He that openeth and no man shutteth; and
shutteth, and no man openeth:
According
to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, the
key of David is the Cross of Christ, whereby He was given power to open
heaven and hell.[94]
According to the Venerable Bede, it is royal power.
In
some ancient manuscripts, it is written the
key of hell instead of the key of
David.[95]
"By
the key of David is understood that
power which His humanity received from the Divinity, as He said after His
resurrection: All power has been given
to Me in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28.18). This power He also
gave to His disciples, and it is called a key,
as He said to Peter: I give thee the
keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 16.19), that is, to loose and
to bind sins. To open and to shut means to justify a man from his sins and to
condemn the impenitent." (Patriarch Anthimus)
"The key of David is the key to the
prophetic book of David, which is called the Psalter, and to all the prophecies
which holy men of God uttered under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Who
opens the treasuries of knowledge. The particular quality of these treasuries
lies in the fact that they cannot be withstood by the wise men of this world,
for that which is opened by Divine truth cannot be eclipsed by human wisdom,
and that which the key of David (the
Holy Spirit) closes to the curiosity of the human mind no mind can open."
(St. John of Kronstadt)
"The Son of God calls Himself the key of David in the sense of having
the supreme authority in the house of David, for a key is the symbol of power.
The house of David, or the Kingdom of David, is the same as the Kingdom of God,
whose foreshadowing it was in the Old Testament." (Archbishop Averky)
The
phrase the key of David recalls a
prophecy from Isaiah: I will give
him the glory of David; and he shall rule, and there shall be none to shut; and
he shall shut, and there shall be none to open (22.22). These words were
spoken, in the first place, of Eliakim, the chief minister of King Hezekiah of
Judah, who was to succeed to the office of the high priest and temple treasurer
Somnas. Jewish tradition relates that Somnas wished to betray the people of God
and flee to the Assyrian King Sennacherib; and St. Cyril of Alexandria says of
him: "On receiving the dignity of the high-priesthood, he abused it, going
to the extent of imprisoning everybody who contradicted him."[96]
The picture, then, is one of betrayal at
the highest level in the Church at a time of maximum pressure from outside. The
Lord, however, as First Hierarch of the Church, promises His faithful remnant
that the power of the keys - the charisma of the priesthood, the power
to bind and to loose - will remain among them (cf. I Peter 2.25; Matthew
16.19). However much the false priests will strive to exclude the faithful from
the Church by means of bans and excommunications, their efforts will come to
nothing because the Lord will not recognise their repressive measures - the
door into the sacred enclosure of the Church will remain open to the sheep who
know His voice (John 10.9).
For
there is no infallible authority but God - this is the teaching of the One,
Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. And while the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth (I
Timothy 3.15), we cannot be certain that any individual Church or hierarch
will remain in the Truth. For the Spirit
of truth blows where it wills (John
3.8). As St. Columbanus of Luxeuil wrote to a heretical Pope: "[If you
err], then those who have always kept the Orthodox Faith, whoever they may have
been, even if they seem to be your subordinates,
shall be your judges.. And
thus, even as your honour is great in proportion to the dignity of your see, so
great care is needful for you, lest you lose your dignity through some mistake.
For power will be in your hands just so long as your principles remain sound;
for he is the appointed keybearer of the Kingdom of heaven, who opens by true
knowledge to the worthy and shuts to the unworthy; otherwise if he does the
opposite, he shall be able neither to open nor to shut..."[97]
Now betrayal at the highest level was a
tragic feature of Orthodox Church life in the 1920s. Thus Greek and Romanian
hierarchs sought to betray their flocks into union with western heretics, the
first step to which was the introduction of the papal calendar in 1924.
However, they were foiled, at least in part, by the determined opposition of a
handful of priests and several hundred thousand laymen. Again, in Russia,
certain bishops and clergy created the so-called "Living Church" with
the blessing of the Soviets in opposition to the true Church led by Patriarch
Tikhon. This heretical schism was eventually crushed, but only after wreaking
great damage on the Church with the loss of millions of souls. Then, in 1927,
came the still more destructive schism of Metropolitan Sergius of
Nizhni-Novgorod, who published a declaration placing the official Russian
Church into submission to the militantly atheist State.
St. Seraphim of Sarov had prophesied a
hundred years before: "The Lord has revealed to me, wretched Seraphim,
that there will be great woes on the Russian land, the Orthodox faith will be
trampled on, and the hierarchs of the Church of God and other clergy will
depart from the purity of Orthodoxy. And for this the Lord will severely punish
them. I, wretched Seraphim, besought the Lord for three days and three nights
that He would rather deprive me of the Kingdom of Heaven, but have mercy on
them. But the Lord replied: I will not have mercy on them; for they teach the
teachings of men, and with their tongue honour Me, but their heart is far from
Me.'"[98]
And at another time he said that the
hierarchs of that time would become so impious that they would exceed in
impiety the Greek hierarchs of the time of Theodosius the Younger (fifth
century), so that they would not believe in the chief dogma of the faith of
Christ.[99]
As Archbishop Averky writes:
"Terrible upheavals, unheard of in history since the first ages of
Christianity, have been lived through and are still being lived through by our
Russian Orthodox Church. But it is not so much these bloody persecutions,
likening her to the early Church, that are terrible in themselves, as the inner
corruption which began in her and in the whole of the Orthodox Church after the
Bolshevik coup. What we have in mind is that corrupting spirit which
began to reveal itself openly, and which at first merged into the so-called
'living church' and 'renovationist' movement, and then - into the destructive
compromise with the God-fighting communist power. This was the spirit of
Apostasy in the bowels of the Orthodox Church herself, which engendered all
kinds of divisions and schisms, both there in the Homeland enslaved by the
atheists, and here, abroad. This spirit of Apostasy
is, of course, far more dangerous and destructive for souls than open bloody
persecutions. It is the inner betrayal of Christ the Saviour with the
preservation of merely external, visible faithfulness to Him.
"Was it not about this that Bishop
Theophanes the Recluse prophesied more than eighty years ago in his
interpretation of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, when he said: 'Although
the name of Christianity will be heard everywhere, and churches and church
rites will be seen everywhere, all this will be only appearance, while within
will be true apostasy (pp. 491-492). Christ Himself in His Sermon on the
Mount clearly said that nobody can serve
two masters (Matthew 6.24); it is impossible simultaneously to serve
God and Mammon, that is, this world
lying in evil; it is impossible at one and the same time to please Christ
and Beliar, that is, the servants of the coming Antichrist, in the person of
the clear or secret God-fighting authorities (II Corinthians
6.15)."[100]
"Soon after the publication of
Metropolitan Sergius' declaration," writes E. Lopeshanskaya, "Bishop
Damascene [one of the faithful martyr-bishops of the Catacomb Church] had
thought about the fate of the Russian Orthodox Church in the image of two of
the churches of the Apocalypse: those of Philadelphia and Laodicea. The Church
of Patriarch Tikhon was the Church of Philadelphia.. And next to the Church of
Philadelphia was the Church of Laodicea - that of Metropolitan Sergius."[101]
Now this identification of the
Philadelphian Church with the Russian Tikhonite or Catacomb Church was disputed
by a fellow-martyr of Bishop Damascene's, Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan, who is
reported to have said in 1934: "Not we, but those who will come after us
are the Philadelphian Church."[102]
However, we may suppose him to have been thinking of the latter part of the
prophecy concerning the Philadelphian Church, which had not been fulfilled in
his time and has not been fulfilled even now. This is the promise of an open door being extended to her
hierarchs:
3.8. I know thy works; behold, I have set before
thee an open door, and no man can shut it; for thou hast a little strength.
The meaning of this phrase is explained by
St. Paul's words: Praying for us also,
that God may open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the Mystery of Christ,
for which I am also in bonds; that I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak
(Colossians 4.3-4; cf. I Corinthians 16.9).
The Catacomb Church was in bonds for most
of the twentieth century, as Paul was in Rome in the first century.
Nevertheless, although the Church suffers
trouble, as an evil-doer, even unto bonds,
the word of God is not bound (II
Timothy 2.9). The Lord can open the
door of faith to the Gentiles (Acts 14.27) now as He did then; and
here He promises the Philadelphian Church, i.e. the True Orthodox Church of
Russia and perhaps throughout the world, that since she has kept His word and
not denied His name in the midst of the most terrible persecutions, He will
release her from bondage and give her the opportunity to proclaim the word of God
freely.
"These words in all probability refer
to that spreading of the Gospel throughout the world which has penetrated from
the Eastern Church into China, Japan, India, Persia, Africa and other pagan
countries." (St. John of Kronstadt)
Looking at the world from a worldly point
of view, it is difficult to see how this prophecy could be fulfilled. In Russia
today, it is still the Laodicean Church of Sergianist Ecumenism that is
dominant rather than the Philadelphian Church of True Orthodoxy; and faith and
morals are in sharp decline throughout the world. The faithful people of the
Church are preparing for the coming of the Antichrist rather than a dramatic
expansion of the Church of Christ.
And yet, as Tertullian said, "the
blood of the Christians is the seed of the Church" - and where, if ever,
has more blood been shed for Christ than in the past century in Russia? This
alone should give us reason to hope for a rich harvest of souls entering the
Church before the end. Moreover, there are many prophecies foretelling the
resurrection of Holy Russia and a spectacular expansion of the Church
throughout the world, as, for example, the following remarkable Greek prophecy
dating probably from the ninth century and found in the monastery of St. Sabbas,
near Jerusalem:-
"At various times this great people
[the Russians] will fall into sin and for this will be chastised through
considerable trials. In about a thousand years [i.e. in the 1900s] this people,
chosen by God, will falter in its Faith and its standing for the Truth of
Christ. It will become proud of its earthly might and glory, will cease to seek
the Kingdom and will want paradise not in Heaven but on this sinful earth.
"However not all this people will
tread this broad and pernicious path, though a substantial majority will,
especially its governing class. On account of this great fall, a terrible fiery
trial will be sent from on high to this people which will despise the ways of
God. Rivers of blood shall flow across their land, brother shall slay brother,
more than once famine shall visit the land and gather its dread harvest, nearly
all the churches and other holy places shall be destroyed or suffer sacrilege,
many shall perish.
"A part of this people, rejecting
iniquity and untruth, will pass over the borders of their homeland and will be
dispersed like unto the people of the Jews all over the world. Nevertheless the
Lord will not show His wrath on them to the uttermost. The blood of thousands
of martyrs will cry to the heavens for mercy. A spirit of sobriety will grow
among this chosen people and they will return to God. At last this period of
cleansing trial, appointed by the Righteous Judge, will come to an end, and
once more Holy Orthodoxy will shine forth and those northern lands will be
resplendent with the brightness of a faith reborn.
"This wonderful light of Christ will
shine forth from there and enlighten all the peoples of the earth. This will be
helped by that part of the people providentially sent ahead into the diaspora,
who will create centres of Orthodoxy - churches of God all over the world.
"Christianity will then be revealed
in all its heavenly beauty and fullness. Most of the peoples of the world will
become Christian. And for a time a period of peace, prosperity and Christian
living will come to the whole world...
"And then? Then, when the fullness of
time has come, a great decline in faith will begin and everything foretold in
the Holy Scriptures will occur. Antichrist will appear and the world will
end."[103]
3.8.
For thou hast a little strength, and hast kept My word, and hast not denied My
name.
He shows the reason why the Church obtains these
gifts, namely, that she does not trust in her own powers, but in the grace of
Christ the King. (The Venerable Bede)
These
words are reminiscent of the following passage from Daniel: They shall profane the sanctuary of
strength, and they shall remove the perpetual sacrifice, and make the
abomination desolate. And the transgressors shall bring about a covenant by
deceitful ways: but a people knowing their God shall prevail, and do valiantly.
And the intelligent of the people shall understand much: yet shall they fall by
the sword, and by flame, and by captivity, and by spoil of many days. And they
shall be helped with a little help; but many shall attach themselves to them
with treachery. And some of them that understand shall fall, to try them as
fire, and to test them, and that they may be manifested at the time of the end,
for the matter is yet for a set time (11.31-35).
The parallel between this people and the
Christians of the True Orthodox Church is striking. The profanation of the
sanctuary of strength and the removal of the perpetual sacrifice refers to the
Bolsheviks' destruction of churches and removal into prison of the priests who
celebrate the Sacrifice of the Eucharist, replacing them by false priests and
churches which do not have the Grace of the sacraments. The deceitfully
arranged covenant refers to Metropolitan Sergius' pact with the atheists, which
introduced the abomination of desolation
- militant atheism and anti-theism - into the heart of the Church's
administration. It was of just such a covenant that the Prophet Isaiah wrote: Thus says the Lord God:... hail will sweep
away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter. Then your
covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with hell will not
stand; when the overwhelming scourge passes through you will be beaten down by
it... (Isaiah 28.15, 17-19)
As for the abomination of desolation, this refers to the renovationist
"Living Church" according to St. John of Kronstadt's vision of 1908:
"We went further, and entered a big cathedral. I wanted to cross myself,
but the elder said to me: 'Here is the abomination of desolation'... The
cathedral, the priest, the people - these are the heretics, the apostates, the
godless, who departed from the Faith of Christ and the Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church and recognised the renovationist living church, which does not
have the Grace of Christ."[104]
The
people knowing their God are the believers of the True Orthodox Church, who
reject this evil covenant and abomination. They have fallen by the sword, and by flame, and by
captivity, and by spoil of many days - over seventy years of struggle
against the Soviet Antichrist. Just as the Philadelphian Church is said to have
little strength, so these Christians
are said to be helped with a little help;
and in material and political terms they are indeed weak. Many shall attach themselves to them with treachery - and many
traitors, KGB agents, have attached themselves to the True Orthodox Christians,
causing some of them to fall temporarily, being tried as with fire. And all this takes place in the last days, at the time of the end, and yet before
the final destruction of the tormentor, the
king of the north, on the mountains of Israel (Daniel 11.36-45; cf. Ezekiel
38 and 39).
3.9. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of
Satan, who say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them
to come and make obeisance before they feet, and to know that I have loved
thee.
The phrase the synagogue of Satan was used before, in the message to the
Church of Smyrna (2.9), which in Archbishop Averky's interpretation represents
the second period in the history of the Church. It can be interpreted in two
ways. Either it refers to the Jews, who have been at the forefront of the
persecutions against the Christians in the twentieth, as in the first three
centuries, or to the false brethren who have betrayed the Israel of God (Galatians 6.16), the Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church, and thereby ceased to be true
Jews, i.e. real Christians. For he is
not a Jew, who is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward
in the flesh. But he is a Jew, who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of
the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men,
but of God (Romans 2.28-29).
Of such true, Christian Jews it is
written: In those days ... ten men of
all the languages of the nations shall take hold of the hem of a Jew, saying,
We shall go with thee; for we have learned that God is with you (Zechariah
8.23).
"Here is foretold the mass conversion
of the Jews to Christ which must take place in the last, that is, the sixth
period in the construction of the Holy Church... This triumphant promise
relates, in all probability, to the last times, after the breaking of the sixth
seal from the book of the destinies of the world, when great signs in the sun,
the moon and the stars will begin to appear, and terrible upheavals in the
elements - upheavals which will be restrained from appearing until the
conversion to Christianity and return to Palestine of one hundred and forty
four thousand Jews is accomplished, as we clearly see in Revelation
(7.2-8). They will be regenerated, as some fathers of the Church, in particular
St. Ephraim the Syrian and St. Hippolytus of Rome, have surmised, by the
Prophet Elijah's preaching of the Gospel of Christ." (St. John of
Kronstadt)
In the early 1920s the Church writer and
hieromartyr Bishop Mark Novoselov identified the Jews in this passage with the
persecutors of the Church in Bolshevik Russia. "[St. John] with complete
clarity speaks about the conversion of the God-fighting people to the Church of
Christ, when she, few in numbers and powerless from an external point of view,
but powerful with an inner strength and faithfulness to her Lord (Revelation
3.8) will draw to herself the remnant
of the God-fighting tribe. Behold, says
the Lord to the Angel of the Church of Philadelphia, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews, and
are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and make obeisance before
they feet, and to know that I have loved thee.
"Gazing with the eye of faith at that
which the Lord has done before our eyes, and applying the ear of our heart and
mind to the events of our days, comparing that which is seen and heard with the
declarations of the Word of God, I cannot but feel that a great, wonderful and
joyous mystery of God's economy is coming towards us: the Judaising haters and
persecutors of the Church of God, who are striving to subdue and annihilate
her, by the wise permission of Providence will draw her to purification and
strengthening, so as to present her
[to Christ] as a glorious Church, having
no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but so that she should be holy and
blameless (Ephesians 6.27).
"And in His time, known only to the
One Lord of time, this, according to the son of thunder's strict expression synagogue of Satan will bow before the
pure Bride of Christ, conquered by her holiness and blamelessness and, perhaps,
frightened by the image of the Antichrist. And if the rejection of the Apostle
Paul's fellow-countrymen was, in his words, the reconciliation of the world [with God], what will be their acceptance if not life from the dead? (Romans
11.15)."[105]
Lev Tikhomirov agrees with this
interpretation: Is this conversion of the Jews that salvation of all Israel which the Apostle Paul
foretold? In the Apocalypse it is said that the saved will come of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are
Jews, and are not, but do lie. But not the whole of the synagogue will come, but only of the synagogue, that is, a part of
it. But even here where the Apostle Paul says that the whole of Israel will be saved, he means only a part: for they are not all Israel, which are of
Israel
They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of
God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed (Romans
9.6,8).
The opinion is widespread among us that
the conversion of the Jews will take place at the very appearance of the
Saviour, when they shall cry out: Blessed is He That cometh in the name of the
Lord. But this is not evident from the Apocalypse. But if the Philadelphian
conversion will bring all Israel
that is to be saved to Christ, then this will, of course, be a great event,
fully explaining the rejoicing of the Heavens. Israel is a chosen people with
whom it will not be possible to find a comparison when he begins to do the work
of God. The Jews will, of course, multiply the forces of Christianity for the
resistance against the Antichrist. If
the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, says the Apostle
Paul, what shall the receiving of them
be, but life from the dead? (Romans 11.15).[106]
3.10-11. Because thou hast kept the word of My
patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come
upon the whole world, to try those that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come
quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.
Because you have kept My example in
suffering adversity, I also will keep you from the impending afflictions, not,
indeed, that you may not be tempted, but that you may not be overcome by
adversity
Do not grow weary in endurance, for I will help you quickly, in case
another, through your failure, receive the reward which was decreed for you. So
it is impossible that the number of the saints which is fixed with God should
be diminished by the faithlessness of the increasing tares. For if the lost
crown is delivered to another, the place of him who has lost it is not vacant.
(The Venerable Bede)
Take
heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing,
drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come on you unexpectedly. For
it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth
(Luke 21.34-35).
Thus "at that time there will be an
increased danger of losing faith because of the multitude of temptations. On
the other hand, the reward for faithfulness will be, so to speak, right at
hand. Therefore it is necessary to be especially watchful so as not to lose the
possibility of salvation through lightmindedness, as, for example, the wife of
Lot lost it." (Archbishop Averky)
For the
righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in whatever day he shall
transgress (Ezekiel 33.12).
"In this second interpretation, the hour of temptation is virtually
synonymous with the great tribulation
which will come just before the end of the world, when the days will be shortened for the sake of the elect and immediately after the tribulation of those
days the end of everything will come (Matthew 24.21,22,29)."[107]
3.12-13. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar
in the temple of My God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him
the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, which is new Jerusalem,
which cometh down out of heaven from My God; and I will write upon him My new
name. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the Churches.
According to the ancient author Strabo,
Philadelphia was frequently subject to earthquakes, and during the earthquakes
the citizens had to flee out of the city. Russia in the twentieth century is an
earthquake zone in the spiritual sense, and many millions have fled abroad and
into the catacombs. But the faithful Christian will escape unharmed from all
the traumas that the Russian people has had to undergo. Just as the
Philadelphian Christian of the first century was promised that he would not
have to go out any more, i.e. flee
from his house in case it fell on top of him, so the True Russian Christian of
the twentieth century is promised that he will not have to flee abroad or into
the catacombs any more, but will remain as a
pillar in the temple of My God.
St. Clement of Rome writes: "The
Church is not of the present age, but is from above. For She is spiritual, like
our Jesus, and was revealed in the last times in order to save us. And the
Church, though spiritual, was revealed in the Flesh of Christ... If we do the
will of our Father, God, we shall belong to the first Church, the spiritual
one, which was created before the sun and moon. But if we do not the will of
the Lord, we shall fall under the scripture which says: My house is become a den of thieves (Jeremiah 7.11; Matthew
21.23)."[108]
"The placing of a pillar in the Church of Christ which
has not been vanquished by the gates of hell (figuratively represented here in
the form of a house) indicates that the one who overcomes in temptations
belongs to the Church of Christ inviolably; that is, he has a most solid
position in the Kingdom of Heaven. The high reward for such a one will also be
the writing upon him of a triple name: the name of a child of God, as belonging
inseparably to God; the name of a citizen of the new or heavenly Jerusalem; and
the name of Christian, as an authentic member of the Body of Christ. The New
Jerusalem, beyond any doubt, is the heavenly triumphant Church (21.2; Galatians
4.26), which cometh down out of heaven
because the very origin of the Church from the Son of God, Who came down from heaven (John
3.13), is heavenly; it give to people heavenly gifts and raises them to
heaven." (Archbishop Averky)
"We must have written in our hearts
the new name of God, which is His incarnation, which took place in the new, or
last times, and is newer than anything else under the sun." (Patriarch
Anthimus)
7. The Church of Laodicea
3.14.
And unto the angel of the Church of Laodicea write: These things saith the
Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.
Laodicea means the lovely tribe of the
Lord, or, they were in vomiting. For there were there both those to whom He
said, I will spew thee out of My mouth, and those also to whom He said
this, Whom I love, I rebuke and chasten. (The Venerable Bede)
"The last word of the Revelation of
the Lord is addressed to the Laodicean Church, and reflects in itself the
prophecy about the final condition of faith upon earth after great numbers of
confessors of the Church have been taken up to the throne of God, and when,
according to the expression of the Gospel, faith will hardly be found on the
earth (Luke 18.8)... The message to the angel of the Church of Laodicea
refers, in all probability, to the very last times." (St. John of
Kronstadt)
Lev Tikhomirov writes: "In the
Philadelphian Church, we must think, the pure Bride of Christ is preserved to
the end of the world. But the majority of those called 'Christians' will
probably fall ever lower, since the world will move into the seventh epoch, the
Laodicean."[109]
"The Church of Laodicea is the last,
most frightful epoch before the end of the world, characterised by indifference
to the Faith and outward prosperity...
"Laodicea, which is now called
'Exi-Hissar' by the Turks, that is, old fortress, is in Phrygia, by the river
Lyka and near the city of Colossae. In antiquity it was famous for it trade,
the fertility of its soil and its cattle-breeding. Its population was very
large and wealthy, as is witnessed by the excavations, which revealed many
precious pieces of sculpture, fragments of luxurious marble decorations,
cornices, pedestals, etc. We may suppose that it was its wealth that made
Laodicea so lukewarm to the Christian faith, for which the city was subjected
to the wrath of God - its complete destruction and devastation by the Turks (in
1009)." (Archbishop Averky)
Thus
saith the Amen. "The use of this epithet contains in itself a threat,
or, at least, a warning, that the Laodiceans should not err with regard to the
justice of what will be said later: all this is said by Him Who is the purest
truth, unfailing faithfulness."[110]
St. Justin the Martyr writes: I shall
give you another testimony from the Scriptures, that God begat before all
creatures a Beginning,
Who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the
Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and
Logos
For He can be called by all those names, since He ministers to the
Fathers will
The Word of Wisdom, Who is Himself this God begotten of the
Father of all things, and Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and the Glory of the
Begetter, will bear evidence to me, when He speaks by Solomon: The Lord made Me the Beginning of His ways
for His works. He established Me before the age, in the beginning before He
made the earth [Proverbs 8.22,23].[111]
St. Ambrose of Milan writes: The Son of
God has no beginning, seeing that He already was at the beginning, nor shall He
come to an end, Who is the Beginning and
the End of the Universe; for begin the Beginning, how could He take and
receive that which He already had, or how shall He come to an end, being
Himself the End of all things, so that in that End we have an abiding-place
without end? The divine Generation is not an event occurring in the course of
time, and within its limits, and therefore before it time is not, and in it
time has no place.[112]
"The Lord is called the beginning of the creation of God
not, of course, in the sense that He is the first creation of God, but in the
sense that all things were made by Him,
and without Him was not anything made that was made (John 1.3), and
likewise in the sense that He is the recreation of fallen man (Galatians
6.15; Colossians 3.10,1.15,1.18)." (Archbishop Averky)
3.15-16.
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would that thou wast
cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I
will spew thee out of My mouth.
You are neither fervent in faith, nor
entirely unbelieving. But, if you were still unbelieving, you would still have
the hope of conversion, whereas now, in that you do not do the will of the Lord
which you know, you shall be cast forth from the bosom of My Church. (The
Venerable Bede)
Laodicea's water supplies contained large
calcium impurities, which can be seen to this day. If someone drank the
lukewarm water it would make him vomit.[113]
The Lord does not say a single good word
about the Laodicean Church, but reproaches her particularly for her lack of
zeal for the faith and tolerance of evil. As we have seen, Hieromartyr Bishop
Damascene of Glukhov identifies her with the apostate Soviet church, the Moscow
Patriarchate. Without basically disagreeing with this interpretation, we may
nevertheless give the Laodicean church a wider denotation, encompassing all the
so-called Orthodox churches of the last times, whose distinguishing feature is
their indifference to all questions of faith, as witnessed by their
participation in "the heresy of heresies", Ecumenism.
Ecumenism is the heresy that there is no
such thing as heresy as the apostles and fathers of the Church understand that
term - that is, a false teaching on a matter of faith that estranges those who
adhere to it from the unity of the Church. Ecumenism is the heresy that there
is no single faith, whether Orthodox, Papist or Protestant, whether Christian,
Jewish, Muslim or pagan, which expresses the fullness of the truth, and that
all existing faiths (except Ecumenism itself) are more or less in error. It
implies that the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church has foundered on the
reef of sectarian strife, and that She has to be re-founded on the sands of
doctrinal compromise and indifference to the truth. It is the tower of Babel
rebuilt, a babble of conflicting tongues united only in their insistence that
they all speak the same language.
The dominant characteristic of Ecumenism
is lukewarmness. Rejecting any sharp
distinction between truth and falsehood, Ecumenism accepts all churches and
faiths, however incompatible with each other, as being simultaneously true.
Hence the search for truth is replaced by the search for unity - only not unity
truth, but unity in indifference to truth.
However, "in relation to the faith
the middle course has no value. For we may hope that he who is cold, and has no
hot water, will one day receive it. But he who burned in spirit through Holy
Baptism, but then grew cold, removes from himself the hope of salvation."
(St. John of Kronstadt). For "the cold man, who has not known faith, can
more easily believe and become a fervent believer than a cooled-off Christian
who has become indifferent to the Faith. Even an open sinner is better than a
lukewarm Pharisee who is satisfied with his moral condition. That is why the
Lord Jesus Christ reproached the Pharisees, preferring to them the repentant
publican and harlots. Open and evident sinners can more easily come to an
awareness of their own sinfulness and to true repentance than people with a
lukewarm conscience who do not acknowledge their moral infirmities."
(Archbishop Averky)
Ecumenism is spiritually akin to
Communism. Both movements aim at the construction of a materialist paradise on
earth through the destruction of traditional forms of ecclesiastical and
political life; and both achieved institutional status at about the same time -
the years 1917-19. Together, they constitute the third stage in the process of apostasy referred to by St. Paul after
the first stage - Papism and the second stage - Protestantism.
"The ideologue of Ecumenism,"
writes Archbishop Averky, "which is the natural consequence of the
nostalgia of the Protestant world for the Church that they have lost, was the
German pastor Christoph Blumhardt, whom the Protestants call for that reason 'the
great prophet of the contemporary world'. He called all the Protestants to
unity for 'the construction of the Kingdom of God on earth', but he died before
the organisation of the Ecumenical movement, in 1919. His fundamental idea
consisted of the proposition that 'the old world has been destroyed, and a new
one is rising on its ruins'. He placed three problems before Christianity: 1)
the realisation of the best social structure, 2) the overcoming of confessional
disagreements and 3) the working together for the education of the whole world
community of nations with the complete liquidation of war.
"It was in these three points that
the aims of Ecumenism were formulated by the present general secretary of the
Council of the Ecumenical movement, Visser-t-Hooft, who saw the means for their
realisation in the Church's pursuit of social aims. For this it is first of all
necessary to overcome confessional differences and create one church. The
renewed one church will have the possibility of preparing the way for the triumph
of Socialism, which will lead to the creation of one world State as the Kingdom
of God on earth...."[114]
"Since the fall of Orthodox
Russia," continues Averky, "he
who restrains (II Thessalonians 2.7) has been no more, as was
frequently prophesied by the luminary Theophanes [the Recluse] and by our great
all-Russian righteous one, Fr. John of Kronstadt, and by many other
Spirit-bearing prophets of our time, - and everything in the world has
tottered, as if shaken to its very foundations. The spirit of apostasy has begun to proclaim itself
with unusual cynicism and shamelessness everywhere in the world in all spheres
of personal, family, social and state life, as never before. Whole millions of
people, formerly Christian by birth, are not ashamed now openly and in the
hearing of all to declare their unbelief and godlessness, and state power
officially registers them as not belonging to any confession of faith;
immorality has reached frightening proportions, in most cases dissoluteness and
pornography are not only not prosecuted, but are even cultivated by the powers
that be, right to the systematic corruption of the younger generation in
schools; the former concepts of duty, honour, nobility and conscience have
almost disappeared - and in their place have appeared coarse greed, purely
egoistical calculation, material benefits and fleshly pleasures. Particularly
bitter is this for contemporary youth, which is almost completely deprived of
spiritual zeal and that lofty enthusiasm for sacrificial service to neighbours
and attraction to high moral ideas that characterised youth in former times.
For many the aim of life has become only career ambitions and work with
material guarantees, external comfort and base carnal delights. And there is an
unbelievable increase in child crime, which the newspapers constantly talk
about, inspiring us with the most serious anxieties concerning the near future.
"In one word, the world, terrible to say, the
Christian world now presents a dismal, joyless picture of the deepest
religious-moral fall.
"And at the same time, in such sharp
contrast with all this dismal reality, more and more often and more and more
insistently there sound the repeated calls to peace and union.
"Can one believe, in these circumstances and seeing all that is happening, in the