THE BOOK OF THE END
An Interpretation of the Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian
Vladimir Moss
CONTENTS
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
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 and philosopher Lev
Tikhomirov wrote concerning the difficulty of understanding the Apocalypse:
“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 God’s 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]
Again, 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
clear signs of the end are the extraordinary growth of science, the return of
the Jews to their homeland, 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
translator’s introduction to Archbishop Averky’s commentary: “We do seem,
indeed, to be living in the last times of this world’s 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)?
However,
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 it’s not soon’ or
‘it’s all the same – it’s 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 dénouement 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 God’s work and in the constant preservation of their readiness
to appear at the last judgement.”[9]
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 world’s 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 men’s 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…”[10]
Some
epochs have a particular significance for the life of the Church. Thus the
victory of St. Constantine over Maxentius 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. Such events are
“apocalyptic” in the sense that they point to the central event of all
apocalyptic literature – the Coming of Christ. For just as Constantine’s
victory ushered in a kind of resurrection before the General Resurrection, so
Russia’s defeat has been a judgement before the Last Judgement – for judgement must begin at the House of God
(I Peter 4.17). These changes therefore betoken major turning-points in
the war between Christ and Antichrist.
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.”[11]
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 John’s 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
seer’s 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.”[12]
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 late twentieth and early twenty-first century, 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.
Concerning
the question of literal versus symbolical or mystical 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 Church’s 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).”[13]
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”.[14] 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.”[15]
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. John’s 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 Lord’s 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.”[16]
Again, just as Daniel’s 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 world’s phenomena.”[17]
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 book’s
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. 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”.[18]
Accordingly, I have given an historical interpretation to each of these three
parts. And in general, 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”.[19]
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 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 reader’s
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.”[20]
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.
July 31 /
August 13, 2003.
Forefeast of the
Procession of Honourable and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord.
Righteous
Joseph of Arimathea.
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.”[21]
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.[22]
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.”[23]
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.”[24]
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!”[25]
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.
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. 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.”[26]
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!”[27]
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!”[28]
Samson,
according to St. Ephraim the Syrian, “carried seven cedars as an image of
seven-rayed grace.”[29]
And Delilah cut off seven locks of his hair, in which consisted his
extraordinary strength (Judges 16.14-19).[30]
“By
these seven churches,” says the Venerable Bede, “he writes to every church, for
universality is wont to be denoted by the number seven, in that all the time of
this age is evolved from seven days.”[31]
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 all the time
during which the Church is among aliens; or by themselves, as ten by ten are a
hundred, and twelve by twelve are a hundred and forty-four, by which number the
whole body of the saints is denoted in the Apocalypse.”[32]
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”.[33]
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.[34]
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.[35]
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).”[36]
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, for He had already named Him in the Father by
saying, Who was to come.”
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.”[37]
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.”[38]
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).”[39]
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).[40]
“Because
the King of kings and heavenly Priest united us unto 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.” (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.”[41]
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 aivnios and proaivnios, 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 (i.e. aivnios) 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.”[42]
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 the first He
came to be judged, will be manifested at the time when He shall come to judge”
(Venerable Bede).
Patriarch
Anthimus of Jerusalem writes: “The clouds signify the heavenly powers of angels
and saints.”[43]
“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.
“By interposing an Amen, He confirms that
without doubt that will happen, which, by the revelation of God, he knows most
surely is to come to pass” (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.”[44]
“He
is the beginning Whom no one precedes, the end Whom no one succeeds in His
Kingdom” (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.’”[45]
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.
“He
indicates also a fit time for a spiritual vision, for Scripture is wont to express
the reason of things in terms, frequently, of the place, or the body, or the
air, and in like manner the time. The Angels, namely, visit Abraham at noon (Genesis
18.1), Sodom in the evening (Genesis 19.1); Adam after midday (Genesis
3.8) was afraid at the voice of the Lord, walking up and down; and Solomon (III
Kings 3.11) the wisdom which it was not to be his to retain” (Venerable
Bede).
“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 sabbatvn, 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)[46]
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).”[47]
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”
(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 the time in these places alone, but all fulness is
comprised in the number seven. Asia, which is interpreted 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”
(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.”[48]
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.’”[49]
“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 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).”
(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
1.160; the last, because in Him are
all things restored (Ephesians 1.10). Not only, He saith, 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).” (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.”[50]
“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.”[51]
“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)’.”[52]
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.”[53]
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.
The 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 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.”[54]
In
the present interpretation, it is the latter aspect of this prophecy - its
reference to the history of the whole
Church until the Second Coming of Christ - which is explored. This is not to
deny the validity of the former aspect - that which refers only to church life
at the end of the first century; 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.”[55]
“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).
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.”[56]
St.
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 would 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 meats 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.[57]
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.”[58]
“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
man’s 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.”[59]
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 signifies the second period, the period of persecutions
against the Church, of which there were ten in all…[60]
“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 Jews,
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.[61]
“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.”[62]
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.”[63]
“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)
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.[64]
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 satan’s 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.”[65]
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).”[66]
“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.[67]
St.
Jerome writes: “The new name is that of Christians.”[68]
“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)
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 the papacy 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 the Roman 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.[69]
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.”[70]
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.”[71]
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)
“It
is brought about by the just judgement of God, that she should lie in a bed of
eternal punishment, who made the wretched lie down in a bed of lust (St. Bede).
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.
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. And
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 dominion over them. It was only
the heroic firmness of St. Mark, metropolitan of Ephesus, that preserved a
remnant faithful to Orthodoxy in the East.
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…”[72]
“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”.[73]
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 its
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.”[74]
“I
send unto you no new doctrine; but keep that which he have received unto the
end.” (St. 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.”[75]
Tikhomirov
writes: “In the Thyateiran age there also appeared Russia 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.”[76]
A
Greek prophecy of the ninth century predicted this rise of Russia in the place
of Byzantium: “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.”[77]
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.” (St. 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.”[78]
“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.
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, as not sufficiently diligent in correcting the bad.
He commends him, however, as having some who walk in white, and the name
‘Sardis’ agrees with these, as that of a precious stone. To thyself, indeed,
thou seemest to be alive. But if thou art not watchful in the correction of the
wicked, thou wilt henceforth 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.” (St. 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 was 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…”[79]
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 of 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.”[80]
Hence the exhortation: 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).
“This
means that 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: although 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 Saridan epoch calls to repentance and who wear white garments by their spiritual enthusiasm give a beginning to
the Philadelphian Church.”[81]
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.” (St. 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 emigrés, 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”.[82]
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.[83]
According to Bede, it is “royal power”.
In some ancient manuscripts, it is written the key of hell instead of the key of David.[84]
“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.”[85]
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…”[86]
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.’”[87]
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.[88]
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).”[89]
“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.”[90]
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.”[91]
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 has been in bonds for most of this 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.”[92]
3.8. For thou hast a little strength, and
hast kept My word, and hast not denied My name.
“He shews the
reason on account of which the Church obtains these gifts, namely, that it does
not trust in its own powers, but in the grace of Christ, the King.” (St. 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.”[93]
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).”[94]
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).”[95]
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
thou hast kept My example in suffering adversity, I also will keep thee from
the impending afflictions, not, indeed, that thou mayest not be tempted, but
that thou mayest not be overcome by adversity. And although the Church is
always tried by adversity, yet, in this place, the hour of temptation, and the
humiliation of the Jews in the time of antichrist, may be signified; that, as
frequently happens in the course of this book at the sixth in order, so here
also at the sixth angel, the last persecution may be designated. But as to
this, it is well believed that the wicked Jews will be deceived as well as
deceive, but that others will understand the law spiritually through the
instruction of the great prophet Elijah, and will be incorporated among the
members of the Church, and bravely overcome the enemy.” (St. Bede)
Do
not grow weary in endurance, for I will help thee quickly, lest perhaps
another, through thy failure, receive the reward which was decreed for thee. 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.” (St.
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).”[96]
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).”[97]
“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)
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.”
(St. 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.”[98]
“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.”[99]
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 Father’s 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].”[100]
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.”[101]
“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.
“Thou
art neither fervent in faith, nor entirely unbelieving. But, if thou wert still
unbelieving, there would yet remain to thee the hope of conversion, whereas
now, in that thou doest not the will of the Lord which thou knowest, thou shalt
be cast forth from the bosom of My Church.” (St. 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.[102]
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…”[103]
“Since
the fall of Orthodox Russia,” continues Archbishop 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 which 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
with regard to 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
sincerity and, most importantly, in the good intentions of these appeals?
“These
appeals go out: in the East - from the God-fighting Soviet power, which has
drowned our Homeland in blood, and from its obedient tool, the Moscow
Patriarchate, which has thoroughly deserved its name of the ‘Soviet church’
(what a terrible combination of words!); in the West - from papal Rome, which
has compromised itself in history by its evil and antichristian politics of
enslavement of those who think otherwise, and from the Protestant world, which
is guilty of the religious chaos which distinguishes the present seemingly
Christian world that has descended into complete godlessness.
“With
the aim of propagandising this ‘peace’ and ‘unity’, the representatives of the
God-fighting power and its obedient servants in cassock go round the whole world
sowing the seeds of lies and trying to deceive and lead into error naive and
trusting people. It was with this aim that the papal throne created the
so-called ‘Eastern Rite’ so as to lead into error the Orthodox who do not know
their faith well, and now it has even called an ‘Ecumenical Council’, in which
all the so-called ‘separated brethren’ will be able to take part, although at
the same time the encyclical published by the pope leaves no doubt as to the
real aim of this ‘council’ - the unconditional submission of all to papal
power. Nor is the Protestant world uninvolved in this striving for ‘peace’ and
‘unity’ - that world which has itself unceasingly created so many divisions, in
the form of a great quantity of sects, and which is now propagandising its own
‘ecumenical’ movement, into the nets of which it is trying, not without
success, to draw the Orthodox, mainly those who have been infected by the
corrupting spirit of ‘living-churchmanship’ and ‘renovationism’.
“How
should the Orthodox relate to all this?
“Must
he strive towards every kind of peace and unity?
“Is
every kind of peace and unity bound to be valuable in his eyes, dear and near
to his True Christian soul?
“Not at all - was the decisive reply to this
question - a question of Christian conscience - of the great ecumenical teacher
and hierarch, the pillar of our Orthodox faith, St. Gregory the Theologian. ‘It is not fitting,’ he said, ‘to treasure every kind of peace, for there
is a good disagreement, and the most destructive unanimity, and one must love
only a good peace, which has a good aim and unites with God’ (Word
6, vol. 1, p. 192).
“Dearest
of all for a Christian is the Truth,
to witness to which the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, as He Himself
said to Pilate (John 18.37). And for the true Christian only one union
can be desirable - union in Christian
truth - the undistorted, unperverted, pure truth, without any admixture of
demonic lies, unpoisoned by any kind of compromise with it. From this point of
view, all these appeals to ‘peace’ and ‘unity’ are unacceptable for the
Christian, for they proceed from people who have encroached on our main
treasure - the pure and undefiled truth of the teaching of Christ which has
been preserved by us in holiness, and who want to substitute for it a lie,
which is of the devil. The unity which has been thought up now by the enemies
of Christ’s pure truth is not a unity in Christ. It is that unity which the
Antichrist is striving to create for himself in his desire to subdue all people
to himself and found his own kingdom on earth.
“All that is taking place now on the summits
of the religious, state and social life of men since our Orthodox Russia was
cast into the dust is nothing other than intense work on the preparation of the
future kingdom of the Antichrist by his servants.”[104]
“The
religious-moral fall of bishops,” writes Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava, “is…
one of the most characteristic signs of the last times. Especially terrible is
the fall of bishops when they fall away from the dogmas of the faith, or, as
the apostle puts it, they want to
pervert the Gospel of Christ (Galatians 1.7). To such the apostle
orders that we say anathema: Whoever will preach to you a Gospel other
than that which we preached to you, he writes, let him be anathema (Galatians 1.9). And one must not linger
here, he says: A heretic after the first
and second admonition reject, knowing that such a one is perverted, condemning
himself (Titus 3.10-11). Otherwise, that is, for indifference to
apostasy from the truth, you may be struck by the wrath of God: because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold
nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth.”[105]
3.17-18. Because thou sayest, I am rich,
and increased in goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art
wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked; I counsel thee to buy
of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that
thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness not appear; and
anointing thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see.
“Gold
tried in the fire signifies the word of teaching of the holy Fathers of the
Church, and white raiment - the
intercession of the Mother of God and the holy God-pleasers.” (St. John of
Kronstadt)
“If you wish to become rich, I counsel you,
with flaming desire and a fervent heart, to acquire from Me, the Enricher, gold
cleansed by the fire of temptation. From it you will have in your heart a
treasure that cannot be stolen, and
you will be clothed in a most bright raiment of virtues, with which you will
cover the nakedness of sin.” (St. Andrew of Caesarea)
St.
Cyprian of Carthage writes: “You, then, who are rich and wealthy, buy for
yourself from Christ gold tried by fire; that you may be pure gold, with your
filth burnt out as if by fire, if you are purged by almsgiving and righteous
works. Buy for yourselves white raiment, that you who had been naked according
to Adam, and were before frightful and unseemly, may be clothed with the white
garment of Christ. And you are a wealthy and rich matron in Christ’s Church,
anoint your eyes, not with the devil’s eye-shadow, but with Christ’s eye-salve,
that you may be able to attain to see God, by deserving well of God, both by good
works and character.”[106]
The lukewarm water in the village adjacent to
Laodicea is very beneficial to the eyes. Laodicea exported this eyesalve to many parts of the world,
but the irony was that the Laodicean Christians were spiritually blind. In the
same way, the contemporary ecumenists go round the world spreading their
lukewarm Gospel, with which they propose to heal the blindness of men, while
not seeing their own utter blindness.[107]
“To anoint the eyes with eyesalve is to gain an
understanding of holy Scripture by the performance of a good work.” (St. Bede)
Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow says: “Remove
the blindness of crude sensuality. Anoint the eyes of your mind with the subtle
ointment of faith in the spiritual and the Divine. Then you will see in truth.”[108]
“Eyesalve
is the virtue of non-acquisitiveness, which opens men’s eyes to the vanity and
emptiness of all the wealth of the corruptible world.” (Archbishop Averky)
The main impulse towards ecumenism has come from
the materially rich but spiritually starved countries of the West. The Lord
here counsels Western Christians, and those Orthodox who have become westerners
in faith and life, to acquire the spiritual wealth of the Orthodox East - that gold which has been tried in the fire of great suffering. For He is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap; and He shall
sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and He shall purify the sons of Levi,
and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an
offering in righteousness (Malachi 3.2-3).
“From
these reproaches of the Laodicean Church leaders it is clear that the
indifference of pastors will be the final phenomenon of Church life combined
with an extraordinary development of their material security. Such a phenomenon
will appear: a church without the grace of the Holy Spirit, and pastors feeding
themselves, and sermons as mere sounds.” (St. John of Kronstadt)
3.19. As many
as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous therefore and repent.
My son, despise not the chastening
of the Lord, neither be weary of His correction; for whom the Lord loveth He
correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth (Proverbs 3.11-12).
Zeal is precisely the virtue that
ecumenism works to destroy: zeal to struggle for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3), zeal to
rebuke all false teachings and extinguish sin. Zeal is that fiery quality akin
to love which the Lord so longed to send upon the earth (Luke 12.49).
According to St. Gregory the Theologian, zeal is the gift that was given to the
disciples in tongues of fire on the day of Pentecost.[109]
Archbishop Averky writes: “The most important
thing in Christianity, according to the clear teaching of the Word of God, is the fire of Divine zeal, zeal for God
and His glory, that Holy Zeal which
alone is able to inspire a man to labours and exploits pleasing to God, without
which there is no authentic spiritual life - nor can there be any true
Christianity. Without this holy zeal Christians are only Christians by name.”[110]
3.20. Behold,
I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I
will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.
“Not
by compulsion, He says, is My presence; for I knock at the door of the heart
and rejoice with those who open to their salvation. This salvation I consider
food and supper, and I eat what they eat, and thus they banish the famine of hearing the word of the Lord
(Amos 8.11) and the darkness of errors.” (St. Andrew of Caesarea)
I have meat to eat that ye know not of… My
meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work (John
4.32,34). The meat which the Lord
ate on this occasion was the
salvation of the Samaritan woman, to whom He said, in very unecumenical
fashion: Ye worship ye know not what: we
know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews (John 4.22).
Ecumenism destroys the very concept of missionary conversion; for if all faiths
are true and salvific, what is the point of converting from one to another? But
in reality, as St. Cyprian says, “God is one, and Christ is one; His Church is
one, and the Faith is one; and the cement of fellowship binds all the people
into the body’s solid unity. That unity cannot be broken…”[111]
3.21-22. To
him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me on My throne, even as I also
overcame, and am set down with My Father on His throne. He that hath an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches.
“To him that overcometh is given the
promise that he will sit on the throne of God, by which is to be understood the
highest dignity of an heir of the Kingdom of heaven, and who reigns together
with Christ Himself, the Conqueror of the devil (cf. Matthew 19.28; Luke
22.30).” (Archbishop Averky)
Protopriest
(now Bishop) Alexander Mileant writes: “The Sacred Scriptures frequently speak
about the trials and sufferings of life as of a feat which is offered to man
for the attainment of the highest reward in heaven. Thus, for example, the
Apostle Peter writes: Brethren, be not
surprised at the fiery trial which is being sent to try you, as though some
strange thing were happening to you, but rejoice inasmuch as ye are partakers
of Christ’s sufferings; that, when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad
also with exceeding joy (I Peter 4.12-13).
He that overcometh has separated
himself from the apostate Laodicean Church in accordance with the command: Come out from among them, and be ye
separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive
you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters (II
Corinthians 6.16-17). In doing
this he will be joined to the true, Philadelphian Church, which will last to
the end of time. (It is significant that the Philadelphian Church was the only
one of the Seven Churches to survive until 1917, the beginning of the era of
the Apocalypse, and the last to fall to the Turks, in 1922-23.)
“By
sitting with Him He means, being a partner in power and judgement. Who
has made us sit together, he says, in heavenly places in Christ. The
Lord, as a Conqueror, sat down with the Father on the throne, in that, after
the conflict of the passion, after the victory of His resurrection, He
manifested Himself more clearly to all, as coequal with the Father in power.”
(St. Bede)
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit saith unto the Churches. This exhortation is repeated at the end of
the message to each of the Churches. For, as Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava
writes, “the people of this age live by faith in progress and soothe themselves
with unrealisable dreams. Stubbornly and with a certain ferocity they drive
away from themselves the very thought of the end of the world and the coming of
the Antichrist. Their eyes are spiritually blinded. Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear. But the
meaning of contemporary events is not hidden from the true children of God. Nay
more: to him on whom the good will of God rests will be revealed exactly both
the time of the coming of the Antichrist and the end of the world. When the Lord will pronounce His
threatening judgement on the sinful world:
My Spirit will not remain among men, seeing they are flesh, then He will
say to His faithful servants: Come out
from among them and separate yourselves and touch not the unclean thing, and I
will receive you (II Corinthians 6.17; cf. Isaiah 52.11). And
He will hide them from the gaze of the world as they sigh in fear at the woes
that are to come. Therefore great is the merit of those who remind the people
of this age of the great times and events that are to come.”[112]
[1] However, according to the Typicon of the Orthodox Church, the Apocalypse is appointed to be read during the Saturday evening vigil service as part of the reading of the whole New Testament. See Archbishop Averky, Guide to the Study of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Testament, volume II, Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, 1956, p. 378 (in Russian). Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Archbishop Averky will be from this work.
[2] As a far from Christian modern writer on the Apocalypse has said: “A book lives as long as it is unfathomable” (D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse, Granada, 1981, p. 2).
[3] As Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow said: “The prophecies become clearer the nearer we come to their decisive fulfilment” (quoted in Sergius and Tamara Fomin, Russia before the Second Coming (Third Edition), Sergiev Posad, 1998, vol. I, p. 19 (in Russian).
[4] Sergius Fomin, Russia before the Second Coming (First Edition), Sergiev Posad, 1993, p. 79 (in Russian).
[5] Tikhomirov, The Religious-Philosophical Foundations of History, Moscow, 1997, p. 555 (in Russian).
[6] Metropolitan Philaret, Sermons and Addresses of the Metropolitan Philaret, Moscow, 1844, part II, p. 87; quoted in Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, London: James Clarke, 1957, p. 8.
[7] Archbishop Theophanes, Selected Letters, Liberty, TN: St. John of Kronstadt Press, 1989, p. 44.
[8] In Archbishop Averky, The Apocalypse in the Teachings of Ancient Christianity, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1995, pp. 34-35.
[9] Tikhomirov, op. cit., pp. 539-40.
[10] Troubetskoy, “Catastrophic Epochs and the Christian Understanding of the End of the World”, Posev, February, 1984, no. 2 (1321), p. 53 (in Russian).
[11] Quoted in Fomin and Fomin, op. cit., volume I, p. 12.
[12] Tikhomirov, op. cit., pp. 542-43, 544.
[13] Op. cit., pp. 28-29, 30.
[14] Kolesnikov, The Seer of the Future, Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, 1972, p. 12 (in Russian).
[15] Archbishop Nicon (Rklitsky), The Life and Works of his Beatitude Anthony, Metropolitan of Kiev and Galich, Montreal, 1965, volume V, p. 135 (in Russian).
[16] St. Ephraim, Commentary on the Diatessaron, XVIII, 14; Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1966, p. 324 (in French).
[17] Tikhomirov, op. cit., p. 543.
[18] Op. cit., p. 556.
[19] Barsov, M. (ed.), The Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian: A Collection of Patristic and Theological Interpretations, Simbirsk, 1894, Sergiev Posad, 2000, p. 131 (in Russian).
[20] Op. cit., p. 31.
[21] St. John of Kronstadt, The Beginning and End of the Earthly World. St. Petersburg, 1904 (in Russian). Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from St. John are from this work.
[22] Vasileiades, The Apocalypse of John, Patmos, 1995, p. 21 (in Greek).
[23] St. Athanasius, Third Discourse against the Arians, 42-43.
[24] Quoted in Sergius Nilus, Holiness Under a Bushel, Forestville, Ca.: St. Elias Publications, 1977 (in Russian).
[25] St. Hippolytus, Treatise on Christ and Antichrist, 29.
[26] Sergius Fomin, Russia before the Second Coming, Sergiev Posad, 1993, p. 79 (in Russian).
[27] Hieromartyr Mark, Letters to Friends. Moscow: St. Tikhon’s Theological Institute, 1994, p. 293 (in Russian).
[28] St. Cyprian, Witness against the Jews in Three Books, I, 20.
[29] St. Ephraim, Sermon 79.
[30] In the Israeli town of Esadot, where this took place, archaeologists have discovered seven locks of hair which are about three thousand years old and which biochemical analysis has shown to have belonged to a man with a muscular strength 70 to 100 times the normal (Vestnik of the Synod of the Latvian Orthodox Church, N 2, 1996; reported in Pravoslavnaia Rus’, N 24 (1573), December 15/28, 1996, p. 16).
[31] Bede, Explanatio Apocalypsis, P.L. 93; translated by Edward Marshall, The Explanation of the Apocalypse by Venerable Bede, Oxford: Parker, 1878. Unless other wise indicated, all quotations from the Venerable Bede are from this work.
[32] Bede, Explanatio Apocalypsis, Epistola ad Eusebium.
[33] Tikhomirov, The Religio-Philosophical Foundations of History, Moscow, 1997, p. 557 (in Russian).
[34] See Hieromartyr Victorinus of Patau, Commentary on the Apocalypse, M.P.L. 5, on 1.16, coll. 320B-D.
[35] St. Gregory Palamas, Homily 17, M.P.G. 151, coll. 229.
[36] Interpretation of the Apocalypse by St. Andrew, Archbishop of Caesarea, Moscow, 1898 (in Russian translation). Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from St. Andrew are from this work.
[37] St. Gregory Palamas, One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, chaps. 70, 71:165, 167. In The Orthodox New Testament, vol. 2, Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles Convent, 1999, p. 551.
[38] St. Athanasius the Great, Second Discourse against the Arians, ch. 21.
[39] Zhdanov, in Barsov, M. (ed.), op. cit., pp.52-53.
[40] For the Holy Fathers on the royal priesthood of all believers, see Professor P.N. Trembelas, The Laity in the Church, Athens: Sotir, 1976, chapter 2 (in Greek).
William Barclay (The Daily Study Bible: The Revelation of John, Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1976, vol. I, pp. 33-34) notes that some MSS read for this verse: “Unto Him that loved us and set us free from our sins in His own blood”. The Greek word for “to set free” is luein, which is very close to the word for “to wash”, louein.
[41] Archimandrites Seraphim (Aleksiev) and Sergius (Yazadzhiev), Why an Orthodox Christian cannot be an Ecumenist, St. Petersburg, 1992 (in Russian).
[42] St. Damascene, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, II, 1. In Eerdmans, Nicene Fathers, second series, IX.
[43] Patriarch Anthimus, Interpretation of the Sacred Apocalypse, Jerusalem, 1856 (in Greek).
[44] St. Jerome, Against Jovianus, Book I, 18. In Eerdmans Nicene Fathers, second series, VI:360.
[45] Fr. Seraphim Rose, in Archbishop Averky, The Apocalypse in the Teachings of Ancient Christianity, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1995, p. 65, note.
[46] William Barclay (op. cit.) writes: “The three earliest references to the Lord’s Day may well be the following. The Didache, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, the first manual of Christian worship and instruction, says of the Christian Church: ‘On the Lord’s Day we meet and break bread’ (Didache 14.1). Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Magnesians, describes the Christians as ‘no longer living for the Sabbath, but for the Lord’s Day’ (Ignatius, To the Magnesians, 9.1). Melito of Sardis wrote a treatise Concerning the Lord’s Day. By early in the second century the Sabbath had been abandoned and the Lord’s Day was the accepted Christian day.” (p. 43)
[47] St. Jerome, Homily 94, on Pascha.
[48] Baron, Commentary on Zechariah, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1918, 1988, p. 132.
[49] Rose, op. cit., p. 69, note.
[50] The Letters of Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava, Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1976, p. 29 (in Russian).
[51] Lopukhin, The Bible Interpreted, St Petersburg, 1911-1913 / Stockholm, 1987 (in Russian).
[52] Zhdanov, op. cit., pp. 64-65.
[53] St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Romans, 9.
[54] Tikhomirov, op. cit., p. 557.
[55] Averky, Handbook to the Study of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Testament, Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1974, vol. I, p. 256 (in Russian).
[56] St. Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies, Book VII, ch. 24. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, V:115.
[57] St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Ephesians, 9.
[58] Tikhomirov, op. cit., pp. 559, 562.
[59] St. Damascene, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, II, 11. In Eerdmans, Nicene Fathers, second series, IX:29,30.
[60] These were, according to Tikhomirov (op. cit., p. 562), 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).
[61] Ioannis E. Antonopoulos, Conspiracy and Love, Athens, 1979 (in Greek). See also Tikhomirov, op. cit., section 7.
[62] St. Hippolytus, Treatise on Christ and Antichrist, 65. In Eerdmans, Anti-Nicene Fathers, V: 218.
[63] St. Aphrahat, Select Demonstrations, VII, 19. In Eerdmans, Nicene Fathers, second series, XIII:381.
[64] See Orthodox Russia, N 17 (1566), September 1/14, 1996, pp. 13-14 (in Russian).
[65] Tikhomirov, op. cit., p. 563.
[66] Metropolitan Philaret, Sermons and Speeches, vol. III, pp. 364-365; in Barsov, op. cit., pp. 87-88.
[67] St. Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition, 23.
[68] St. Jerome, Homily 25 on Psalm 97.
[69] Thus the first really papist Popes, Nicholas I and Gregory VII (Hildebrand) both came from north of the Alps, from the Carolingian dominions, which since the year 800 had resisted the claims of the East Roman State centred in Constantinople. See John S. Romanides, Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine, Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1981.
[70] Dostoyevsky, The Pushkin Speech, London: Unwin Books, 1960, pp. 64, 89.
[71] Tikhomirov, op. cit., p. 566.
[72] Averky, “On the Situation of the Orthodox Christian in the Contemporary World”, True Orthodoxy and the Contemporary World, Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1971, pp. 18-19 (in Russian).
[73] Mgr. Oliveri, The Representatives, Apostolic Legation of London, 1980.
[74] Tikhomirov, op. cit., p. 566.
[75] Quoted by Sir Steven Runciman, The Orthodox Churches and the Secular State, Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 51.
[76] Tikhomirov, op. cit., pp. 565, 566.
[77] The Orthodox Herald, January-February, 1996 (in Russian); Fomin, op. cit., pp. 316-318; translated in Fr. Andrew Phillips, Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition, English Orthodox Trust, 1995, p. 299.
[78] Rose, op. cit., p. 87, note.
[79] Averky, “On the Situation of the Orthodox Christian in the Contemporary World”, op. cit., pp. 19-21.
[80] Clem Clack, The Bible in Focus. Blackburn, Australia, 1980, p. 147.
[81] Tikhomirov, op. cit., p. 569.
[82] Tikhomirov, op. cit., p. 570.
[83] Metropolitan Philaret, Sermons and Speeches, tome 5, Moscow, 1885, p. 488 (in Russian); cited by Ivan Marchevsky, An Apocalyptic Perspective on the End of Time in a Patristic Synthesis, Sophia: “Monarkhichesko-Konservativen Seyuz”, 1994, p. 84 (in Bulgarian).
[84] Marchevsky, op. cit., p. 84.
[85] St. Cyril, P.G 70, 516B.
[86] G.S.M. Walker (ed.), Sancti Columbani Opera, 1970, The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, pp. 47, 49, 51.
[87] St. Seraphim, quoted by Fomin, op. cit., p. 283.
[88] St. Seraphim, quoted by Fomin, op. cit., p. 283
[89] Averky, “On the Situation of the Orthodox Christian in the Contemporary World”, op. cit.
[90] Lopeshanskaya, Bishop-Confessors, San Francisco, 1971, p. 91 (in Russian).
[91] Hieromartyr Cyril, quoted by Lev Regelson, The Tragedy of the Russian Church, 1917-1945, Paris: YMCA Press, 1977, p. 566 (in Russian).
[92] The Orthodox Herald, January-February, 1996 (in Russian); Fomin, op. cit., pp. 316-318; translated in Fr. Andrew Phillips, Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition, English Orthodox Trust, 1995, pp. 299-300.
[93] St. John of Kronstadt, in Fomin, op. cit., pp. 137-141, Orthodox Russia, no. 20 (517) (in Russian); translated in V. Moss, The Imperishable Word, Old Woking, 1980.
[94] Hieromartyr Mark, op. cit., p. 125. See also pp. 103-104.
[95] Tikhomirov, op. cit., p. 570.
[96] Rose, op. cit., p. 96, note.
[97] II Clement, 14, 1.
[98] Tikhomirov, The Teaching of the Apocalypse on the Destinies and the End of the World, Sergiev Posad: “Khristianin”, 1907, N 9 (in Russian).
[99] Lopukhin, op. cit.
[100] St. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 61. In Eerdmans, Ante-Nicene Fathers, I: 227, 228.
[101] St. Ambrose, Of the Christian Faith, book IV, ch. 9 (108). In Eerdmans, Nicene Fathers, second series, X:276.
[102] Clack, op. cit., p. 149.
[103] Averky, “On the situation of the Orthodox Christian in the Contemporary World”, op. cit.
[104] Ibid., pp. 22-24.
[105] The Letters of Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava, op. cit., p. 29.
[106] St. Cyprian, On Works and Almsgiving, 14. Translated in Jurgens, op. cit.
[107] Clack, op. cit., p. 149.
[108] Metropolitan Philaret, Sermons and Speeches, vol. 3, Moscow, 1877, p. 233 (in Russian); cited by Marchevsky, op. cit., p. 89.
[109] St. Gregory, On Pentecost, 12.
[110] Archbishop Averky, “Holy Zeal”, St. Elias Publications, Forestville, California.
[111] St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 23. Translated by Maurice Benevot, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971.
[112] Archbishop Theophanes, in foreword to Sergius Nilus, On the Bank of God’s River, Sergiev Posad: Holy Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra, 1916 (in Russian).