A Prophecy from Australia
...Finally, the culminating point of the fall is what our Homeland, all its people and all the races who live there have been through since February 1917 until this day. The fall which happened in our time is unprecedented in world history. It could only have taken place because God allowed it to happen on account of the demonism prophesied by Dostoyevsky. Just as our army was preparing to inflict the final crushing blow on the enemy, when a truly everlasting peace was to be concluded with all peoples, when historic justice was to triumph and the renowned Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, an architectural wonder and inimitable model of Orthodox iconography, turned into a mosque through barbaric violence, could once more become an Orthodox Church, on which the cross of Christ would shine forth – at that very moment there took place the greatest of follies – the great Orthodox Empire was destroyed.
An army almost fifteen million strong, armed to the teeth, which had heroically defended the State from a powerful external enemy, lost its Commander-in-Chief, because a bunch of traitors, referring to ‘the popular will’, forced him by deceit to abdicate. He was prevented from sending loyal troops to put down the rebellion. He was blocked from going to the capital. Abandoned by everyone, with bitter feelings in his heart, the Emperor could only say the words: ‘All around treason, cowardice and deceit’. These words are an everlasting reproach to all who committed this crime or sympathised with it. We not only found ourselves at the bottom of the abyss, but we reminded others of the stink of the corpse of Lazarus, the stench of which spread all over the world. Not only does the Russian people suffer, but the stench can be smelled in the free world, which tells us all the time about its culture and philanthropy, but which looked on with complete indifference at the extermination of millions of people and the trampling underfoot of human rights and basic justice in our Homeland. We could fall no further!
But there is hope. The disease that has taken hold of the whole world must disappear. Russians from the Far East who have come to Australia from China have told me the words of a famous ascetic of the Monastery of the Ascension in Irkutsk. This was Schemamonk Theodore who, after the Monastery was pillaged, used to be brought to church on a cart as he was over 80 and could no longer walk. The faithful would ask him: ‘Fr Theodore, how long will this last, the destruction of churches, the profanation of all that is holy? He always replied: ‘This must go around the whole world’.
Atheist communism is an infection which will not pass this world by. But at this moment Russia is developing an immunity and she will rise up in all her might and help the other part of the world to free itself from this disease, that which the Western world did not want to do with regard to Russia. Russia will rise up and help to restore the rest of the world and the words of the Prophet will come true: ‘Arise, O Lord my God, according to the precept that Thou hast commanded, and a congregation of the peoples shall compass Thee about’ (Ps 7, 7-8).
Let us not give ourselves over to sorrow, for Communism is making itself obsolete. Nothing will hasten this process from the outside, rather it will hinder it, but unsuccessfully: Communism is doomed and it will be just as hard to avert its death as it was to avert its temporary triumph.
Who can raise up the Russian Lazarus today? Only He Who raised up Lazarus the four-day dead. He Who is Himself the life and the resurrection will resurrect her. ‘Arise, O God, judge the earth, for Thou shalt inherit among all nations’. Amen.
From the Paschal Message of Archbishop Savva of Australia and New Zealand, 1967
