Jerusalem and Moscow: Apocalypse Postponed?
Jerusalem.
Sunday 25 June 2006.
Twenty thousand Jewish zealots gather at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Among them are the former Chief Rabbis of Israel, Abraham Shapiro and Mordechai Eliyahu. The zealots process around the Temple Mount to the call of the Jewish ritual horn, calling for the building of a Third Temple. Detailed plans to rebuild the Temple and restore its rituals are very advanced. For example, even the upper part of the vestment of the Jewish High Priest has been recreated and there are plans to recreate the vestments of the Temple priests, following the indications in the Jewish Torah. As this goes on, the Israeli government is about to launch massive attacks with American-supplied jets and armour on Gaza and the Palestinian refugees, whose forebears Israel expelled from their native Palestine nearly sixty years ago.
Istra the New Jerusalem. Tuesday 27 June 2006.
At Istra near Moscow an international conference takes place on the subject of the New Jerusalem. It is in honour of the 350th anniversary of the building of the complex of buildings at Istra by the great Russian Patriarch Nikon, known as the New Jerusalem Monastery of the Resurrection. This site was chosen for its resemblance to the Holy Land. The River Istra represents the River Jordan, and the buildings represent the ‘sacral space’ or holy places of Jerusalem. In his time, Patriarch Nikon took in several monks of non-Russian origin to populate the Monastery, for it was intended to represent the multinational Orthodoxy of the Heavenly Jerusalem. (See our article of 1985, 'Patriarch Nikon and the New Jerusalem' in Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition, pp. 71-78)
Moscow. 3 July 2006.
There opens an international summit of traditional religious faiths. The aim of the summit is not the old-style ecumenical one of Geneva, that of uniting all religions in a syncretistic and modernistic union of the lowest common denominator, according to the ‘one size fits all’ egalitarianism of the past. Nor is the aim of the summit the old-style monolithic one of Rome, that of uniting all in the grasp of the Vatican, according to the ceasaropapist imperialism of the past.
Moscow’s aim is the opposite of both Geneva and Rome. It opposes both Genevan modernistic secularization and Roman monolithic globalization, now sweeping the world and destroying all spiritual values and traditional beliefs. It hopes to express the worldwide opposition to the primitive, neo-pagan, materialistic values of the contemporary Western world. The only unity to be achieved is a unity of opposition to modern secularist and globalist decadence. There is here neither syncretism, nor imperialism, merely service. Russian Orthodoxy witnesses to the traditional, spiritual values of the other world and the existence of another way.
The fact that the Russian Orthodox Church can mount such a summit shows just how far it has come from being the downtrodden and brutally repressed erastian servant of the old atheist Soviet State. Soviet decadence – alcoholism, abortion, crime - ironically put the Russian Church in the forefront of the struggle against this world. The post-Soviet Russian State knows that if Russia and the Russian population are to survive, they will need a spiritual and moral Revolution, and that only the Russian Orthodox Church can provide this. That is why in the last twenty years it has baptized tens of millions, opened over 650 monasteries and 20,000 churches, which it continues to open at the rate of three a day.
When we compare what is going on in Jerusalem under the Western-backed Israeli occupier and what is going on in Moscow, we are drawn to certain thoughts. Since the devil keeps the laws in hell, he also endeavours to introduce them into the world, to make the world infernal. He who fights against his laws will be attacked by him. Indeed, if we are not under attack from him, then it becomes clear that we are not doing God’s will. Thus it was in 1917 and 1918, when having overthrown Orthodox Russia, the satanists martyred the Russian Royal Family in their kabbalistic plot.
Today also, the devil will not stand by, as his plans to take over the world through globalization, that is worldwide secularization, risk being thwarted by Russian Orthodoxy. The latter is now a vital force, promoting spiritual values, opposing Western humanist decadence, standing at the forefront of worldwide Orthodoxy. Therefore, we can therefore expect further attacks on the Russian Church, similar to those mounted in England in recent months. These may be led by the Western media, or they may be led by individuals, whether on the inside or the outside of Orthodoxy. But if the Apocalypse now being prepared in Israel is to be postponed, Russian Orthodoxy is our only hope.
