On the London Conference (18-20 October 2012)
God willing, for the first time in history, in London on 18 October 2012 twenty-one Russian Orthodox bishops whose dioceses are situated outside the Russian Lands, will meet from all over the world to confer for the good of mankind. From North America and from South America, from Australasia and from Western Europe, from the eastern and western shores of the Atlantic, from the eastern and western shores of the Pacific, they will gather in London, which may yet be saved by God. Anciently called Londinium, this is where by tradition Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, once preached the Gospel and where it is preached again today.
Our bishops represent the expansion of the Church worldwide, outside the traditional homelands of Russian Orthodoxy, as was prophesied by the Gospel (Matt 24, 14) and by the Saints of God. At first by political force, but then by economic necessity, millions of Russian Orthodox from many nations have over the last five generations established themselves in the Western world. The establishment of the Russian Orthodox Tradition here, principally under the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, is part of the spiritual victory of the Church over the Evil One down the centuries.
These spiritual victories are:
Over the Teutonic Knights who came from the West to conquer and destroy our Church and Faith, and failed;
Over the Mongol-Tartars who came from the East to slaughter and pillage our Church and Faith, and failed;
Over the Western invaders who came in 1612 to uproot and deform our Church and Faith, and failed;
Over the anti-Church ‘reformers’ who came one hundred years later to subjugate and control our Church and Faith, and failed;
Over that forerunner of Antichrist who came in 1812 with twelve nations to burn and plunder our Church and Faith, and failed, for instead Orthodox troops freed not only Moscow, but also marched to Paris and freed that too;
Over those who came in 1912 to plot against the House of Romanov, New Rome, after the repulse in 1854 of invaders who had come from both East and West to destroy and defeat our Church and Faith, and failed;
Over those who, four and three generations after the repulse of two more Western invasions and one generation after the defeat of the greatest persecution of Christ’s Church that the world has ever seen, in 2012 wanted to attack and slander our Church and Faith, and failed.
The New Martyrs and Confessors of the Church of God in the Russian Lands are victorious; what others proclaimed to be impossible, has been made possible. The double-headed eagle looks both east and west and beneath it we have always defended and shall continue to defend our Russian Orthodox Tradition, identity and values. God willing, our Missionary Church, represented by two Metropolitans, eleven Archbishops and eight Bishops, will gather from every corner of the earth in London. This is midway between the shores of North America and Diveyevo, in the heartlands of Orthodox Russia, from where the preaching of Orthodoxy worldwide must go forth according to the prophecy. All will meet with the blessing of the Patriarch of the whole Russian Orthodox Church and under the authority of the Metropolitan of New York, to call to return to the Church. God has given us a little extra time to call to return and we must make use of it to do so:
To call to return to the Church those Orthodox Christians who under secular political pressure, from the left side or from the right side, have strayed from the Love of God and so from the purity of the Tradition, values and calendar of the Church.
To call to return to the Church those unwitting Non-Orthodox whose ancestors were forced to leave the Church, but who even after a thousand years still conserve some parts of the Orthodox heritage. Today, however, they are victims of the illusions of the second millennium, which have led to the worship of man instead of the worship of the God-man and so to the impasse of atheist secularism.
To call to return to the Church the Non-Christian and secular world, created by the errors of the past. It does not know the Church, it has not rejected the Church, because it has never known Her, but only deformations of Her moulded by Western greed.
May God’s Will be done.
Archpriest Andrew Phillips
28 May / 10 June 2012
All Saints Sunday
