PORTENTS OF THE ANTICHRIST

The moral disease that afflicted both the fathers and the sons of Russia in
the 1860s could not fail to be manifested in other forms in other parts of her
mystical body - that is, the Russian Orthodox Church. As the future New-
Martyr Anna Zertsalova wrote: "It was a sad time then in the capital. The holy
churches, the unconquerable strongholds of Orthodoxy, stood in it as before,
as did the unshakeable walls; the holy icons were adorned with shining
covers of precious stones, the God-pleasers rested in the churches in their
incorrupt relics. But the people were perishing from their vices and errors.
The spirit of little faith and debauchery entered everywhere like the most
savage plague into unstable heads. Tolstoy and other false teachers crept into
inexperienced young hearts with their destructive propaganda, undermining
in them the bases of faith and piety. The Lord was forgotten, forgotten were
the rules of morality and honour; forgotten were the authorities and order;
passions and vices broke out into liberty."1

One who succumbed – fortunately, only temporarily - to this temptation

was Sergius Alexandrovich Nilus. "I was born,” he wrote, “in 1862 (25
August), in a family which on my mother's side counted in its midst not a few
advanced people - advanced in the spirit for which the 60s of what is now
already the last century was distinguished. My parents were nobles and
landowners - major ones. It was perhaps because of their links with the land
and the peasants that they escaped any extreme manifestation of the
enthusiasms of the 70s. However, they could not escape the general, so to
speak platonic-revolutionary spirit of the times, so great then was the allure of
the ideas of egalitarianism, freedom of thought, freedom of thought, freedom...
yes, perhaps freedom of action, too, which overcame everyone. It seems that at
that time there was not one home of the nobility in both the capitals where the
state structure of the Russian empire was not reshaped in its own model,
according to the measure of its understanding and according to the last book it
had read, first from Sovremennik [The Contemporary], and then Otechestvennie
Zapiski [Notes on the Fatherland] or Vestnik Evropy [Herald of Europe]. Of course,
the hard food of conversations of a political character did not much help to
develop in me religious dreams, as they were then called, and I grew up in
complete alienation from the Church, uniting it in my childish imagination
only with my old nanny, whom I loved to distraction. Nevertheless, I did not
know any prayers and entered a church only by chance; I learned the law of
God from teachers who were indifferent, if not outrightly hostile, to the word
of God, as an intractable necessity of the school's programme. That was the
degree of my knowledge of God when I, as a youth who was Orthodox in
name, went to university, where they already, of course, had no time for

1"Zhizneopisanie Protoiereia Valentina Amphiteatrova" (Life of Protopriest Valentine

Amphiteatrov), Pravoslavnaia Zhizn' (Orthodox Life), 53, N 11 (658), November, 2004, pp. 9-10.
such trivialities as Orthodoxy. Left to my devices in the life of faith, I reached
such an abominable degree of spiritual desolation as only that person can
imagine who has lived in this spiritual stench and who has then, while on the
path of his own destruction, been detained by the unseen hand of the
benevolent Creator."2

Nilus did not become a revolutionary. But many others subjected to the
same influences did, such as L.A. Tikhomirov. Few were those, like Nilus and
Tikhomirov, who found their way back to the ancestral faith of Orthodoxy.
Thus did the woolly liberalism of the fathers corrupt the sons, preparing the
way for the revolution…

Among those who still considered themselves Orthodox, one of the earliest
signs of this spiritual sickness was indifferentism, what we would now call
ecumenism, that is, an increased tolerance for Christian heresies to the extent
of placing them on a par with Orthodoxy. By this time, the first ecumenical
dialogue with the American Episcopalians had begun, and while the Church
leaders stood firm in Orthodoxy, the spirit of Anglican indifferentism was
infectious.

Thus in the 1850s St. Ambrose of Optina wrote: “Now many educated
people bear only the name of Orthodox, but in actual fact completely adhere
to the morals and customs of foreign lands and foreign beliefs. Without any
torment of conscience they violate the regulations of the Orthodox Church
concerning fasts and gather together at balls and dances on the eves of great
Feasts of the Lord, when Orthodox Christians should be in church in
prayerful vigil. This would be excusable if such gatherings took place on the
eves of ordinary days, but not on the eves of Feasts, and especially great
Feasts. Are not such acts and deeds clearly inspired by our enemy, the
destroyer of souls, contrary to the commandment of the Lord which says:
carry out your ordinary affairs for six days, but the seventh (festal) day must
be devoted to God in pious service? How have Orthodox Christians come to
such acts hated by God? Is it not for no other reason than indiscriminate
communion with believers of other faiths?…”

In 1863 St. Theophan the Recluse described how western indifferentism

had begun already centuries before: “Have you heard of the indulgences of
the Pope or Rome? Here is what they are: special treatment and leniency,
which he gives, defying the law of Christ. And what is the result? From all of
this, the West is corrupt in faith and in its way of life, and is now getting lost
in its disbelief and in the unrestrained life with its indulgences.

2Monk Boris (Ephremov), "Sergius Nilus", Pravoslavnaia Rus'(Orthodox Russia), N 1 (1454),

January 1/14, 1992, pp. 5-9.
 “The Pope changed many doctrines, spoiled all the sacraments, nullified
the canons concerning the regulation of the Church and the correction of
morals. Everything has begun going contrary to the will of the Lord, and has
become worse and worse.

“Then along came Luther, a smart man, but stubborn. He said, The Pope
changed everything as he wanted, why shouldn’t I do the same? He started to
modify and to re-modify everything in his own way, and in this way
established the new Lutheran faith, which only slightly resembles what the
Lord commanded and the holy apostles delivered to us.

“After Luther came the philosopher. And they in turn said, Luther has
established himself a new faith, supposedly based on the Gospel, though in
reality based on his own way of thinking. Why, then, don’t we also compose
doctrines based on our own way of thinking, completely ignoring the Gospel?
They then started rationalizing, and speculating about God, the world and
man, each in his own way. And they mixed up so many doctrines that one
gets dizzy just counting them.

“Now the westerners have the following views: Believe what you think
best, live as you like, satisfy whatever captivates your soul. This is why they
do not recognize any law or restriction and do not abide by God’s Word.
Their road is wide, all obstacles removed. But the broad way leads to
perdition, according to what the Lord says…”3

The danger of religious indifferentism was especially noted by St. Ignaty

Brianchaninov (+1867): "You say, 'heretics are Christians just the same.’
Where did you take that from? Perhaps someone or other calling himself a
Christian while knowing nothing of Christ, may in his extreme ignorance
decide to acknowledge himself as the same kind of Christian as heretics, and
fail to distinguish the holy Christian faith from those offspring of the curse,
blasphemous heresies. Quite otherwise, however, do true Christians reason
about this. A whole multitude of saints has received a martyr's crown, has
preferred the most cruel and prolonged tortures, prison, exile, rather than
agree to take part with heretics in their blasphemous teaching.

"The Ecumenical Church has always recognised heresy as a mortal sin; she
has always recognised that the man infected with the terrible malady of
heresy is spiritually dead, a stranger to grace and salvation, in communion
with the devil and the devil's damnation. Heresy is a sin of the mind; it is
more a diabolic than a human sin. It is the devil's offspring, his invention; it is
an impiety that is near idol-worship. Every heresy contains in itself

3 Theophan the Recluse, Sermon on the Sunday after Nativity, December 29, 1863.
blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, whether against the dogma or the action
of the Holy Spirit."4

“The reading of the Fathers clearly convinced me that salvation in the

bosom of the Orthodox Russian Church was undoubted, something of which
the religions of Western Europe are deprived since they have not preserved
whole either the dogmatic or the moral teaching of the Church of Christ from
her beginning.”5

St. Ignaty was especially fierce against the heresy of Papism: "Papism is the
name of a heresy that seized the West and from which there came, like the
branches from a tree, various Protestant teachings. Papism ascribes to the
Pope the properties of Christ and thereby rejects Christ. Some western writers
have almost openly pronounced this rejection, saying that the rejection of
Christ is a much smaller sin than the rejection of the Pope. The Pope is the
idol of the papists; he is their divinity. Because of this terrible error, the Grace
of God has left the papists; they have given themselves over to Satan – the
inventor and father of all heresies, among which is Papism. In this condition
of the darkening [of the mind], they have distorted several dogmas and
sacraments, while they have deprived the Divine Liturgy of its essential
significance by casting out of it the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the
blessing of the offerings of bread and wine, at which they are transmuted into
the Body and Blood of Christ… No heresy expresses so openly and blatantly
their immeasurable pride, their cruel disdain for men and their hatred of
them.”

St. Ignaty was pessimistic about the future of Russia: "It is evident that the
apostasy from the Orthodox faith is general among the people. One is an
open atheist, another is a deist, another a Protestant, another an
indifferentist, another a schismatic. There is no healing or cure for this
plague."

"What has been foretold in the Scriptures is being fulfilled: a cooling

towards the faith has engulfed both our people and all the countries in which
Orthodoxy was maintained up to now."

"Religion is falling in the people in general. Nihilism is penetrating into

the merchant class, from where it has not far to go to the peasants. In most

4Brianchaninov, Pis'ma, no. 283; translated as "Concerning the Impossibility of Salvation for
the Heterodox and Heretics", The Orthodox Word, March-April, 1965, and Orthodox Life,
January-February, 1991.

5 Brianchaninov, "Lamentation", in The Orthodox Word, January-February, 2003, p. 20.

peasants a decisive indifference to the Church has appeared, and a terrible
moral disorder."6

"The people is being corrupted, and the monasteries are also being
corrupted," said the same holy bishop to the future Tsar Alexander II in 1866,
one year before his own death.7

Another pessimist was Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, who feared

“storm-clouds coming from the West”, and advised that rizas should not be
made for icons, because “the time is approaching when ill-intentioned people
will remove the rizas from the icons.”8

Visions from above seemed to confirm that apocalyptic times were

approaching. Thus in 1871 the Over-Procurator of the Holy Synod, Count
Alexander Petrovich Tolstoy, had the following vision: "It was as if I were in
my own house standing in the entrance-hall. Beyond was a room in which on
the ledge between the windows there was a large icon of the God of Sabaoth
that gave out such blinding light that from the other room (the entrance-hall)
it was impossible to look at it. Still further in was a room in which there were
Protopriest Matthew Alexandrovich Konstantinovsky and the reposed
Metropolitan Philaret. And this room was full of books; along the walls from
ceiling to floor there were books; on the long tables there were piles of books;
and while I certainly had to go into this room, I was held back by fear, and in
terror, covering my face with my hand, I passed through the first room and,
on entering the next room, I saw Protopriest Matthew Alexandrovich
dressed in a simple black cassock; on his head was a skull-cap; in his hands
was an unbent book, and he motioned me with his head to find a similar
book and open it. At the same time the metropolitan, turning the pages of
this book said: 'Rome, Troy, Egypt, Russia, the Bible.' I saw that in my book
'Bible' was written in very heavy lettering. Suddenly there was a noise and I
woke up in great fear. I thought a lot about what it could all mean. My
dream seemed terrible to me - it would have been better to have seen
nothing. Could I not ask those experienced in the spiritual life concerning the
meaning of this vision in sleep? But an inner voice explained the dream even
to me myself. However, the explanation was so terrible that I did not want to
agree with it."

6 Brianchaninov, in Fomin and Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 339, 340.

7Zhizneopisanie Sviatitelia Ignatia Brianchaninova, p. 485. In the last decade of his life the holy
hierarch composed notes for an agenda of a Council of the Russian Church that would tackle
the grave problems facing her. See
http://catacomb.org.ua/modules.php?name=Pages&go=page&pid=1968.

8 Fomin and Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, p. 349.

 St. Ambrose of Optina gave the following interpretation of this vision: "He
who was shown this remarkable vision in sleep, and who then heard the very
significant words, very probably received the explanation of what he had
seen and heard through his guardian angel, since he himself recognized that
an inner voice explained the meaning of the dream to him. However, since we
have been asked, we also shall give our opinion...

"...The words 'Rome, Troy, Egypt' may have the following significance.
Rome at the time of the Nativity of Christ was the capital of the world, and,
from the beginning of the patriarchate, had the primacy of honour; but
because of love of power and deviation from the truth she was later rejected
and humiliated. Ancient Troy and Egypt were notable for the fact that they
were punished for their pride and impiety - the first by destruction, and the
second by various punishments and the drowning of Pharaoh with his army
in the Red Sea. But in Christian times, in the countries where Troy was
located there were founded the Christian patriarchates of Antioch and
Constantinople, which flourished for a long time, embellishing the Orthodox
Church with their piety and right dogmas; but later, according to the
inscrutable destinies of God, they were conquered by barbarians - the
Muslims, and up to now have borne this heavy slavery, which restricts the
freedom of Christian piety and right belief. And in Egypt, together with the
ancient impiety, there was from the first times of Christianity such a
flowering of piety that the deserts were populated by tens of thousands of
monastics, not to speak of the great numbers of pious laity from whom they
came. But then, by reason of moral licentiousness, there followed such an
impoverishment of Christian piety in that country that at a certain time in
Alexandria the patriarch remained with only one priest.

"... After the three portentous names 'Rome, Troy, Egypt', the name of
'Russia' was also mentioned - Russia, which at the present time is counted as
an independent Orthodox state, but where the elements of foreign heterodoxy
and impiety have already penetrated and taken root among us and threaten
us with the same sufferings as the above-mentioned countries have
undergone.

"Then there comes the word 'Bible'. No other state is mentioned. This may
signify that if in Russia, too, because of the disdain of God's commandments and the
weakening of the canons and decrees of the Orthodox Church and for other reasons,
piety is impoverished, then there must immediately follow the final fulfillment of that
which is written at the end of the Bible, in the Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian.

"He who saw this vision correctly observed that the explanation given him
by an inner voice was terrible. Terrible will be the Second Coming of Christ
and terrible the last judgement of the world. But not without terrors will also
be the period before that when the Antichrist will reign, as it is said in the
Apocalypse: 'And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it;
and death shall flee from them' (9.6). The Antichrist will come during a period of
anarchy, as the apostle says: 'until he that restraineth be taken away from the
midst' (II Thessalonians 2.7), that is, when the powers that be no longer exist."9

St. Ambrose's identification of "him that restraineth" the coming of the

Antichrist with the Russian State had long roots in the patristic writings. St.
John Chrysostom, Blessed Theophylact and others identified him with the
Roman emperor, whose successor, as being the emperor of "the Third Rome",
Russia, was the Russian Tsar. Metropolitan Philaret had restated the political
teaching of Orthodoxy with exceptional eloquence in the previous reign. And
now St. Theophan the Recluse wrote: "The Tsar's authority, having in its
hands the means of restraining the movements of the people and relying on
Christian principles itself, does not allow the people to fall away from them,
but will restrain it. And since the main work of the Antichrist will be to turn
everyone away from Christ, he will not appear as long as the Tsar is in power.
The latter's authority will not let him show himself, but will prevent him from
acting in his own spirit. That is what he that restraineth is. When the Tsar's
authority falls, and the peoples everywhere acquire self-government
(republics, democracies), then the Antichrist will have room to manoeuvre. It
will not be difficult for Satan to train voices urging apostasy from Christ, as
experience showed in the time of the French revolution. Nobody will give a
powerful 'veto' to this. A humble declaration of faith will not be tolerated.
And so, when these arrangements have been made everywhere,
arrangements which are favourable to the exposure of antichristian aims, then
the Antichrist will also appear. Until that time he waits, and is restrained."

Bishop Theophan wrote: "When these principles [Orthodoxy, Autocracy

and Nationality] weaken or are changed, the Russian people will cease to be
Russian. It will then lose its sacred three-coloured banner." And again: "Our
Russians are beginning to decline from the faith: one part is completely and in
all ways falling into unbelief, another is falling into Protestantism, a third is
secretly weaving together beliefs in such a way as to bring together spiritism
and geological madness with Divine Revelation. Evil is growing: evil faith and
lack of faith are raising their head: faith and Orthodoxy are weakening. Will
we come to our senses? O Lord! Save and have mercy on Orthodox Russia
from Thy righteous and fitting punishment!"10

Again, he wrote: “Do you know what bleak thoughts I have? And they are
not unfounded. I meet people who are numbered among the Orthodox, who
in spirit are Voltaireans, naturalists, Lutherans, and all manner of free-

9 St. Ambrose of Optina, Pis'ma (Letters), Sergiev Posad, 1908, part 1, pp. 21-22.

10 St. Theophan, in Fomin and Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 346, 347.
thinkers. They have studied all the sciences in our institutions of higher
education. They are not stupid nor are they evil, but with respect to the
Church they are good for nothing. Their fathers and mothers were pious; the
ruin came in during the period of their education outside of the family homes.
Their memories of childhood and their parents’ spirit keeps them within
certain bounds. But what will their own children be like? What will restrain
them within the needed bounds? I draw the conclusion from this that in one
or two generations our Orthodoxy will dry up.”

As St. Ignaty Brianchaninov wrote: “We are helpless to arrest this apostasy.
Impotent hands will have no power against it and nothing more will be
required than the attempt to withhold it. The spirit of the age will reveal the
apostasy. Study it, if you wish to avoid it, if you wish to escape this age and
the temptation of its spirits. One can suppose, too, that the institution of the
Church which has been tottering for so long will fall terribly and suddenly.
Indeed, no-one is able to stop or prevent it. The present means to sustain the
institutional Church are borrowed from the elements of the world, things inimical to
the Church, and the consequence will be only to accelerate its fall. Nevertheless, the
Lord protects the elect and their limited number will be filled.”11

11 Sokolov, L.A. Episkop Ignatij Brianchaninov (Bishop Ignaty Brianchaninov), Kiev, 1915, vol.
2, p. 250. Italics mine (V.M.).