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“…
ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth;
but how is it that ye do not discern this time?
Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?”
Luke 12:56-57
“And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the nations, until the times appointed for the nations are fulfilled”
(Luke 21:24).
The proposed (the only possible, in my opinion)
translation of this prophecy immediately raises an alarming question: how could it happen that the promise of some predestined times contained in this prophecy was not noticed by the Fathers of the Church and, in fact, was ruined in the translations that have come down to us?
The answer is like this. The promise of these times is closely connected with another promise, which, as a rule, is not noticed when reading, although it was the topic of the last conversation of the Apostles with the Savior on the day of his Ascension
(Acts 1:6).
Question: Is it not at this time, O Lord, that You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?
meant: won't you now, won't you fulfill the promise, which is proclaimed three times in the book of the prophet Daniel, at your first coming?
(Dan 7:18,22,27).
Here it is predicted that at the end of the hard times of hardship, indicated by the symbol “half-week of times” (“time, times, half-time”), two more periods “time (zman)
and term (idon)” will follow
(Dan 7:12).
During the “half-week of times” the People of God suffer such a heavy defeat and oppression
(Dan 7:21,25)
that by the end of this hard time they find themselves in a state of complete exhaustion, depletion
(Dan 12:7).
In this state, the coming of the Ancient of Days finds they, and
zman
comes, the appointed time, in which the people of the saints of the Most High receive a timeless “the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom
under the whole heaven”
(7:18,22,27).
We Christians understand that “Israel of God”, “the holy people”, “the people of the saints of the Most High”, and finally, simply “saints” — all these are the Biblical names of
the historical Church of Christ.
And Daniel's promise predicts the time of her greatest triumph on earth after the end of the hard times. But by the day of the Ascension of the Lord, the Church had not yet been born. And in answer to their question, the Apostles hear a negative answer, but it in no way condemns the faith of the Apostles in this promise. On the contrary, in the words of the Savior
(Acts 1:7)
it is easy to see the approval and reinforcement of their faith. The promised time, in which the historical Church will forever reign on earth, refers to those “times or seasons” (χρόνους ἢ καιροὺς)
which are established by
the authority of the Heavenly Father.
This means that it must certainly come, but not in the first coming of Christ.
10 days after this conversation, the Apostles will receive all the charisms of Pentecost, including the gift of prophecy. And in their own predictions promises will sound parallel to Daniel and other eschatological promises of the Old Testament prophets
(Acts 3:20-21).
However, the generations of Christians of subsequent centuries cannot be bearers of a “horizontal” tradition emanating from the Apostles themselves, in the light of which it would be possible to identify the coming of times and the fulfillment of dates, the knowledge of which was not given to the Apostles themselves. Therefore, the generation that is destined to live to see the fulfillment of Daniel's promise must expect the operation of the “vertical” tradition, i.e. promised descents, or “great signs from Heaven”
(Luke 21:11),
making up for what is lacking in the “horizontal” tradition.
And until these guiding signs are received, human thought, daring at its own risk to identify the “times or dates” established by the authority of the Father, is most likely doomed to immature and erroneous conclusions.
The Savior's answer
(Acts 1:7)
reveals the reason (or one of the reasons)
for many failures in attempts to interpret and translate into other languages the promises of “times or seasons” rooted in the authority of the Father.
The first of these failures is the eschatology of Sts. Early Christian Martyrs, spiritual sons and “grandchildren” of the Apostles themselves: St. Irenaeus of Lyons (†202)
and four of his associates: St. Papias of Hierapolis (†135), St. Justin the Philosopher (†166), St. Hippolytus of Rome (†250), St. Methodius of Patara (†312). Their concept is most fully set forth in
the 5th book
of the work of St. Iriney
“Against Heresies”.
A parallel to the above Daniel promise St. Irenaeus finds John the Evangelist in the Apocalypse. Here the promised time of the reign of God's Israel on earth is indicated by the symbol “a thousand years”
(20:2-6).
The promised “millennium” will come at the end of the “half-week of times”. This hard time is portrayed in the Revelation of John in even more gloomy colors than in the book of the prophet Daniel. The Apocalypse also predicts the defeat of the “saints”, i.e. of the entire People of God from the “seed of the serpent”, which is contemplated by the Seer in the form of the first beast of the 13th chapter
(v. 7),
bearing the numerical name 666. Those of the defeated Christians in whom enough spiritual strength is preserved so as not to fall into “beast-worship”, are killed, more precisely, “beheaded”
(20:4)
by the deadly energy of the speaking and acting image of the beast that defeated the “saints”
(13:15).
In the promised “millennium” the slain Christians come to life in the “first resurrection” and reign with Christ
(20:4).
It is difficult for those reading our Synodal Translation to agree with St. Irenaeus already because this Russian text predicts the “thousand-year”, i.e. temporary co-reigning with Christ of the participants in the “first resurrection”
(20:4).
Thank God, the Church Slavonic translation helps to harmonize this prophecy with the promise of Daniel and understand the logic of St. Irenaeus. The “millennium” is the time of co-reign, and not co-reigning with Christ of those who were revived in the “first resurrection”.
Rev 20:4
should be translated “they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”
Rev 20:6:
“… and they shall reign with Him for a thousand years” (See
archpriest S. Bulgakov
“The Apocalypse of John”).
St. Irenaeus generally avoids the term “millennium”, in the 5th book of the specified work this word is not. It occurs once at St. Justin the Philosopher in
“Dialogue with Trypho”:
“But I and others, who are right-minded Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged,
[as]
the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare.”
In the writing of St. Methodius of Patara “The Feast of Ten Virgins” in Tisiana's speech, the term “millennium” is used twice, it refers to “a thousand-year rest, this true Sabbath” (Anthology “Fathers and Doctors of the Church of the III century”, vol. 2, p. 451). None of the early Christian saints uses the term “millennium” as an attribute of the Kingdom of Christ or the Kingdom of Saints.
Strictly following Sts. Apostles
(2 Pet 1:11),
St. Irenaeus speaks of the Kingdom of Christ only as an eternal Kingdom
(op.cit. pp. 501,503).
And in teaching about the receiving of the promised Kingdom by the saints, he strictly follows the prophet Daniel. Paraphrasing
Dan (7:21-22),
St. Irenaeus writes: “I was looking, and this horn made war against the saints, and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of Days came and gave judgment to the saints of the Most High God, and the time (zman)
came, and the saints obtained the kingdom.”
(op.cit.p.499,500).
This is about the time of receiving the kingdom, and not about the time of the kingdom itself, about which the prophet predicts four verses above: “But the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever”
(Dan 7:18).
“If therefore the great God showed future things by Daniel, and confirmed them by His Son;
and if Christ is the stone which is cut out without hands, who shall destroy temporal kingdoms, and introduce an eternal one, which is the resurrection of the just;
as he declares, 'The God of heaven shall raise up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed'
(Dan 2:44),
— let those thus confuted come to their senses, who reject the Creator (Demiurgum), and do not agree that the prophets were sent beforehand from the same Father from whom also the Lord came…”
(op.cit.p.503).
What does St. Irenaeus under the term “millennium”, without using it explicitly, is evident from his following words: “But when this Antichrist shall have devastated all things in this world, he will reign for three years and six months, and sit in the temple at Jerusalem;
and then the Lord will come from heaven in the clouds, in the glory of the Father, sending this man and those who follow him into the lake of fire;
but bringing in for the righteous the times of the kingdom, that is, the rest, the hallowed seventh day”
(op.cit.p.512).
And also asking about (Luke 14:12-14
and
Mat 19:20,
18:29-30): “what is a hundredfold reward in this age for lunches and dinners made to the poor?” — St. Irenaeus replies: “These are
[to take place]
in the times of the kingdom, that is, upon the seventh day, which has been sanctified, in which God rested from all the works which He created, which is the true Sabbath of the righteous”
(op.cit.p.517).
So, the promised “millennium” is that fullness of time which St. Apostle Paul predicted as “the day of the Sabbath of the People of God”
(Heb 4:8-9).
“Sanctified seventh day, peace” are synonyms for the “thousand-year” Sabbath of those Christians who, at the end of the “half-week of times”, come to life in the “first resurrection”
in the conditions of complete paralysis of the seductive energy of the devil, the seven-headed and ten-horned dragon
(Rev 20:2-3)
and forever reign with the ever-reigning Christ. The promise of the “millennium” establishes time limits not for the Kingdom of Christ and not for the co-reign of the participants in the “first resurrection” with Him, but for the reign of the ancient serpent that deceives the whole universe
(Rev 12:9).
Subjected to five “measures of restraint” (“taken”, “bound”, “cast into the abyss”, “imprisoned”, “sealed”), he cannot deceive the nations, “until the thousand years are ended”
(Rev 20:2-3).
The question naturally arises: how will the spiritual growth of people be accomplished in conditions where there is no need to fight against satanic temptations, St. Irenaeus foresaw and answered it like this: “in
[the times of]
which
[resurrection]
the righteous shall reign in the earth,
waxing stronger by the sight of the Lord:
and through Him they shall become accustomed to partake in the glory of God the Father, and shall enjoy in the kingdom intercourse and communion with the holy angels, and union with spiritual beings”
(op.cit.p.523).
These are the main indisputably true positions of the faith of the early Christian saints in the coming Kingdom after the end of the “half-week of times” — the Sabbath of the people of God, which they never called the “thousand-year”, although the apocalyptic promise of the “millennium” was attributed to it. St. Irenaeus and his like-minded people saw that what the prophet Daniel predicts as the acceptance of the eternal kingdom by the people of God, the seer John contemplates as the “reign with Christ” of those who came to life in the “first resurrection”
(Rev 20:4-6).
The Apostle Paul describes this union with the Lord using the verb συμβασιλεύσομεν — we shall reign
(2 Tim 2:12),
and in another epistle as a union with the Lord into one Spirit of the Lord
(1 Cor 6:17).
In the Apocalypse, it is also predicted as a union similar to a marriage union, like the marriage of the Lamb with the Church, the people of God
(Rev 19:7).
This connection cannot be temporary, it is forever, for ever and ever. But the Sabbath is limited by the time during which the deceiver of the universe, the ancient serpent, is paralyzed. The Sabbath of God's people will end when the dragon is released from the “prison of a thousand years”
(Rev 20:7).
But the co-reign with Christ of those revived in the “first resurrection” will never end.
It is clear that of all the eschatological promises of the Bible, the devil especially hates the apocalyptic promise of the “millennium”, the “sanctified seventh day”, in which his seductive energies will be completely paralyzed. Throughout the centuries of the New Testament era, he has been waging a most intense and not unsuccessful struggle against faith in this promise. This struggle continues to this day. The overwhelming majority of Orthodox do not believe in this promise. The interpretation of the author of the book “Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future” enjoys wide popularity: “There is to be no future 'millennium'. For those who can receive it, the 'millennium' of the Apocalypse
(Rev 20:6)
is
now;
the life of grace in the Orthodox Church for the whole 'thousand years' between the First Coming of Christ and the time of antichrist”
(op.cit.p.183).
The author refers to the “Guide to the study of the New Testament” by Archbishop Averky, who rewrote this interpretation from the textbook of “Dogmatic Theology” by Metropolitan Macarius Bulgakov (vol. 2, ed. 3, St. Petersburg, 1868). It says that the teaching of the early Christian saints about the “millennium” could only be held as a private opinion only until the Second Ecumenical Council made an addition to the seventh article of the Nicene Creed: “His Kingdom will have no end.” But this addition is in no way directed against the eschatology of St. Irenaeus of Lyon and his like-minded people, who never taught about the “thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ on earth.”
The struggle against belief in the “millennium” promise is also revealed in the fact that almost all the prophecies associated with this promise are corrupted in translations.
In this regard, the translation of the second sermon of the Apostle Peter is very indicative. Addressing his compatriots, he said:
“Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord (God the Father)…”
(Acts 3:19).
Καιροί ἀναψύξεως in the Slavic translation “cool times”, in the Synodal “times of joy”, in Kassian — “times of coolness”. Meanwhile, the verb ἀνέψυξεν was used by the Apostle Paul in the sense of resting, giving rest (2 Tim 1:16: “he (Onesiphorus)
many times gave me rest” — “ὅτι πολλάκις με ἀνέψυξεν”).
That's ἀνάψυξις — rest, comfort — one of the Greek equivalents of the Jewish
Shabbat.
The apostle prophesies that with the repentant conversion of the Ancient Israel to Christ, the predestined Sabbath times will come from the presence of God the Father.
The connection of this prophecy with Daniel and the parallel apocalyptic promise of the “sanctified seventh day” or “Sabbath of the people of God” is revealed, which will come to life in the “first resurrection” from the complete exhaustion predicted by Daniel
(12:7),
and the general mortification predicted by the Seer John
(13:15).
This connection becomes even more evident upon further study of the second sermon of the Apostle Peter.
“And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution (ἀποκαταστάσεως)
of all things”
(Acts 3:20-21)
(on the day of the Ascension, when the question was asked: Lord, wilt thou at this time ἀποκαθιστάνεις the kingdom to Israel?
i.e. Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom of the people of the saints of the Most High, promised by Daniel?
(Acts 1:6)).
“… until the time of the apocatastasis of everything that God spoke through the mouths of all His holy prophets from the beginning” (and above all, the apocatastasis of the kingdom of Israel of God).
Apokatastasis — restoration (destroyed), return (lost)
(Ancient Greek-Russian Dictionary of I.Kh. Dvoretsky, v.1, M.1958, p.203). In the Slavic translation, this extremely important term is conveyed by the word “dispensation”, in the Synodal — “completion”, due to which the very salt of the promise has lost its force.
Is it not obvious that such a significant distortion of the meaning of the words
anapsyxis and apokatastasis
was committed under strong pressure from one who fiercely hates the promise of a time in which the people of God will be healed of the mortal wounds inflicted on them during the “half-week of times”, who does not want the Israel of God revived in the “first resurrection”?
It is noteworthy that in this sermon, the Apostle Peter, addressing the hardened Ancient Israel, utters a promise that relates most closely to New Testament Israel. The destinies of both Israel turn out to be connected in such a way that with the repentant conversion of the Ancient Israel to Christ, the Sabbath times will come from the presence of God the Father, which for the New Israel, i.e. for the Church of Gentiles, they should begin a little earlier, for in the life of the Church the fate of the world is decided, namely, at the end of the “half-week of times”, with the coming of the Ancient of Days
(Dan 7:22).
According to the Apostle Paul
(Rom 11:25),
the hardening of Ancient Israel will continue “until the fulfillment of Gentiles comes in” (Slavic translation), “until the fullness of the Gentiles enters” (Kassian), “until the full number of the Gentiles enters” (Synodal). There is no “number” in the Greek text.
In the language of the Apostle Paul, fullness (pleroma)
is the antonym of “fall and impoverishment”, with the last images the Apostle describes the state of Ancient Israel in bitterness
(Rom 11:12).
I.e. fullness is the charismatic abundance that the Holy Spirit bestowed on the Church on her birthday. In the words “the fullness of languages will enter”, the verb εἰσέρχομαι means “to arise” (Ancient Greek-Russian Dictionary of I.Kh. Dvoretsky, v.1, M.1958, p.471, in relation to spiritual phenomena). During the “half-week of time” New Testament Israel is defeated to the point of complete exhaustion
(Dan 7:21,
12:7)
and general mortification
((Rev 13:7,15).
I.e. experiencing a “fall and impoverishment” similar to what happened to Ancient Israel.
With the words “a fullness of tongues will arise,” Apostle Paul predicts the grace-filled transformation of the Church of tongues from “exhaustion and mortification” of the end of the “half-week of times” to the charismatic abundance of the first days of Pentecost, after which the hardening of Ancient Israel will stop.
So, in the promised “millennium” the “first resurrection” of God's Israel, first of the New Testament, then of the Ancient, will take place, which the Apostle of Gentiles predicted with the words “life from the dead”
(Rom 11:15).
The essence of the “first resurrection” is in the rise from the “extreme exhaustion” and “general mortification” of the end of the “half-week of times” to the charismatic abundance of the first days of Pentecost, which in subsequent times will not be scarce and the immediate result of which will be the conversion of the Jewish people to Christ. Both Israel will be reunited into one People of the Saints of the Most High, eternally co-reign with the Heavenly Man and Bridegroom of the Church.
The spiritual core of this eschatology is the faith of the prophets, apostles and most glorious martyrs and teachers of early Christianity in the (“thousand year”)
“the sanctified seventh day”,
“the Sabbath day of the people of God”
(Heb 4:8-9),
in which he will come to life in the “first resurrection”, having been healed from the mortal wounds of the hard years of “half-week of times”.
Now we have to understand why our official theological school is still dominated by a completely different eschatology, which Professor-Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev rightly calls “one of the darkest”, because it instills in the church people “the conviction of the inevitability of the historical defeat of Christianity”, eschatology, in which perspective is not the “first resurrection”, not the “Kingdom-Sabbath of the people of God”, but the “universal dominion of the Antichrist”?
Why did the subsequent generations of Fathers and Doctors of the Church not accept the teaching of St. Irenaeus of Lyon and his like-minded people as a universally binding rule of faith, why did they not dogmatize it?
In the Fathers and Teachers of the 4th-5th centuries, one can find a sharp criticism of the crude chiliasm of the ancient heretics (the Gnostic of Kerinth, the Ebionites, the Montanists, etc.), who taught that in the Second Coming “Christ will establish His millennial kingdom on earth (which St. Irenaeus and his like-minded people never taught — h.V.), will restore Jerusalem in all its glory, will again introduce the fulfillment of the ritual Mosaic law with all the sacrifices, and the happiness (of those who came to life in the 'first resurrection' — h.V.)
of the righteous will consist in all kinds of sensual pleasures” (Metropolitan Macarius, op.cit.p.650). With the exception of Blessed Augustine, none of the critics of this chiliasm encroached on the authority of St. Irenaeus and his like-minded people and did not touch their teaching about the Kingdom-Sabbath of the people of God. Augustin, expounding this doctrine, wrote: “… as it is written 'One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,'
(2 Pet 3:8),
there should follow on the completion of six thousand years, as of six days, a kind of seventh-day Sabbath in the succeeding thousand years;
and that it is for this purpose the saints rise, viz.,
to celebrate this Sabbath.
And this opinion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God;
for
I myself, too, once held this opinion”
(St. Augustin,
The City of God, Bk.20, Ch.7).
So Blessed Augustine admits that until some time the teaching of the early Christian martyrs was recognized by the Church as quite acceptable.
Further, following Metropolitan Macarius Bulgakov, one would have to expect a reference to the Second Ecumenical Council, which adopted the aforementioned addition to the Nicene Symbol, after which the teaching of St. Irenaeus and his like-minded people are not allowed even as a private opinion. But Blessed Augustine has no such reference. He was baptized at the age of 33, i.e. six years after the Second Ecumenical Council, Blessed Augustine certainly knew that this addition was not directed against the faith of the early Christian martyrs.
He criticizes their teaching in a completely unexpected way. “… for
I myself, too, once held this opinion.
But, as they assert that those who then rise again shall enjoy the leisure of immoderate carnal banquets, furnished with an amount of meat and drink such as not only to shock the feeling of the temperate, but even to surpass the measure of credulity itself, such assertions can be believed only by the carnal”
(St. Augustin,
The City of God, Bk.20, Ch.7).
The faith of the ancient martyrs was discredited by mixing their teachings with the crude sensual chiliasm of the ancient heretics.
St. Irenaeus and his associates taught that the “first resurrection” of the Apocalypse is the “resurrection of the righteous” promised in the Gospel
(Luke 14:12-14),
who for their disinterested deeds to the sufferers will receive a hundredfold reward “in the times of the kingdom, that is, upon the seventh day, which has been sanctified, in which God rested from all the works which He created, which is the true Sabbath of the righteous, which they shall not be engaged in any earthly occupation;
but shall have a table at hand prepared for them by God, supplying them with all sorts of dishes”
(op.cit.p.517,518).
But it is not at all “in immoderate carnal feasts” that the joys of the Sabbath of the righteous will consist, who “at that time
(…)
shall enjoy in the kingdom intercourse and communion with the holy angels, and union with spiritual beings”
(op.cit.p.523).
Augustine's criticism of the faith of the ancient martyrs must be recognized as groundless.
Even stranger is his exegesis of the Apocalyptic “millennium”, which in the dogma textbooks of the Russian Empire, and then of the Russian Church Abroad, was presented almost as a dogma. It was first expounded by Augustine in the essay “On the City of God”, then repeated in the “Commentary on the Apocalypse” by Andrew, Archbishop of Caesarea. “All subsequent interpretations of this Book are adjacent to it and are partly extracts from it” (Christianity. Encyclopedic Dictionary, vol. 1, p. 81, M., Scientific publishing house “Big Russian Encyclopedia”, 1993).
Using the impious expression “The Millennium Kingdom of Christ,” Metropolitan Macarius, who considered Blessed Augustine “one of the best interpreters of the Apocalypse,” describes his exegesis as follows: “Under the name 'Thousand Year Kingdom of Christ' is meant the entire indefinite period of time from the very beginning of the grace-filled Kingdom of Christ on earth or, in fact, since the faith of Christ under Constantine the Great became triumphant and dominant in the world, until the end of the world” (op.cit.p.653).
Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose), the author of the aforementioned book “Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future”, apparently noticed the logical inconsistency of this strange definition of the “Thousand Year Kingdom of Christ”, according to which this Kingdom is a kind of “period of time” with an indefinite beginning and end: the beginning — either the Coming of Christ, or the birth of the Church, or the accession of Constantine the Great;
the end is either the accession of the Antichrist, or the end of the world. He interprets the apocalyptic “millennium” quite definitely: this is the period of time between the first coming of Christ and the time of the Antichrist, and the “thousand-year Kingdom of Christ” is the life of the Orthodox Church during this period. And the fact that “Protestants should expect the 'millennium' in the future is only their confession that they do not live in it in the present — that is, that they are
outside the Church of Christ
and have not tasted of Divine grace”
(op.cit.p.183).
It turns out that the most glorious martyrs and teachers of early Christianity, who were expecting this “millennium” in the future, were outside the Church of Christ and did not taste God's grace. Careless reading of St. Irenaeus of Lyon and his like-minded people come to blasphemy, even more daring if we remember that these teachers of the ancient Church quite reasonably considered the apocalyptic “millennium” a synonym for that time (zman)
promised in the book of the prophet Daniel, which was the topic of the last conversation of the Apostles with the Savior
(Dan 7:22-27,
Acts 1:6-7).
According to Daniel's prophecy, the time of the reign of God's people on earth will begin at the end of the “half-week of times” with the coming of the Ancient of Days. And that this advent cannot be identified with the first Coming of Christ, is evident from the Savior's answer to the apostles
(Acts 1:7).
If, following Metropolitan Macarius, we accept the 16-century era of the Konstantinovsky Church-State Symphony as the apocalyptic “millennium”, then there is no reason to assert that this era began with the coming of the Ancient of Days, as it should have been, according to Daniel’s promise, and ended with the second coming of Christ, as one would expect, according to the interpretation of Blessed Augustine.
And, really, all these centuries the devil, in ordinary times “deceiving the whole world”
(Rev 12:9),
“does not deceive the nations”
(Rev 20:3)?
Against this promise, Blessed Augustine invents the concept of
Predestination:
“For what Christian is not aware that he seduces nations even now, and draws them with himself to eternal punishment, but not those predestined to eternal life?
(…)
The devil, then, is bound and shut up in the abyss that he may not seduce the nations from which the Church is gathered, and which he formerly seduced before the Church existed”
('City of God', Bk.20, Ch.7).
Undoubtedly, the devil will not be able to drag with him into eternal punishment those whom God foreknew, called and predestined to justification and glory
(Rom 8:29-30).
But this does not mean at all that they will not experience the seductive actions of Satan. The experience of all the holy martyrs and saints testifies that demonic temptations fell upon them too. “For since they possessed Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and wholly destroyed the demons' strengthless presumption.”
The most convincing arguments against such an interpretation of the “devil's bondage” were advanced by one of St. Irenaeus of Lyon, St. Hippolytus of Rome in “Chapters Against Kai” (quoted from the book of St. Boris Kiryanov “A Complete Exposition of the Truth about the Millennium Kingdom of the Lord on Earth”, published by Aleteyya, St. Petersburg, 2001, pp. 185,186).
“On this Caius the heretic objected: that Satan is bound here, according to that which is written, that Christ went up into the strong man's house and bound him, and spoiled his goods for us
(Mat 12:29).
Hippolytus answered this and said: If the Devil has been bound, how does he deceive the faithful and persecute and plunder men?
And if you say that he has been bound as regards the faithful, how did he draw near against Christ, Him who aid no sin?
according to the text, The Prince cometh and findeth no sin in me
(Jhn 14:30).
And if then he has been bound, how did the Lord teach us to pray, that we should be delivered front the evil one
(Mat 6:13)?
and why did he desire to tempt Simon and the Apostles
(Luke 22:31)?
And how was one who had been bound able to sift and trouble the disciples
[ib.]?
And truly for us the conflict is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world
(Eph 6:12).
If he had been bound, he would not maintain the conflict, or catch away the word which was sown
(Mat 13:19),
as is said in the Parable of the Seed. That He has bound the strong man;
the meaning of it is this: that He has rebuked and cast scorn on those who did not come unto Him when He went against the Devil in order to purify them from his bondage and make them sons unto the Father. And this is proved by what He said just after, that he that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth abroad
(Mat 12:30).
Accordingly, in the end of times, the Devil is to be bound and to be flung into the bottomless pit, when the Lord comes;
even as Esaias hath said, that the wicked shall be taken away in order that he see not the glory of the Lord
(Isa 26:10)”.
HIPPOLYTUS AND HIS 'HEADS AGAINST CAIUS.'
Many testimonies of the devilish temptations can be found in the Fathers of the “Philokalia”.
For example, Saint Macarius the Great: “Nevertheless, even after baptism Satan still acts on the soul, often, indeed, to a greater degree than before”
(Volume 1).
St. Maximos the Confessor: “The demons attack the person who has attained the summits of prayer in order to prevent his conceptual images of sensible things from being free from passion;
they attack the gnostic so that he will dally with impassioned thoughts;
and they attack the person who has not advanced beyond the practice of the virtues so as to persuade him to sin through his actions. They contend with all men by every possible means in order to separate them from God”
(Volume 2).
St. Gregory of Sinai: “For the devil's traps are many, and he persistently and secretly watches the bias ofour intention, without most of us being aware of it, striving imperceptibly to corrupt our labour so that what we do is not done in accordance with God's will”
(Volume 4).
St. Symeon The New Theologian: Indeed, who can describe all the various forms of deception employed by the devil?
(Volume 4).
The idea that “the nations that make up the Church” are not subject to satanic temptations, is rooted in the peculiar ecclesiology of Blessed Augustine: “the Church even now is the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven”
(op.cit.p.430).
Heresy, as a rule, is confusion, and dogma is distinction (V.N. Lossky). In this conception of Blessed Augustine, two aspects of ecclesiological reality are mixed: the aspect of eschatological completion and the aspect of historical formation and growth.
In the first, the Church is the Wife, the Bride of the Lamb, the Wife clothed in the sun
(…),
the Mother of all of us (the people of God), the Heavenly, New, Above,
eternally free Jerusalem,
whose participation in the life of the church people is contemplated in the Apocalypse as a “descent”
(3:12;
21:2,10).
The Wife, the Bride of the Lamb is a trinitarian-like manyunity of those who have already acquired the Spirit of God, united with the Lord into His one Spirit
(1 Cor 6:17)
and eternally co-reigns with Him. The “female” side of this union is the side seeded by the Word and fruitful by the Spirit of God.
If in the Holy Trinity the hypostasis of the perfect unity of the Three is the First Person — the Father, then in the
Heavenly Jerusalem
the unifying center, the unifying peak of all the deified becomes the first
totally
deified (acquired the fullness of Grace)
personality of the Mother — the Virgin. It is thanks to Her
total
deification that the Church is the guardian of “all things
that the Son heard from the Father and have made known to the Apostles” and that by the reminding and instructive action of the Holy Spirit is passed on to subsequent generations of Christians
(John 14:26;
15:15).
The Wife, the Bride of the Lamb is the (intolerant plural)
name of the entire multitude of the deified, but above all this name belongs to the Ever-Virgin Mother of God. This truth is confessed in the Liturgy of Sts. Basil the Great and John Chrysostom: in the rank of Proskomidia, the Psalm image of the Wife of the Messiah, “the Queen who appeared at His right hand”
(Psa 45:9),
the Church refers to the Mother of God. And in the divine services of the Mother of God feasts, the Ever-Virgin Mother of God includes such names of the Church as “House of God”
(Gen 28:17),
“House of the Lord”
(Ezek 44:4),
“House of Wisdom”
(Prov 9:1).
All citizens of
the Jerusalem Above
possess the perfections promised by the Church, but the bearer of all their fullness, first of all and, without a doubt, is the Ever-Virgin Mother of God. “The House of God, invincible by the gates of hell, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth”
(Matt 16:18;
1 Tim 3:15)
these names of the Church belong first of all and unconditionally to the Mother of God and all of us, more precisely, to Her Most Pure and Kind Heart.
The last clarification is required by the interpretation that the Savior gave to the biblical image of the promised “good land”
(Deut 3:25;
4:21;
8:7,10).
In the parable of the Sower, Christ explained that under the New Testament conditions, the promised “good land” is a single “good and pure Heart” of many who hear perfectly, keep and bear in perfect patience the “seed” planted by the Word, thanks to which it brings abundant fruit of the Spirit God's
(Luke 8:15).
And since, in the most perfect way, she listened to the Incarnate Word and in the most perfect patience kept in Her Heart His preaching and all His service to the human race, His Most Pure Mother, then all the Biblical names of the sacred center of the promised “good land” in the New Testament conditions are transferred to Her Most Good and Most Pure Heart.
Accordingly, all the commands of the Holy Spirit about the worship of God in this sacred center are transferred to him
(Psa 29:2;
99:9)
and all the most joyful eschatological promises of the Biblical prophets pointing to him, parallel to Daniel's promise of the time (zman)
of the accession of the People God's “in all things under heaven” and the apocalyptic promise of the “millennium” of his co-reign with Christ ever-reigning.
The promise of
such
an exaltation of the Mountain of the House of the Lord above all the heights of this world and
such
a gathering of the peoples of the earth to it, as a result of which the blessed time of grace-filled peace and the irreversible general disarmament of the peoples will come
(Isa 2:2-4;
Mic 4:1-3)
is nothing else than the promise of the restoration of the trinitarian-like manyunity of many hearts into one heart
(Acts 4:32),
the unifying center and peak of which will be the All-Good and Most Pure Heart of the Mother of God and all of us.
In the aspect of historical formation and growth, the Church is the People of God (“the peoples that make up Her” according to Augustine), i.e. the multitude of those who are united by faith and the law of God, who are nourished by the hierarchy and sanctified by the Sacraments. But between the acceptance of the grace of the Sacraments and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, there is “an enormous distance,” and this distance is growing in the historical life of the Church. Declaring that “at the present time the Church is the Kingdom of Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven”, Blessed Augustine assimilates all the perfections of the Wife, the Bride of the Lamb to the people of God, forgetting that it is conventionally called the “House of God”: “whose house are we,
if we hold fast
the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end”
(Heb 3:6).
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for”
(Heb 11:1).
If our faith in the Church of Christ is the realization of that hope in the “Mountain of the Lord”, in the “House of the God of Jacob”
(Isa 2:3),
which leads us to the trinitarian-like manyunity of many hearts into one Precious and Most Pure Heart, then we, the People God, this hope makes the House of the Living God, endowing us with all the charisms of His Spirit, all the perfections promised to the Church.
Thus, in the state of “coming to Mount Zion”…, to “Heavenly Jerusalem”
(Heb 12:22),
New Testament Israel was the bearer of the divine perfection of omniscience
(1 John 2:20).
For this approach to the sacred center of the promised “good land” signified an inner, heartfelt closeness to the trinitarian-like union of many hearts into one Good and Most Pure Heart
(Acts 4:32),
in which is the fullness of the acquired Grace and other perfections of the Church — the Wife, the Bride of the Lamb. In order for the People of God to become the bearer of these perfections, it is necessary, at least, that their ecclesiological self-consciousness be
"Mario-centric"
insofar as the religious consciousness of the prophets of Ancient Israel and their eschatological optimism were
"Jerusalem-centric". In this sense, “Jerusalem at the head of joy” of the royal Psalmist
(Psa 137:6)
is equivalent to the
“Joy of All Joys”
of St. Seraphim of Sarov.
The loss of this optimism, the emergence of “the darkest eschatology in the perspective of which is not the Kingdom-Sabbath of the People of God, but the worldwide dominion of the Antichrist”, is rooted in a dispersed, paracentric ecclesiology, in which the Biblical “Jerusalem-(or Zion-)centrism” is forgotten, for New Testament piety equivalent to the “Mariocentrism” of the ecclesiology of the “female” side of the Lamb's Marriage.
“The Wife, the Bride of the Lamb” is a trinitarian-like manyunity of many hearts into one “good and pure heart.” Graphically, this polyunity can be depicted as a scheme of many converging concentric circles, the unifying and life-giving center of which is the Precious Most Pure Heart of the Virgin Mother, the sacred center of the promised “good land” in the New Testament sense of this biblical image. The people of God, the periphery of this polyunity, called to strive towards this promised “land”, converges to its sacred unifying Center. The ultimate goal of this movement “within us”, within the religious consciousness, is the trinitarian-like union of many hearts into one Precious and Most Pure Heart of His Wife, who eternally co-reigns with the Lamb of God.
With the achievement of this goal of the historical struggle and wandering of the People of God, the eternal co-reign of his ever-reigning Christ begins. The last victorious stage of this path is the time (zman)
promised by Daniel, by John the Seer, the millennium. In the “thousand-year” Seventh Day, the People of God will be healed of all the deadly wounds of the hard times of the “half-week of times”, in which the New Testament Israel is defeated by the seed of the serpent with extremely grave consequences of this public sin by the end of this hard times.
It is possible to defeat
the entire
People of God only by making a “hole” in the “shield of faith”, with which the fiery arrows of the evil one are quenched
(Eph 6:16),
the faith that we unanimously profess and which unites us into the one army of God. Having penetrated this “hole”, the arrows of the evil one can destroy the hope in the church people, which constitutes the highest glory of the Church, as a result of which it ceases to be the House of God
(Heb 3:6).
Indeed, they disperse the ecclesiological
self-consciousness
of the People of God in such a way that it ceases to be “Mariocentric” and at the same time distort its eschatological consciousness so that it forgets the ultimate goal of the historical path — the promised “good land”, its sacred unifying Center in the New Testament sense of sacred topographical Bible images.
For this “forgetfulness of Jerusalem” the formidable prophetic oaths of the Psalmist will fall upon him: impotence of action (“let my right hand forget
her cunning”)
and impotence of the word (“let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth”)
(Psa 137:5-6).
Thus, Daniel's prophecy about “when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people” by the end of the “half-week of times”
(Dan 12:7)
will be fulfilled. The parallel prophecy of the Apocalypse predicts of a general killing of all those who rejected beast-worship by the end of this hard time
(Rev 13:15).
The terrible prophecies of the defeat of all the People of God
(Dan 7:21;
Rev 13:7)
and of the grievous consequences of this defeat by the end of the “half-week of times”
(Dan 12:7;
Rev 13:15;
20:4)
were not noticed by the blessed Augustine, nor early Christian saints, like-minded St. Irenaeus of Lyons. From the latter originates the tradition of interpreting the general killing of Christians by the deadly energy of the speaking image of the beast
(Rev 13:15)
as physical killing. It turns out that the hard times of the “half-week of times” are the time of a nationwide martyrdom. But in the guise of holy martyrs, the Church glorifies Christians who were physically mortified by those enemies of the faith whom they defeated in spiritual warfare: “For since they possessed Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and wholly destroyed the demons' strengthless presumption.”
The events of the “half-week of times” take place in the opposite sequence. Christians (and all those who reject beast-worship)
are killed by the energy of the image of the beast that defeated them
(Rev 13:7,15).
“Of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage”
(2 Pet 2:19).
Having become the master of the situation, the winner has the opportunity to choose the killing of the vanquished, which will be the continuation and completion of his victory.
What kind of killing he chooses is evident from the vision of
the first verses of the 11th chapter
of Revelation, in which the Seer contemplates the consequences of the defeat of Christians by the beast 666. The state of the Church of the period of “half-week of times” appears to him in a vision of the Old Testament Solomon’s Temple with such characteristic details as “the Altar and the Court of the Gentiles”. And the entire temple of the Holy City (“Jerusalem”)
is
trampled
underfoot by enemies whose power extends to the “Court of the Gentiles” of the Temple
(Rev 11:1-2).
“The image of trampling is taken from the custom of the ancient Eastern conquerors to stand on the back of the kings they defeated as a sign of their humiliation and humility” (Explanatory Gospel of Bishop Michael, Kyiv, 1889, v.2, p.571).
“Jerusalem” — “the habitation of the Lord”
(Psa 135:21)
does not cease to be one of the names of the Church — the People of God, even in a state of being trampled by enemies. The enslavement expressed in this way does not deprive the People of God of that Grace that lives in the two-natural Body, the Head of which is overpowering forever. The image of trampling characterizes the personal condition of the people who make up the People of God, the nature of their religious consciousness. As for their natural communion with the Body of Christ, even when it becomes vanishingly small, it still remains.
The trampling of the Holy City, i.e. the extremely humiliating enslavement of earthly Christianity of this time continues throughout the “42 months”, all the time of the free action of the beast — the conqueror of the saints
(Rev 11:2;
13:5).
This state is absolutely incompatible with the version of a national martyrdom, the blood of which would wash away the sin of defeat
(Rev 13:7)
and restore the freedom lost in this sin
(2 Pet 2:19).
The unacceptability of the version of the general physical mortification of Christians by the end of the “half-week of times” can be proved by other arguments.
From the vision
(Rev 11:1)
it is clear that the temple worship of God, i.e. Church worship continues even in this hard times. And according to the holy Apostle Paul, the Sacrament of the Eucharist will continue until the Second Coming
(1 Cor 11:26).
The general physical mortification of Christians would mean that at some point in time on the eve of the Second Coming, with the cessation of the Eucharist, the life of the Body of Christ on earth would also end, i.e. the seed of the serpent would have triumphed over the Head of this Body, and not only over the People of God.
Finally, the physical slaughter of all those who reject beast-worship would make it completely superfluous to take away economic freedom from those who do not accept the outward signs of beast-worship
(Rev 13:16-17).
So, Christians of this age are not physically killed. The life given in birth “from the blood, from the will of the flesh, from the will of man”
(John 1:13)
continues in them. What kills in them the deadly energy of the image of the beast that defeated them?
The answer can be read in the visions of the
12th
and
13th
chapters of Revelation. They reproduce the anciently established
the law of mutual enmity
between
the serpent and its seed,
on the one hand, and
the Woman and Her Seed,
on the other
(Gen 3:15).
Ancient Serpent
seeks to devour the
Promised Seed
“A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars”
(Rev 12:1-5).
Moved by ferocity against the Woman, he goes “to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ”
(Rev 12:17).
The beasts of the 13th chapter are
his seed,
through which he instills beast worship in people. And in those who reject all his forms, he kills that which he especially hates. He hates not so much the life that is given in the natural birth from parents, but everything that Christians receive in the “new birth” from
Heavenly Jerusalem,
Mothers of us all
(Gal 4:26),
all that makes them partakers
seed
“The woman clothed with the sun.” As a result of this killing, Christians are thrown into the state contemplated in the vision of
the first two verses of the 11th chapter.
Certain features of this vision have an obvious meaning.
If the
“falling away”,
which necessarily precedes the parousia of the Antichrist
(2 Thess 2:3),
is a gradual descent to a state diametrically opposed to what the early Christian
coming
“unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God,
the Heavenly Jerusalem”
(Heb 12:22)
was, then “trampling of the temple city"
is a humiliating enslavement, extreme remoteness from the blessed freedom that is eternally inherent
Jerusalem Above,
Mothers of us all. We are trampled on, which means that the enemies are on our backs, and our eyes are turned to the earth, and not to the descending Heavenly Jerusalem, not to that wisdom descending from above, which the Wife, the Bride of the Lamb brings in her descent to the People of God.
“To descend” (Greek
καταβαίνω)
means to descend from the center to the periphery (dictionary of I.Kh. Dvoretsky, vol.1, p.881). The descent of the Heavenly City takes place for the sake of the ascent and gathering of the People of God to Mount Zion, to
Jerusalem Above,
to that sacred unifying Center of the promised “good land”, where the trinitarian-like union of many hearts into the one Good and Most Pure Heart of the Lamb’s Wife will be restored, and the People of God will forever reign with reigning Christ.
But during the “half-week of times” these bright eschatological prospects are closed for the People of God. The state of his religious consciousness is revealed to the Seer in the form of “the outer courtyard of the temple, given to the tramplers of Jerusalem.” The outer courtyard of the temple is the place where the people prayed during the Old Testament worship. In accordance with the Gospel parables, the “holy place” and all biblical sacred topographical images in the New Testament conditions are transferred inside us, into the heart, into the religious consciousness. The subjection of the “outer court of the temple” to the trampling of Jerusalem means the enslavement of the religious consciousness of the Church People by the enemies of the Church. To some extent permitted by God, the religious consciousness of even those Christians who, under the conditions of triumphant beast-worship, preserved traditional piety, is enslaved by the enemies of the faith.
Let us now recall the allegories with which the Apostle of Gentiles describes the spiritual state of the ancient Israel of his day. The Old Testament is “the Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children”
(Gal 4:24-25).
“Jerusalem” (New Testament Israel)
of the period of “half-week of times” is in extremely humiliating slavery, in a state of trampling along with its children (New Testament Israel), whose religious consciousness — the “outer courtyard of the temple” — is also subject to the tramplers of “Jerusalem”.
The name “Jerusalem” in both cases (both for the Old and for the New Israel)
refers to the bearers of hierarchical and educational authority over the People of God.
“Defeat” (Dan 7:21;
Rev 13:7)
“apostasy” leading to the parousia of the Antichrist
(2 Thess 2:3),
“trampling down” during the whole time of the reign of the beast — the conqueror of Christians
(Rev 11:2;
13:5,7)
— all these troubles bring New Testament Israel to a state that can be described as “approaching Mount Sinai” (and not Mount Zion), to the yoke of the law, to the loss of that freedom that is eternally inherent in
Jerusalem Above,
which It is bestowed by the presence in us of the contracted Spirit of God: “where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there
is
liberty”
(2 Cor 3:17).
This “Old Testamentism”, the judization of New Testament Israel during the period of “half-week of times”, is revealed to the Seer John in the vision of the Old Testament Solomon's temple in New Testament Jerusalem, which “is in bondage with her children”
(Gal 4:25).
The killing in Christians of that which is given in the birth from
the Jerusalem Above,
the Mother of all of us, which is inherent in the seed of the “Woman clothed with the Sun”, is contemplated in the Apocalypse as “beheading”
(Rev 20:4).
We are talking about cutting off the People of God from that leadership, which, in the trinitarian-like manyunity of hearts, inseminated by the Word and fruitful by the Spirit of God, is the Most Good and Most Pure Heart of the Virgin Mother. The participants of this polyunity listen and see with the ears and eyes of this Heart.
But “of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage”
(2 Pet 2:19).
Conquered by the seed of the serpent — the beast 666 and decapitated by the action of his “speaking image”
(Rev 13:7,15),
New Testament Israel hears and sees what the victors plant in their ecclesio- and eschatological consciousness — the father of lies and his seed. This is how diffuse paracentric ecclesiology and defeatist eschatology are born. The main thesis of the latter: the death of the “present evil world” coincides with the end of the “half-week of times”. There will be no future “millennium”
(Rev 20:2-7),
“sanctified Seventh day”.
“When I was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hands against me: but
this is your hour, and the power of darkness”, the Savior said during His arrest on the night from Thursday to Friday of Holy Week
(Luke 22:53).
The day of the Christicide is the time of the power of darkness. “The power of darkness” is one of the demonic officials
(Eph 6:12).
The power of the darkness of the “Sixth Day” is the highest power of the most terrible darkness, the darkness of Christ's murder. In the septenary time of the fallen world, this darkness reached its highest power on the sixth day of Passion Week, blinding the God-chosen Old Israel and its God-established hierarchy.
A similar catastrophe occurs with New Testament Israel during the period of “half a week of times”.
The “beast 666” that conquers him is the power of darkness of the “Sixth Day”, killing the faith in the coming “sanctified Seventh Day” among the People of God.
The numerical name of the conqueror of Christians means three times, i.e. complete denial of this promise and conviction in the endless triumph of darkness in the threefold septenary time (in the past, present, future)
of the “Sixth Day”, Good Friday, the day of Christ's murder. Christ and the early Christian martyrs inflict a mortal wound on this authority
(Rev 13:3),
but as the apostasy of Christians progresses
(2 Thess 2:3),
their “Old Testament”, this wound is healed and by the time of Antichrist's parousia “the beast 666” achieves “power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations”
(Rev 13:7).
We are talking here about the “power of darkness of the Sixth Day”, which, consequently, won and enslaved after the Old and New Testament Israel, uniting all the peoples who entered the Church of Christ, and not about the global dominion of the Antichrist in the geopolitical sense. In the prophetic vision of Daniel, the kingdom of the Antichrist does not take possession of the entire world space. It is contemplated in the form of a “little (i.e. new, young)
horn”, before which three ancient horns of the fourth beast are uprooted, in which the Apostles (judging by the question and aspiration expressed in the last conversation with the Savior —
Acts 1:6)
saw the contemporary Roman Empire. With the end of the “half-week of times” and the coming of the Ancient of Days, only one of the four beasts is subjected to “slaing, destroying and burning”
(Dan 7:11),
which would be inexplicable if the dominion of the Antichrist extended to the entire world space.
The semantics of the image of the “seven-headed and ten-horned beast”
(Rev 13:1-2)
is too complex to attribute it exclusively to the person of “the man of sin, the son of perdition”
(2 Thess 2:3).
The victory of the “beast 666” over
the entire
people of God — a circumstance, as a rule, not noticed by exegetes — is possible only through the invasion and deep defeat of the religious consciousness. With the appropriate permission of God, such an impact is feasible only for “spiritual wickedness in high
places”, but not for “flesh and blood”
(Eph 6:12).
“Beasts” are
the seed of the ancient serpent,
and the seed (Heb.
זֶרַע “zera`”)
in the language of the Biblical writers has a double meaning: what inseminates our consciousness, and what is born as a result of this insemination with the consent and participation of our freedom.
In the people of God, the power of darkness of the “Sixth Day” that conquered them is implanting a paracentric ecclesiology and defeatist eschatology, disbelief in the coming “Sabbath day” and “first resurrection”.
In “the man of sin, the son of perdition”, i.e. in one who is born Apollya, the energy of Apollyon the destroyer, the blinding energy of the power of darkness of the “Sixth Day” instills an extremely daring opposition to any worship of God;
orthodox, heretical, pagan
(2 Thess 2:3-4).
Beast-worshipers are ready to give him the honors befitting the Messiah. At the same time, apostate Christians who fell into beast-worship become a temple, more precisely, a temple of the quasi-religion of the Antichrist.
This was understood by Russian theologians of the late 19th century, contemporaries of St. Ambrose of Optinsky, who identified the birth of the Antichrist from Apollya in the early 80s (see S. Nilus “There is near at the door”. M .: Alta-Print, 2004, p.67, S. Fomin “Russia before the Second Coming” , ed.1, pp.68-69)[1]. “The fallen Christians, having previously belonged to the Holy Church, were themselves temples of the Holy Spirit
(1 Cor 3:16-17;
6:19;
1 Pet 2:5;
2 Cor 6:16);
but through the acceptance of the Antichrist, these churches of God are already becoming the seat of the enemy of God, whom they begin to serve as God” (see “The Teaching of the Holy Fathers about the Antichrist”. M .: 1887, publishing house of I.D. Sytin, Ch. “The doctrine of the Antichrist by modern Orthodox theologians”, p.122).
The Fathers of the Church were not unanimous in their understanding of the apostolic prophecy about the temple of God in which the Antichrist, pretending to be God, will sit
(2 Thess 2:3).
Many, following St. Irenaeus of Lyon thought that it would be the ancient Solomon temple restored by him.
Otherwise interpreted this prophecy of St. John Chrysostom: “… and he will sit in the Temple of God — not only in Jerusalem, but everywhere in the Churches” (Teaching of the Holy Fathers on the Antichrist. M .: 1887, p. 90).
There was also disagreement among the Fathers on the issue of the “Restraining One”
(2 Thess 2:6-7),
i.e. preventing him from appearing. St. John Chrysostom: “Some believe that this should mean the grace of the Holy Spirit (extraordinary gifts), while others — the Roman state. I am more in agreement with these latter (…)
he should have already come when extraordinary talents are scarce, because they have long been depleted (…), but after it (the Roman state)
is destroyed, anarchy will set in, and he will strive to steal all — both human and divine power” (Teaching of the Holy Fathers on the Antichrist. M .: 1887, pp. 91-92).
The teachers of the Russian Church (St. Theophan the Recluse, John of Kronstadt, and others)
continued and developed this idea of Chrysostom in the sense that they considered the state of the Roman (“Caesarean”)
system, an autocratic monarchy, to be “restraining”.
In Daniel's prophetic vision, the appearance of the “little horn” of the fourth beast is accompanied or preceded by the uprooting of the three former horns
(Dan 7:8,24).
Their belonging to the single body of the fourth beast means their co-nature and uniformity — a single Roman (“Caesarean”)
monarchical system.
By the beginning of the 20th century, only three real monarchies remained in Europe, the insignia of which (eagles)
indicated kinship with the Roman Empire: Russian, Austro-Hungarian and German. As a result of the First World War and the revolutionary process caused by it, these three monarchies are overthrown. In Russia, the “little horn” comes to power, first political, then spiritual, whose attitude to “everything that is called God or sacred”
(2 Thess 2:3)
is expressed by a short, in its own genius, thesis: “all worship of a divinity is a necrophilia”
(Complete Set of Works, vol. 48, p.227).
In this thesis, everything is brought to the extreme limits of hatred of God, which is absolutely impossible to overcome, just as it is impossible to be north of the north and south of the south pole.
The ideology of extreme God-hatred lost its political power in 1991, but spiritual power over those who saw and sees in its author all divine and human perfections, over those in whose heart he took the place befitting the Messiah, remains. In a sense, this power has become even deeper, because the state violence, which kept it under the Bolshevik regime, has disappeared. Now, in a liberal democracy, it is based on free choice. It is also nourished by all the problems of the new system, which are too much for people accustomed to the paternalistic guardianship of the totalitarian regime.
But the main source of its vitality is the “power of darkness of the Sixth Day” that beheaded and blinded New Testament Israel.
These deadly diseases of the ecclesiastical and eschatological consciousness were revealed in the absolute, defiantly scornful inattention of the Eastern Patriarchs to the guiding ministry of the Mother of God at that turn of history, which in the Gospel prophecy about the fate of Jerusalem
(Luke 21:22-24)
is predicted by the subordinate clause “until …”, and the meaning of which cannot be understood without the guiding signs of the Queen of Heaven.
The task of interpreting this prophecy for the Russians is hampered by the translation dictated by the interpretation of St. John Chrysostom. But for those who read the Gospel in their native Greek, it is not so difficult to understand that the verb πληρόω (as soon as the translation “end” turned out to be erroneous)
can have only one meaning: the one that it has in the initial words of the Savior’s sermon: “The time is fulfilled (πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς), and the Kingdom of God is at hand”
(Mark 1:15),
the meaning that the Lord Himself reveals in two synonymous phrases of the Gospel of John: “My time (καιρὸς)
is not yet come (…)
My time (καιρὸς)
is not yet fulfilled (πεπλήρωται)”
(John 7:6,8).
So, the only possible translation of
Luke 21:24,
dictated by the very events of our days: “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times appointed for the Gentiles be fulfilled (come)
…”. The prophecy of the Savior contains the promise of the appointed times of such descents of Heaven, which (judging by the analogy with
Mark 1:15)
will bring to the nations the most abundant liberating healing Grace.
In the parallel verses of the first two synoptics
(Mat 24:21-22;
Mark 13:19-20),
the shortening (for the sake of the elect)
of the days of greatest sorrow is predicted, with the end of which it is natural to expect days of consolation. It is they who are foretold in the third Gospel in the promise of the times destined for the nations.
Prophecy
Luke 21:24
connects the fate of the old Israel with the fate of the nations, among which the Christians were the masters of Jerusalem for several centuries. Therefore, it is necessary to see in it the connection between the destinies of both Israel: the Old and the New Testament. The latter, as was shown above, during the period of “half-week of times” suffers troubles similar to those that befell Old Israel.
All this, of course, was foreseen and predicted by the Savior in his eschatological conversation on the Mount of Olives
(Mat 24:1-3;
Mark 13:1-27;
Luke 21:5-28).
Starting with the mention of Daniel's prophecy about “shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place”
(Mat 24:15;
Mark 13:14),
which in the Gospel of Luke is predicted as “the desolation of Jerusalem”, preceded by the encirclement of its troops
(Luke 21:20),
speech The Lord becomes two-valued, two-dimensional. One prophetic text predicts, one divinely named name two destinies are named: Israel of the Old and Israel of the New Testament.
The name is the verbal image of the named. The divinely named homonymousness of the two destinies signifies their conformity and consubstantiality conceived by God, which is to be realized in “the times appointed for the Gentiles”
(Luke 21:24).
According to the prophecy of the Apostle Peter, with the repentant conversion of old Israel to Christ, “times of anapsyxis will come from the presence of the Lord”
(Acts 3:20),
that is, the Sabbath from the presence of God the Father. Therefore, the gospel promise of “times for the nations” includes both Daniel's promise of time (zman)
and the Apocalyptic promise of “the millennium”. But, first of all, the prophecy of
Luke 21:24
contains the promise of the time of that descent of Heaven, which should cause in the Church and the world the changes necessary for the historical fulfillment of these most bright and joyful promises of the Bible.
[1] ↑
For the prophecies of the saints about the Antichrist, see the book of the priest Sergei Kobzar “Lenin — Antichrist from the Apocalypse”.
See also
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