Inasmuch as modern knowledge has penetrated into the past
history of mankind, it appears apparent that two great ideas were initially
inherent to man: faith in God and a notion of eternity (in the Bible — of the
heavenly "tree of life"). It was always understood that if there was
no eternity in God, then for every man in the future, after a short and always
uncertain, although perhaps even a "happy" course of life, death will
come, meaning collapse, emptiness, darkness. And this hopeless latter outcome —
death — completely erases the meaning of the former: the earthly life. In the
very "worldview" of the unbelieving person the final line is emptiness
and darkness.
But the Christian worldview is different, named
shortly "faith." The Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples and other
people about faith in the Sermon on the Mount: "Lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven… for where your treasure is, there will you heart be also." "The light of the body is the
eye: if therefore thine eye be single, (in the Slavic, "prosto"
or "simple," that is, in direct, healthy condition) thy whole body
shall be full of light." (We shall clearly see our steps, our acts and
ourselves). "But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of
darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that
darkness!? (In Slavonic, the translation is, how many times is it greater! — Matt. 6:20-23) What
kind of darkness awaits a person in the future, if he has already removed
himself from Godly light here on Earth… Protect yourself, human, so that you do
not declare yourself unbelieving, an atheist, and thus predetermine your fate
in the "absolute" darkness (in the Slavonic, the word
"kromeshniy" for absolute stands for "krome," or
"without," "outside of" God’s light), external in relation
to the omnipresent God…
The author of the non-canonical, but
Church-revered book "The Wisdom of Solomon," in the last two chapters
of the book, gives a frightening image of absolute "Egyptian
darkness," which befell Egypt before the exodus of the Jews. This is a symbol of the
other one, "eternal darkness."
For the believing person, for the Christian, "And
the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not"
(John 1:5). And in addition to the words of the Sermon on the Mount quoted
above, the Evangelist Luke adds the following words of the Lord: "If
thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall
be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee
light" (Luke 11:36).
On such candles of faith does the one, holy,
catholic and apostolic Church have its beginnings and is established.
Return to the first page
