OUR TIMES

We live in the times which our Lord warned us about in the Gospel, when “the love of many shall grow cold” [Matt 24:12], in the latter times when the Christian Gospel which was received with such fervor by the first Christians has become only one small part of the worldly life that most of us lead, instead of the center and meaning of our life — which is what it should be if we realized what our faith really is.  Orthodox Christianity, as a burning faith which we are not ashamed to confess and to have as the most precious thing in our life, is to a great extent in a state of decline and retreat in the world today.

But ironically — and providentially — as Orthodoxy has seemed to retreat, Russia (or rather, the Soviet Union, the atheist regime that has enslaved the Russian land) has advanced and now has a leading, perhaps the leading position in the world history of our times.  Therefore, what is happening in the Soviet Union today is looked to with great interest by the rest of the world.  And significantly, a good part of what is happening in the Soviet Union today concerns the life of the real Russia — Orthodox Russia.  The Orthodox revival in Russia today is closely bound up with the future of the Russian land.

In the 19th and early 20th century Russia before the Revolution of 1917, there were prophecies of spiritual men not only concerning the coming of atheism to Russia and the epoch of blood and slavery which it introduced into the world, but also concerning what would happen to Russia after this epoch, if the Orthodox Russian people would repent of the sins which produced it.

Let us, therefore, look at these prophecies and the way they are bound up with what is happening in Russia today.  Let us look, not from the superficial point of view of the popular newsmagazines, but deeper, and try to see something of what is happening to the soul, to the heart of Russia, and what may be expected there according to these prophecies and according to our knowledge of the more general prophecies concerning what is to happen before the end of the world.