80 years have passed since the end of the Great Patriotic War and the World War II as a whole, the post-war system of global world order was created. But the truth is, it is now rapidly collapsing beneath our very eyes, especially since the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, since the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the revival of Russia's geopolitical power in the 2010s.
However, how many have drawn spiritual conclusions from the events of the Great Patriotic War? And how many understand the most important and deep reasons for the brewing World War III, which only the lazy do not talk about now? Precisely spiritual reasons? I suggest we talk about this in more detail...
It is obvious that the cause of the World War II and in particular our Great Patriotic War was the mass people’s apostasy from God, the onslaught of material atheistic consciousness on Christian Europe, the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent the USA (by the way, now about 80 percent of people there, according to polls, believe in God). I will not say anything about the kind of their faith now - that is a different conversation. This apostasy from Christ did not begin in the 20th century, but already in the times immediately following the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, because the Saint John the Theologian already in the first century AC wrote that " the spirit of antichrist, of which you have heard that it comes, and is now already in the world" (1 John 4:3). It intensified in the 11th century, when Western Christians left the Church of Christ, having established their false Catholic pseudo-church organization; it was further aggravated during the era of the growing interest in paganism in philosophy and art, as well as during the period of the Protestant Reformers in the mid-second millennium AD, and it has already reached a huge degree in the Age of the so-called Enlightenment and German classical philosophy (18th-19th centuries), when false thinkers like Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire, Darwin, Huxley, Marx began to sow the seeds of atheism, materialism and worship of science, tearing it away from its mother – religion; and opposing the 1st to the 2nd. Humanity has consistently gone through several stages in its spiritual development during this time - from theocentrism to the anthopocentrism, then from it to the scientism and in recent decades, we have seen that humanity is rapidly and massively plunging into devil-centrism, seeing how much magic, occult and esoteric there is in culture, art and everyday life. And it is not only the Western world that suffers from this, but also our dear and long-suffering mother Russia. According to the latest data from December 2024, our citizens spend 2.4 trillion rubles a year on all sorts of magicians, esotericists and tarot readers, that is, almost half a trillion more than on food! This is approximately as much as the six-month budget of our Ministry of Defense in peacetime! And according to the same surveys, almost 60 percent of our citizens have resorted to, so to speak, occult services at some point in their lives! This is approximately as many as the number of baptized people in our country - only 60-70 percent! Conclusion - a huge number of even baptized people go to sorcerers!
In Russia, all this did not begin today or even in the 19th century. After the Christianization of Kievan Rus’ and a short period of the golden age of ancient Russian Orthodoxy already in the 12th-13th centuries, during the period of feudal internecine feuds, in fact, during the period of mass civil wars, the depletion of faith began. At that time, in fact, for about 150 years, Russians killed Russians. The situation reached the point that in Kyiv in the first half of the 13th century there was already a Catholic monastery. The Lord did not tolerate this and allowed the Mongol Empire to come. In the 14th century, through the great saint of our Land, Sergius of Radonezh, Orthodoxy began to revive in Rus'. In the 15th century, the new capital of Rus', Moscow, after the fall of Constantinople, recognized itself as the Third Rome. In the 16th century, in parallel with the strengthening and expansion of the state, however, the seeds of a new spiritual cooling had already appeared, which led to the invasion of the Poles. Once again, after the repentance of the people and through the prayers of our beloved Mother of God, at the beginning of the 17th century, Rus' began to revive, preserving its independence.
Peter the Great essentially carried out a spiritual revolution in the consciousness of Russians - he rejected the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome, the view of Russia as Holy Rus', as well as the keeper and defender of Orthodoxy throughout the world, and began to build a typical European secularized military-political and economic state, subordinating the Orthodox Church to the state. This led to a mass retreat from Orthodoxy, first by the aristocracy and nobility, then by the commoners, the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, that is, the so-called representatives of the middle class, and then by the masses of proletarians (by the way, the translation of this word from Latin sounds like this - having nothing but offspring). It was on these people, who had nothing to lose in terms of property, that the Bolsheviks counted and carried out their coup in 1917. By the way, let me remind you that the first attempt at a coup was undertaken by the nobles in 1825, immediately after Napoleon’s invasion, permitted by God, which apparently only briefly delayed the death of the Orthodox empire.
In 1917, having rejected Orthodoxy and monarchy or indifferently looking at this rejection at the top of power in the mass, our people found themselves in the largest atheistic state in the entire history of that time. Now the USSR has overtaken modern China in this sad competition, in which there are now about a billion atheists, although there are still almost 1.5 times more Christians than in today's Russia.
All attempts to reach an agreement with the authorities and preserve church governance came to nothing. Despite the Declaration of Patriarch Sergius (Stragorodsky) on loyalty to the Soviet government, the entire administrative apparatus of the Moscow Patriarchate by the beginning of the war in 1941 consisted of only three people - Patriarch Sergius himself, one bishop and a female typist - clerk. In the entire Union, several hundred active Orthodox churches remained, approximately 1 church per 1 million people. They constituted less than one percent of the number of churches in 1916 (then there were about 80,000). That is, in fact, almost all churches were closed.
Naturally, in such conditions, in order to preserve the Church and revive faith among the people, the Lord allowed the Great Patriotic War, the most terrible in the history of mankind, and so far the most terrible. But even then, Stalin did not immediately open churches, monasteries, seminaries, did not immediately release bishops, priests and laymen from prisons, but only in 1943, after Hitler opened about 10,000 Orthodox churches in the territories of the Union occupied by him in 1941-42. It is clear that both acted for their own political purposes, trying to attract religious people, and not at all because of sympathy for Christianity. Stalin, as is known, was an atheist, and even forbade his grandchildren to be baptized; they were baptized secretly, his daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva wrote about this in her memoirs (by the way, her surname was absolutely churchly, glorifying God). Well, Hitler was an esotericist and a Satanist, his contract with the devil, signed in his own blood, is still on display in one of the museums in Germany.
The fact that the people were still mostly religious, despite all the persecutions since 1917, is shown by the results of the census in 1937, at the very peak of Stalin's persecutions. At that time, they were classified by order of Stalin, since during the non-anonymous census, more than half of the inhabitants of the USSR called themselves believers.
So what is next? During the war, there was a mass repentance of the people; crowds of people poured into churches, notes for the commemoration of people, according to the recollections of the patriarch and priests, were brought in baskets; another priest recalled that the windows in the churches even fogged up not because of poor waterproofing, but from the tears of mothers, wives, grandmothers, sisters, daughters who came to pray for their loved ones.
Our victory, according to the words of Elder Vlasiy (Peregontsev), was a Holy Victory, since people really were drawn to holiness again and the authorities did not particularly hinder them in this. Many military leaders showed their belonging to Orthodoxy - for example, the Chief of the General Staff Shaposhnikov, Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov, famous in our Volgograd land.
However, after the Great Patriotic War there was no fundamental turn towards the Church, but the opposite. Under Khrushchev, new strong persecutions began, this "activist" even promised to show the last, as he put it, priest on TV. Under Brezhnev, there were no major persecutions, although the general pressure on the Church continued. By the way, Brezhnev himself believed in God and even communicated well with Patriarch Pimen I of Moscow. After Brezhnev's death, a telegram was sent throughout the Union on behalf of the Patriarch to all parishes so that they could pray for the repose of the servant of God Leonid. But his faith did not affect the general change in the nature of the state's religious policy. Now, as for the 1980s and subsequent years...
There is a famous prophecy attributed to St. Matrona of Moscow. According to it, the Lord will punish our Russian people in any case for the murder of God's anointed - the holy Tsar - Martyr Nicholas and his holy family for 70 years. So, these years of punishment ended exactly in the year of the 1000th anniversary of the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in 1998. And then the Lord will look at whether there is mass repentance among the Russian people or not, and accordingly, shorten or extend the time of punishment. We will have 4 more such reference points in history according to this prophecy - every 10 years, that is, 40 years. 10 years for each member of the servants of the royal family, also killed in the Ipatiev House along with the royal persons.
So, our future once again depends not on political, economic, military and social events in the world, but on the contrary, they depend on the spiritual state of our entire people, and accordingly our future.
Now let's count for verification. Indeed, every 10 years we had important events in this period. 1998 - the war in Chechnya, default, economic problems, no mass repentance among the people. 2008 - essentially the first clash with NATO in Georgia, economic crisis throughout the world, no repentance among the people. 2018 - the confrontation with the West reaches a new level, we have essentially been waging a war with it since 2014 in Ukraine, since 2015 in Syria, and there is also a heated confrontation in Africa, the country's economy is again in turmoil from sanctions, and there is still no repentance.
The next test year is already in 2028. But already now in 2025 we see that the conflict with the West is flaring up and gradually reaching its apogee. The SMO has been going on for almost 3 years, instead of helmets and bulletproof vests they are already supplying Ukraine with air defense systems, fighters and long-range missiles, in fact we suffered defeats from the NATO member country Turkey in Karabakh and in Syria, and our people live as if nothing is happening! What else can we expect? What kind of victory can we dream of when the main condition for its granting to us from God is not there, as has happened more than once in Russian history? According to the prophecies of Orthodox saints and ascetics (here are just a few names: Kosmas the Aetolian, Paisios of Mount Athos, Feodosiy Kavkazsky, St. Laurence of Chernigov, Elder Sepphora (Shnyakina), Elder Joseph of Vatopedi, Elder Vlasiy (Peregontsev), Metropolitan Neophytos of Morphou), we should expect the World War III, which is now being predicted not only by them, but also by political scientists, military men, economists and other secular analysts.
I would like to conclude with the words of Metropolitan Neophytos of Morphou. This is a modern bishop of the Church of Cyprus, to whom Saint Paisios of Mount Athos predicted the episcopacy about 40 years ago, when the future bishop was still a secular student. In his latest interview in December 2024, he said this: “Now, do you know what is important? What the Holy Scripture says: “Hide yourself until the wrath of the Lord passes.” Hide somewhere with the Psalter, with the Divine Liturgy, with a few people around you who will help you celebrate the Liturgy until the wrath of God passes... We are now in a time of God’s wrath, and those who do not understand this and who are now trying to give solutions to social, political or even church problems, I think, are deeply mistaken... We must first be nourished by the Orthodox faith ourselves, and then the Chinese, Indians, Africans will be waiting for us - many of them will want, although not all, to receive this Orthodox faith. Even the Germans, as the prophets say, will ask us for the Orthodox faith... Our task now is to become good students of the Orthodox saints.”
So, Victory in any war, including the coming World War III, which is predicted even in the Apocalypse, the last book of the Bible, and which will be allowed for the sins of people all over the world (in another interview, Metropolitan Neophyte said that mainly for three main sins - for murder/abortion, for fornication in all forms, for Satanism/magic) is possible only with the repentance of the people. Whichever people repent and turn to God, which is shown to us by the example of Nineveh in the Bible, and which Saint Nikolaj (Velimirovic) speaks about in the book "War and the Bible", will win! Lord, grant repentance to Orthodox Christians all over the world! Holy Mother of God, save us!
Автор статьи: Максим Анатольевич Злобин, православный христианский миссионер, публицист, выпускник аспирантуры Московской духовной академии.
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