home » Plants » The Holy Fathers of the Church on Monarchy. What Orthodox priests of the Russian Orthodox Church say about the possibility of restoring the monarchy in modern Russia What is the essence of the idea of the Orthodox monarchy

The Holy Fathers of the Church on Monarchy. What Orthodox priests of the Russian Orthodox Church say about the possibility of restoring the monarchy in modern Russia What is the essence of the idea of the Orthodox monarchy

ORTHODOX MONARCHY, the state form taught to man from God. The Bible gives a direct instruction from the Lord: “Set over you a King whom the Lord your God will choose…” (Deut. 17:15). By the will of Almighty God, His Son, Jesus Christ, descended from Heaven and incarnated and became human in the days of Caesar Augustus, in the 8th century. from the founding of Rome.

The new life, revived by the Savior Jesus Christ, the life of Grace, carried out in the Church of Christ, by the will of God was inscribed in the imperial state system. She consecrated this system. She updated this system. She gave this system the strength and ability to be a vessel containing the church pillar and the affirmation of the truth (see: 1 Tim. 3, 15) and the precious wine of the Divine grace of life, based on the gospel word.

So infinitely irresistible was the power given to the Church by its Founder that the Church withstood three hundred years of cruel persecution, during which the conquered became victorious, death scattered the seeds of life, the poor in spirit gained the Kingdom of Heaven, and the meek inherited the earth. From the very beginning of her earthly existence, to the society that perceived the spiritual life brought by the Church, she brought sanctification, consolation and affirmation (see: 1 Cor. 14, 3).

The Orthodox Christian monarchy first appeared on the historical scene in the empire of St. equal to ap. imp. Constantine the Great. The construction of this monarchy has always remained not brought to its completion, to the attention of the top of the building, but the greatness of the idea of this construction in itself had the greatest moral and political significance, which determined the aspiration of mankind to the greatest possible harmony of human community (polytheme). This idea, this ideal, consisted in the combination of empire with Christianity. The practical implementation of this principle was expressed in the emperor's view of himself as God's servant, acting in conjunction with the Church. So about St. imp. Constantine the Great is testified by the famous historian of the Church, a contemporary of Constantine, Eusebius of Caesarea.

This view of the emperor on himself was immediately reflected in the legislation of the empire, and it acquired an unusual harmony, for it was imbued with philanthropy and the desire to support good and eradicate evil. The emperor ceased to be the executor of the will of the people, but became the executor of the will of God and God's Law. But not only that, the emperor's view of himself and his service became such. Although the oppression of paganism by Christianity proceeded slowly and many pagans remained in the system that in our time has been given the name of the state apparatus, the strength of the Christian imperative for spiritual achievement was so great that its light penetrated everywhere. Following the emperor's example, others who made up the chain links in the state mechanism began to relate to the ideal of Christian statehood.

Although the triumph of the Christian state, that is, the empire of Constantine the Great, lasted barely a hundred years, having suffered a defeat from the barbarians, it turned out to be the victor anyway, for it subdued the pagan barbarians to Christ God.

It would be interesting to delve into the history of events in the alternation of which the Christian empire of Constantine the Great overcame in itself the influence of pagan Rome, weaved the strokes of the "Iron Rome" into itself, marching along the historical path, fell under the influence of Roman Catholicism and the papacy, scholasticism and successively Protestantism. But ... leaving Rome and general history Let us direct all our attention to the fate of our Motherland.

The Russian people were a strong people many centuries before the adoption of Christianity. However, Orthodox statehood begins from the Baptism of Russia - from the day when Russia adopted Christianity. Let the materialists evaluate this event in their own way, and instead of listening to what the creeping worm thinks about the eagle soaring in the skies, instead of studying the material goods that came to Russia as a result of Baptism through the pages of Soviet historians, let's go along the paths of pilgrimage routes by which the whole Russian land was trampled. Only in this way can you find out the truth about the monarchical legal consciousness of the Russian people.

Christ's Truth, having penetrated the Russian land, sanctified the Russian statehood. Here, under the rule of the princes, many of whom have themselves revealed themselves to be saints, the whole people turned out to be striving “for the honor of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14), for in the entire Russian people the faith and moral teaching of the Orthodox Church became the cornerstone the stone of the whole culture of Russia. She became Holy (see: Holy Russia), just as the Church is holy, uniting both saints and penitent sinners, and even sinners who have not yet repented, but are capable of repentance, for she is a source of holiness for those who seek sanctification and strive for it. .

Lived in God's world. They lived for the sake of God, for the sake of His glory, and did not wait for wishes and aspirations to be fulfilled here on earth, but in Heaven and in Eternity they expected their crowns. Thus, the Holy Gospel was embodied in the people's life and character. Russia was renewed in Holy Baptism, for it accepted the mystery of the new life brought to earth by the incarnate Christ God.

The natural world did not know this mystery before Christ, and outside of Christ cannot know it even now. The mystery of the reborn new, grace-filled Christian life is the spirit of self-humiliation and humility, filled with love, and this mystery is known to those who aspire along the path of following Christ's commandments, having taken up the cross, as the Lord taught (see: Matt. 16, 24, etc.).

Russia has always recognized itself as a sinner and has always risen to holiness. Here, each person spent his life in an internal struggle, in an invisible battle with his passions, in the struggle against evil and on the side of good. Let not everyone emerge victorious, but there were none who would be indifferent to their falls, who would not be tormented by them. The fallen ones were in a hurry to rise up and correct themselves: “... we will rise up and correct ourselves” (Ps. 19, 9).

Russia has been turning into Holy Russia for more than one year, but it has been turning steadily, and, no matter how wonderful it may be, our attention is especially drawn to the fact that in this Holy Russian time of our history, the Christian feat of holiness harmoniously fit into all the phenomena of public and state life. Russian monarchical autocratic system. Ideally, each administrative official, in solving all his official tasks, proceeded from the concepts of Christian achievement. This principle pervaded the entire society. Neither Roman Catholicism, nor even Protestantism, provides that inseparability between inner and outer life, which is required for the harmonious development of social and state life and for which the path and all possibilities are open in Orthodoxy. Not by tsars, but by the Orthodox life of the Russian people, the Russian state form was created - the Orthodox monarchy. What more, if, according to our faith, not only all the feats of piety, but also everyday affairs with civilians should be directed to the achievement of salvation, but they are evaluated not by their number and external significance, not by their appearance, but rather by their invisibility, according to how they influenced the heart to correct the will, to what extent they testify to the purity of the will, to what extent, through them and for the sake of love for God, a Christian was able to take a step to free himself from the network of passions that keep him in bondage to sin.

This is how the Russian people lived in the spirit of the righteousness of Christ, lived “hungry for truth” (see Matt. 5:6). In this, Russia fulfilled its calling, and the loyalty to this calling on the part of the whole people made our Motherland a repository of Divine truth and a servant of the Gospel piety.

Holy Russia, Orthodox Russia brought up a people alien to the Western legal concept of society and statehood. The spirit of Christian achievement and righteousness reigned supreme in our Motherland for many centuries, it left a deep imprint on the heart and mind of the people. Even during the imp. Peter I, the Russian people lived in the spirit of the teachings of the Holy Church, which they adhered to "as if they had given birth to his mother." The Russian people had no need for the external heartless legalism of a constitutional state, and they did not seek to snatch even a piece of state power for their own selfish interests. On the contrary, the people, strong in their Orthodoxy, first of all took care of the purity of conscience, softening of the heart, perfecting themselves according to the word of Christ (see: Mt. 5, 48). Therefore, he surrounded the bearer of power, the God-chosen Tsar, with love, obedience and willingness to cooperate and handed over his God-appointed Monarch not to the jealous supervision of selfish, ambitious and power-hungry people who wanted to play the role of accomplices of power, but the all-perfect grace of God.

N. Kusakov

The Orthodox monarchy is the most ancient and most natural among all peoples. The first democracies (Roman and Athenian) arose later, after the first anti-monarchist revolutions in history and the expulsion of kings. The cell of the state is the family. In a family, the father is naturally the boss, and the son is the subordinate; the power of the father is not the result of family elections, but handed over to him by the natural law of God (Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow). Just as a people arises from an overgrown family-tribe, so does the tsarist autocracy from a family individual leadership. Both the family and the monarchical structure are God's institution for the earthly existence of sinful fallen man. Primordial man, who was in living communion with God, did not obey anyone but God, and was the lord over unreasonable creatures. A person who has sinned, violated the Divine hierarchy of subordination, fallen away from God, became a slave of sin and the devil, and as a result of this became subordinate to a person like himself. The sinful will of man requires submission to limit its destructive activity. This Divine institution has in mind the only good of man - to limit the spread of evil. And history itself confirms that whatever the shortcomings of monarchies, they cannot be compared with the evil that revolutions and anarchies bring to the peoples.

Monarchical government is established by God in His own image. “God, as the One, established the sole power, as the Almighty - autocratic power, as the Eternal - hereditary power” (metropolitan Filaret of Moscow). Such is the monarchy in general, regardless of its spiritual content; being established in the likeness of God, it already has an educational religious significance. The Christian monarchy took shape and developed under the direct guidance and grace-filled sanctification of Christ's Church, and therefore has a special spiritual content.

The Church is also a Divine institution, just like monarchical statehood, although it is incomparably higher due to its Divine-human nature. Therefore, she could not have a fundamental contradiction with her, but from the time of Constantine the Great, together with her, she did the common work of God on earth. After the conversion, the emperor, in his own words, began to perform the functions of "bishop (i.e. overseer) of the external affairs of the Church", and the monarchical statehood itself became "an external Church fence."

The relationship between the Church and the Orthodox monarchy is most clearly expressed by two documents: the 6th short story "On the Symphony" by imp. Justinian and the "Epanagogue" of St. Patr. Photius, adopted among the fundamental laws of the imp. Basil the Macedonian. These documents were taken by the Church as expressing her teaching on this subject. According to them, the Church and the Orthodox Kingdom exist in the same unity as the soul and the body, forming a single living organism. Of course, the Church can exist without Christian statehood, just like a soul without a body, but this state is unnatural. Of the nineteen and a half centuries of its existence, the Church has lived in the Orthodox Kingdom for sixteen (from Equal-to-the-Apostles Constantine to the Tsar-Martyr Nicholas II). The Church and the Kingdom are connected not by legal relations, not by delimitation of spheres of activity, but by Truth - the faith of the Church, which the Orthodox Kingdom recognizes as its truth. Therefore, crimes against faith and the Church (preaching godlessness, immorality, all kinds of magic) in the Orthodox Kingdom are also state crimes. The Orthodox Tsar recognizes himself as a servant of God, an executor of His will, and the Orthodox Kingdom is an instrument of God's Providence in the world. The task of the Orthodox tsar, according to the definition of imp. Justinian, - the preservation of the purity of the Christian faith and protection from any attempt on the Holy Apostolic Church. The Orthodox Kingdom is religious in nature and is a special God-established form of human society. It is subordinated to the faith of the Church as Divine truth, and this truth itself is differently embodied in the state, in its culture and way of life.

Deeply understanding the spiritual foundations of state existence, Justinian wrote: "The well-being of the Church is the fortress of the empire." As long as the soul is healthy, the body can resist any disease; when the soul leaves the body, death is inevitable.

The Church does not assume earthly power, the earthly organization of human life, but gives both power and earthly life a spiritual basis, an inner content that transforms the monarch into an Orthodox anointed king, the people's life into a church life, and the population of the country into an Orthodox Church people.

In united service to the cause of God - in the creation of the Kingdom of God on earth - the Church and the Kingdom constitute one whole, one organism, although "unmergeable", but also "inseparable", just as there are two natures (Divine and Human) in the one Person of Christ . The Kingdom receives faith and the grace of sanctification from the Church, and the Church, without changing her mysterious spiritual nature, instructs this Kingdom to protect itself from external enemies. This Orthodox “symphony” (see: Symphony of Powers) is fundamentally different from “papocaesarism” (state-administrative domination of the Church) and from Protestant “caesaropapism” (power over the Church of an absolute monarch, not limited either by the faith of the Church or by its canons, which are its heretical perversions). In the Orthodox Kingdom, according to Justinian, "no law is valid if it contradicts the canons of the Church."

It is precisely the inseparability and inseparability of the Church and the Kingdom, their living connection, that is reflected in the double joint ministry of the Tsar and the Patriarch. In addition to his place in the Church, determined by the canons (the first among his equal bishops), the Patriarch is the representative of the Church in the state, the overseer of its Orthodoxy. The state itself imposes on the Church the duty to teach and grants her a monopoly right in this. From the tsar, according to the Epanagoge, loyalty to Orthodoxy, that is, to the entire teaching of the Church, and life based on this teaching, is required. Thus, royal power is subordinated to the truth preserved by the Church. The king himself receives from the Church a special charisma - a special gift of the Holy Spirit for his royal service. This happens during the sacrament of his wedding to the kingdom and chrismation. The essential moments of this are the confession by the king of the Creed and his oath to God to preserve the faith in its integrity in a special kneeling prayer of the king, as well as the prayer of the king for the people and the people for the king. In response to this vow of allegiance to the king, he is taught a special “grace of the kingdom” through the laying on of the hands of the Patriarch, the anointing of St. the world and through Communion according to the priestly rank.

The Anointed Tsar is not just a ruler blessed by God, but also a special rank in the Church itself, a special guardian of the Universal Church, who has the right to convene Church Councils and preside over them. Such an Anointed Tsar has always been in the Church in the singular: first the Byzantine emperor, and then the Russian tsar. The Orthodox Ecumenical Church, even in other countries, has always commemorated the tsar in a special way, as her patron. So, for the final approval of this title for Ivan the Terrible, the Council of Russian Bishops was not enough, but confirmation was required from all the Eastern Patriarchs.

The Russian Grand Dukes, the Serbian, Georgian, Bulgarian rulers were the defenders of the Church only in their own regions. They were also raised to reign with the blessing of the Church, but according to a different rank (“Bless the prince in a hedgehog”), which included the wedding of the prince, but did not have Chrismation. Of course, they, too, in their service were Christian sovereigns, inseparably conscious of themselves as both children of the Church and national rulers, defenders of the interests of both Christianity and their people. They lived entirely in church life, had their confessors, through whom, just as through archpastors, the Church influenced their Christian conscience. Many holy noble princes are glorified by God with incorruptible relics and miracles precisely for their service as Christian sovereigns. The Russian Church knows about 70 holy princes and princesses, more than a dozen of them are counted by the Georgian, Serbian and Bulgarian Churches. These are the princes-martyrs who were killed for Christ by the infidels, and the princes-martyrs who suffered from the false brothers, and the Equal-to-the-Apostles sovereigns - the spreaders of Christ's faith in their countries, and the princes-monks, and the princes-warriors who laid down their lives for the faith and the fatherland.

Byzantine pious kings also show a special type of piety - the pacifiers of the Church, who gathered Ecumenical and Local Councils, and deposed heretics. Among such kings we also see deep theologians like imp. Justinian, and church hymnographers, like imp. Leo the Wise, whose stichera is still sung by the Church to this day, and zealots of monastic life, who lived in the palace itself almost according to the rules of the Studion Monastery. What was the range of interests even among women - members of the royal family, eloquently says the testimony of the daughter of imp. Alexy Comnenus Anna: they regularly read St. fathers, mainly Maximus the Confessor (one of the deep contemplative theologians). At the service, the kings themselves read the Apostle, carried a candle in front of St. Gifts, on religious processions they carried the icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands. Everyone knows that Vladimir Monomakh ordered his children to pray even in the saddle, and he himself had a Psalter in his saddle bag, which he read daily. Before death, both Byzantine kings and our princes, as a rule, took monastic tonsure in order to go to the Lord in a monastic rank. The same title was also given to widowed princesses who avoided a second marriage.

The Christian kings of Byzantium built hundreds of monasteries, thousands of churches, many charitable institutions (homes for orphans, the sick and the elderly). On their initiative, missions with Christian preaching were sent to the Armenians, Georgians, Arabs, Ethiopians, Goths, and later to the Slavs. Justinian saw his task as a Christian king in "that the whole world become Christian." For the same purpose, even Constantine the Great interceded for the persecuted Persian and Gothic Christians, and later Justinian for the Arab Christians who suffered from the Jews.

The history of the spread of Christianity shows quite clearly the role of Orthodox sovereigns. The first Christians of Armenia, Georgia, Ethiopia, Bulgaria, Great Moravia, Czech Republic, Russia were their sovereigns. The first Christians of Russia are the pious princes Askold and Dir, who were converted to the faith by the miracle of the Mother of God and sealed their loyalty to Christ by martyrdom; it is equal to book. Olga, this is the recipient of the Russian people from the Baptismal font, his godfather is Equal to the Ap. book. Vladimir, according to whose ardent faith the Russian people were worthy of being born from water and the Spirit before the announcement in faith. Everyone knows the role of the Kyiv led. princes in the spread of Christianity in Russia, the construction of temples and monasteries by them. How long Christianity was considered a “princely faith” is evidenced by the fact that already a century after the Baptism of Russia, according to the testimony of the district message of Metropolitan. John of Kyiv, many of the common people believed that only princes and boyars should get married, observe fasts, pray in church and confess.

The Orthodox tsar, being an instrument of God's Providence, carries out a very special service - in symphony with the Church, to be "holding back" the evil of the world. Ap. Paul in 2 Thessalonica, predicting the coming of the Antichrist at the end of world history, says: "The mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but it will not be accomplished until the one who restrains now is taken out of the midst." According to the unanimous interpretation of St. fathers, from St. Chrysostom to St. Theophan the Recluse - by "retaining" is meant the Christian sovereign of Rome: in the time of St. Chrysostom - Emperor of the Second Rome - Byzantium, during the time of St. Theophan - Russian Tsar of the Third Rome - Moscow.

Constantine the Great was the first to receive and fulfill this ministry of “restraint” with the special blessing of God (let us remember the sign of the Cross and the inscription: “By this you conquer”). It is by the blessing of God and the sword of St. Constantine, the worst enemies of the Church of Christ, Maxentius and the apostate Licinius, were deposed, and the Christian faith became dominant in the empire after two and a half centuries of persecution (and Christians themselves made up no more than 10% of the population). Later, Christian sovereigns repeatedly had to defend the Church with a sword, subdue the fury of barbarians, pagans and apostates. A. Tuskarev

After Peter I denied the supreme importance of the Church in state affairs, the idea of the Russian Orthodox monarchy was undermined. In its place, some kind of hybrid with a semi-Russian content and a pre-Western form began to be created. For legality, Russian emperors and empresses continued to be crowned kings in the Church. This was done with a great deal of formality. It took the people two centuries to “enlighten” to such an extent that they were so indifferent to the murder of the Anointed of God.

According to the idea of the Russian monarchy, only God is the source of the power of the monarch! This idea was formulated with the utmost honesty by Ivan the Terrible in one of his letters to Prince. A. M. Kurbsky, who fled to Lithuania and from there, from a safe distance, started his dispute. “Your business is a slave to obey, and I,” writes the Tsar, “I will answer for you before God!”

If we agree that the Russian Orthodox monarchy can exist only when both the monarch and his subjects are truly believing Christians, then the problem of restoring the monarchy in Russia becomes the problem of restoring Christianity. I will make a reservation right away, saying that the problem of the restoration of Christianity is also relevant among Russians living abroad. People who imagine the restoration of the monarchy as the overthrow of communism and attaching the label "monarchy" to the society formed after this overthrow simply misunderstand the historical foundations of the Russian monarchy or confuse the idea of a Russian monarchy with the idea of a Russian empire. Restoring an empire will be even more difficult than a monarchy. While monarchy is an almost natural form of government, from the perspective of a believing Christian, empire cannot claim the same acceptability. That is why Orthodoxy was the main ideological enemy for the Soviet government.

At the initiative of Peter I, Russian religious and philosophical thought lost all influence on the Russian state system. Peter's successors elevated subservience to Western (atheistic) thinkers almost into a cult. Thus, in the XIX century. Russian religious and philosophical thought was little studied, and not only was little studied, but the vast majority of Russian educated people simply did not suspect its existence. Few, for example, from the Russian intelligentsia of the XIX - n. 20th century heard about the teachings of St. Rev. Seraphim of Sarov. But it is in no way inferior to Western philosophical thought in its depth and universality. True, with an important difference: in his writings, everything is based on faith, and not on unbelief (or “faith” in the power of the human mind). Or who (already in the 20th century) took seriously the works of L. A. Tikhomirov (after his insight and "betrayal" of the revolutionaries and the transition to the camp of "obscurantists")?

Analyzing the behavior of the majority of Russian tsars and tsarinas of the post-Petrine period, one involuntarily comes to the conclusion that they also did not understand the true role of the Russian Orthodox monarch. So, with the light hand of Peter I, the Russian Orthodox clergy were often persecuted, and in the rest of the time, until the revolution of 1917, they played a ritual role rather than the role of a spiritual educator and guardian of spiritual values. It is not surprising that while the Russian clergy played a decisive role in liberation from the Tatar-Mongol yoke, and later in saving the country from complete decline in Time of Troubles, in 1917 it did not play such a role. The revolution, being a matter of state, did not concern the Church according to the "glorious" principle of the separation of the Church from the state, which by that time had assumed the meaning of an inviolable law.

Therefore, it is difficult to find any serious positive works on the foundations of the Russian Orthodox monarchy that have been written during the last two centuries. It became fashionable and readily accepted by the “progressive part” of Russian society to condemn the monarchy in general and the Russian one in particular. With rare exceptions, Russian thinking people looked for answers in the West. The vast majority of Russian journalism reflects a fascination with Western (and at the same time socialist) ideas and a renunciation of everything Russian, and especially of the idea of a Russian Orthodox monarchy.

One of the theorists of the idea of the Russian Orthodox monarchy of the pre-Petrine period is undoubtedly Tsar Ivan the Terrible, whose interpretations of the idea of the Russian monarchy were clearly expressed in his numerous letters.

State administration, according to Grozny, should be a coherent system. The representative of the aristocratic beginning of the book. Kurbsky rests mainly on the personal prowess of the best strong in Israel (isn't that what we hear in the demands of the constitution three hundred years later?). Ivan regards this as a manifestation of political immaturity and tries to explain to the prince that personal valor will not help if there is no proper structure, if the authorities and institutions in the state are not located in the proper order. “Just as a tree cannot bloom if the roots wither, so it is: unless there are good buildings in the kingdom before, then courage will not be shown in war. But you, - says the king, - not paying attention to buildings, glorify only valor.

On what, on what general idea, is this necessary structure, the "constitution" of the Christian kingdom erected? Ivan, in an explanation, recalls the Manichaean heresy: “They depravedly taught that Christ possesses only heaven, and that people independently control the earth, and the devil controls the underworld.” “But I,” says the King, “I believe that Christ possesses everything: heavenly, earthly and underworld ... and everything in heaven, on earth and underworld is His desire, the advice of the Father and the goodwill of the Holy Spirit.” It is the Supreme Power that imposes its will on the state "structure", and establishes the royal power.

The Manichaean heresy, by the way, is the very principle of the separation of the Church from the state, for which the “Westernizers” in Russia advocated.

The rights of supreme power in terms of Ivan the Terrible are determined by the Christian idea of subjection to subjects. This gives both the breadth of power, and this also its limits (for there are limits for Ivan the Terrible). But within the indicated boundaries, unconditional obedience to the king, as a duty prescribed by faith, enters the circle of Christian piety. If a king acts cruelly or even unjustly, that is his sin. But this does not relieve the subjects of the duty of obedience. Even if Kurbsky is right in censuring Ivan as a man, then from this he still does not receive the right to disobey the Divine law: “Do not think, righteously enraged at a person. To be astonished by God: otherwise there would be human, if only to wear purple, otherwise it would be divine. Therefore, Kurbsky ruined his “soul” by his act. “If you are righteous and pious,” says the king, “then why did you not want me, the obstinate ruler, to suffer and inherit the crown of life?” Why "did not you become jealous of piety" of your servant Vaska Shibanov, who preferred to die in agony for his master?

The opposition between our principle of supreme power and the European one in general is repeatedly noticeable in Ivan, and in addition to the polemic with Kurbsky ... He clearly understands what constitutes a different higher principle. If you, he said to the Swedish king, had a perfect kingdom, then your father's archbishop and advisers, and the whole land would not be friends. He venomously remarks that the Swedish king is "just like a headman in a volost", showing a complete understanding that this "imperfect" king represents, in essence, a democratic principle. So it is with us, says the tsar, “the governors of Novgorod are great people,” but still “the sovereign’s serf is not a brother,” and therefore the Swedish king should communicate not with the sovereign, but with the governors. Grozny makes the same compliments to Stefan Batory, remarking to the ambassadors: "Your sovereign Stefan is not fit to be in equal brotherhood with us." At even the coolest moment for himself, Ivan proudly exposes to Stefan the superiority of his principle: “We, the humble John, the Tsar and Grand Duke of all Russia, by God’s will, and not by the many-rebellious human desire.” As we saw above, representatives of the authorities of the European neighbors for Ivan are representatives of the “godless” idea, that is, guided not by divine commands, but by those human considerations that prompt the peasants to elect the headman in the volost.

The whole essence of royal power, on the contrary, lies in the fact that it is not elected, does not represent the power of the people, but something higher, recognized by the people above itself, if it is "not godless." Ivan reminds Kurbsky that "by God kings reign and the strong write the truth." To Kurbsky's reproach that he "destroyed the strong in Israel", John explains to him that the strong in Israel are not at all where the representative of the aristocratic principle of "the best people" believes them. The land, Ivan says, “is governed by the mercy of God and the mercy of the Most Pure Theotokos and all the saints by the prayers and blessings of our parents, and after us, our sovereigns, and not judges and governors and hedgehogs and strategists.”

Not from the people, but from God's mercy to the people comes, therefore, the tsarist autocracy. Ivan explains it this way: “... Autocracy by the will of God ... began from St. Vladimir, Vladimir Monomakh, and so on and through a number of sovereigns,” he says, “even the humble scepter-power of the Russian Tsardom reached us ...”

Royal power is given to encourage the good and punish the evil. Therefore, the king cannot be distinguished only by meekness. “Have mercy on the ovs judiciously, save the ovs with fear,” says Grozny. “It is always fitting for kings to be observant: sometimes the meekest, sometimes the most ardent: to the good, mercy and meekness, to the evil, rage and torment: if he doesn’t have this, the king will not be!” The duties of a king cannot be measured by the yardstick of a private individual. It is another matter to save one's soul, but it is another thing to "worry about many souls and bodies." We need to distinguish between conditions. Life for personal salvation is a “fasting life”, when a person does not care about anything material and can be meek like a lamb. But in public life this is no longer possible. Even hierarchs who personally renounced the world according to the monastic order are obliged to have a structure, care and punishment for others. But the hierarch's prohibition is primarily moral. “The royal administration (requires) fear, prohibition and curbing, and the final prohibition” in view of “the madness of the worst evil people.”

Power so important should be united and unlimited. If those who are ruled are not under a single authority, then even if they individually were brave and reasonable, the general government will turn out to be "like female madness." Royal power cannot be limited even by hierarchs…

Even more harmful is the restriction of royal power by the aristocracy. king by personal experience describes the disasters, disorder and rebellions generated by boyar autocracy. Having plundered the royal treasury, the autocrats, he says, attacked the people: “With the bitterest torment, the estates in the villages of the living were robbed ...”

Only the autocracy can put an end to this predation. However, this unlimited political power has, as we noted above, limits. It is limited by its own principle...

The responsibility of the king is before God, moral, however, for the believer it is quite real, for God's power and punishment is stronger than the king's. On earth, the king does not give an answer to his subjects. “Until now, the Russian rulers were not interrogated ... from anyone, but they were free to complain and execute their subjects, and did not sue them before anyone.”

Thus, the restoration of the monarchy requires the restoration of a true Christian worldview, that is, a completely real sense of the Providence of God in earthly affairs. It goes without saying that there can be no talk of the separation of the Church from the state here. On the contrary, it is the Church who must see to it that the moral foundations are constantly maintained and observed. It is the Church that should be engaged in the education of citizens. And it is the Church that should be the supreme moral authority in all matters.

Therefore, there is no question of restoring the monarchy, strictly speaking. There is a question about the restoration of Orthodoxy in the future Russia. For a truly believing Christian, the monarchical form of government is a matter of course. The religious outlook of the nation gives rise to an instinctive striving for truly monarchical power, and the same instinct prompts in general terms many of the truths necessary for a monarchical structure.

For a believer, it is clear that only a real connection with the Divine is capable of giving strength to live moral ideals. Be that as it may, in historical reality, a comprehensive ideal capable of uniting all goals, all aspects of life on moral grounds, humanity found precisely in religion. This or that religious conception, just like this or that mood of religious consciousness, powerfully influences the social and political life(despite all attempts to “separate” the Church from the state).

From this it is clear that it is precisely Christianity that provides the firmest ground for the monarchy.

In fact, the power of the monarch is possible only with popular recognition. But, being connected with the Higher Power, it is not a representative of the people, but of that Higher Power, from which the moral ideal follows. A nation can recognize the supreme dominance of this ideal only when it believes in its absolute significance, and therefore elevates it to an absolute personal principle, i.e., to the Divine. Deriving from human spheres, the ideal would not be absolute; not flowing from a personal source, could not be moral. Thus, by subordinating its life to the moral ideal, the nation, in fact, wants to subordinate itself to the Divine guidance, seeks the supreme power of the Divine.

This is the necessary condition under which the sole power is able to outgrow the meaning of empowered and becomes supreme, empowered by the Divine, and therefore not only completely independent of people, but above all human power.

It was precisely the already significantly dimmed religious consciousness that gave place to the theory of absolutism, according to which the people allegedly renounce their power in favor of the monarch. In reality, this is not an idea of a monarchy, but of caesarism, an eternal dictatorship, i.e. the idea is democratic. According to the monarchical idea, the people do not renounce anything of their own, but are only imbued with the consciousness that the supreme power, in essence, does not belong to them, but to that Higher Power that indicates the goals of human life. The people have nothing to give up, they simply recognize the power of God and the fact that in state relations it is handed over to the monarch not by the people, but by the Divine will. With such an understanding, the power of the monarch is not people's power, it does not flow from people's power and is not called upon to express the people's will. But, on the other hand, this power does not exist for itself, as it can happen under absolutism, but for the people, for the fulfillment of a mission beyond that indicated. Thus, monarchical power constitutes a service, not a privilege.

The real monarchy, by its abstraction from the people's power and the people's will, and at the same time by its subordination to the people's faith, the people's spirit, the people's ideal, precisely acquires the ability to be the supreme power.

I will begin the article with two quotations from the holy fathers of the Church, which I think are well-known to most readers.

The words of St. Theophan the Recluse are known: “The royal power, having in its hands the means to restrain the movements of the people and holding itself to Christian principles, will not allow the people to deviate from them, will restrain them. Since Antichrist will have to distract everyone from Christ as his main task, he will not appear as long as the Royal power is in force. She will not let him turn around, will prevent him from acting in his spirit. This is what is holding back. When the Tsar's power falls and the people everywhere lead arbitrariness (republics, democracies), then the Antichrist will have room to act. It will not be difficult for Satan to prepare voices for the denial of Christ, as the experience of the French Revolution showed. There will be no one to say "veto" imperious. A humble declaration of faith will not be listened to. And so, when such orders are established everywhere, favorable to the revelation of antichrist aspirations, then the antichrist will appear. Until the same time, he will wait, he will hold on. (Bishop Theophan. Commentary on the Second Epistle to Thessalonica.)

And here is how the holy righteous John of Kronstadt says about this: “Through the sovereign persons, the Lord watches over the good of the kingdoms of the earth and especially the good of the world of His Church, not allowing godless teachings, heresies and schisms to overwhelm her, and the greatest villain of the world who will appear in the last time, the Antichrist, cannot appear among us because of the autocratic power that restrains the disorderly vacillation and the absurd teaching of the atheists. The apostle says that the Antichrist will not appear on earth until then, as long as autocratic power exists. The mystery of lawlessness is already happening, he says, but it will not be done until then, until the sovereign is taken from us, until now hold on from the environment will be taken. And then the lawless one will appear, whom the Lord will kill with the Spirit of His mouth (2 Thess., 7, 8). ("New words spoken in 1902.")

The power of an Orthodox monarch comes from Christ's anointing. The holy fathers say that the secret of the restrainer lies not only in the preservation of the Church by the grace of the Holy Spirit, but also in the preservation of lawful state power, especially that which is based on Christian principles. The meaning of the service of the Orthodox Tsar, as you know, was to protect the Church and the Orthodox faith from external threats.

On these two quotations, the topic of the Orthodox monarchy in this article, in essence, ends. The meaning of the article is not only to show the prophetic depth of these words using the examples of ancient and modern history, but, so to speak, in a negative way - in the light of the construction of a new world order - to indicate the enduring significance of the Orthodox monarchy and the martyrdom of the last Russian Tsar.

In the third millennium, the phrase "new world order" begins to sound more and more often in the mouths of politicians, philosophers and theologians. The so-called perestroika in Russia was marked by the emergence of "new thinking". Although the concept of "new world order" is nothing new. This was the basic principle on which Nimrod proposed building the Tower of Babel over four thousand years ago. The purpose of building the Tower of Babel was to reject the authority of God, to expel Him from human life. It was Satanism and demonic possession, and this was expressed in the occult symbols that decorated the tower.

In the 6th century BC, the Babylonian kingdom became the first of the great empires that spread their power throughout the then civilized world. From a purely historical, "earthly" point of view, the Babylonian kingdom was the most magnificent and most vicious of all that have ever been in the world. The people of God remember this time as the Babylonian captivity. We also know the great empires of the Medes and Persians, who in their turn aspired to world domination. Their kingdoms, based on idolatry, stretched from central Europe to India.

And according to many modern historians, the most progressive "world order" was established in ancient Greece, where democracy was carried out in its purest form. This experience of democracy was actually very brief and limited. More than half of the population of ancient Greece were slaves. And of those who were free, half were women who had no right to vote, own property, or testify in court. They were not even counted in the official census. The famous "pure" Greek democracy was beautiful in its lucky twenty-five percent. How is this not the idea of a "golden billion" that today's Western politicians are hatching?

The Roman Empire - the last ancient "world order" - became famous for its militant anti-Christianity. Under the emperor Nero, Christians were thrown to be torn to pieces by lions and lit like living torches in the garden, where the emperor's amusements took place. It should be noted that St. John Chrysostom and other holy fathers called the Roman Empire, based on the famous Roman law, one of the main forces of restraint. But at the same time, we can see in the collapse of its statehood and morality (as well as in other “world orders” we are considering) that decay, behind which the features of the future kingdom of the Antichrist clearly appear.

“The beast I saw was like a leopard; his feet are like those of a bear, and his mouth is like the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority” (Rev. 13:2). According to the interpretation of St. Andrew of Caesarea, the kingdom of Greece is signified by a trot, Persian by a bear, and Babylon by a lion (cf. Dan. 7); they will be ruled by the Antichrist, who, coming as the Roman king, will destroy their dominion.

In the end, Satan himself, tempting the Lord, offered him to establish a “new world order”: “I will give you all this if you bow down to me.” “The devil lied when he said this,” writes St. Irenaeus of Lyons, “for it is not he who rules the world, but God. The power in reality was established for the benefit of the pagan peoples not by the devil, who never has rest and even less desires that the peoples live in peace, but by God, so that people, fearing this power, would not devour each other like fish, but with the help of laws they resisted the manifold injustices of the pagans.

However, in a sense, these kingdoms really belonged to the “prince of this world,” Satan, because the distribution of power in a world where evil triumphs largely depended on him, by God’s permission. Today, he still does not skimp on promises and offers, in one program or another, “put an end to hunger and war,” and arrange a paradise on earth. But the word of God says that it will soon turn into hell before eternal hell.

Since ancient times, politics has been intricately intertwined with mysticism. Political and public life in ancient Greece was under the absolute dictate of the Pythians - the mysterious Delphic oracles. The pagan priests took some simple woman, called on her "spirits", and when she finally fell into a trance, she was offered to answer questions that determine the life of society. Oddly enough, after two thousand years of Christianity in our time in many traditionally Christian countries, various kinds of fortune-tellers and sorcerers begin to play an almost equally important role again.

A vivid illustration of the connection of mysticism with politics over the past centuries is also the history of the so-called Illuminati. There are many exaggerated and unsubstantiated writings written about this organization. But you need to find the essence in order to separate fact from fiction. One thing is certain: the Illuminati really existed. It was an ultra-secret European organization of international financial power, the original purpose of which was to create a world economic system. But thanks to her rapid success, and sometimes strong resistance, she set herself a grander goal - world domination. It is known that the Illuminati took an active part in the Protestant movement against the official catholic church and also in the French Revolution. Their leadership was mostly atheistic, with the exception of a few "practicing" Satanists. In various periods of the last centuries, the power and influence of this organization among the world's financial and governmental circles has been tremendous. Real banking and government mafia.

Look at the back of the US dollar and you will see three Latin words: "Novus ordo saeclorum" (new world order). These words are inscribed, as it were, on a fluttering banner under a pyramid made up of thirteen stones, above which is depicted the “all-seeing eye”. Some say that it means the Providence of God. Others believe that it represents the eye of the ancient pagan deity Osiris. This seal, approved by the US Congress in 1782, was drawn up by Charles Thompson, a member of the Masonic Order, Secretary of Congress.

AT recent history attempts to establish a new world domination are associated with the names of Hitler and Stalin. On the eve of the 1932 elections, Adolf Hitler addressed the people of Germany literally with these words: "If you choose me as the leader of this people, I will establish a new world order that will last a thousand years." A collection of Hitler's speeches published on English language abroad, was called accordingly: "My new order".

Only after the Nuremberg trials did researchers begin to understand how deeply mystical, satanic was the conspiracy carried out by the leaders of Nazism. Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, included in his program much of what we could directly attribute to contemporary spirituality and New Age culture. Himmler and his SS officers replaced the Christian sacraments and rites of baptism, weddings and funerals with neo-pagan ones. The feast of the Nativity of Christ, for example, became "Julfest", "the feast of Julius", and was moved to December 21st. Compare this with the attempt to establish Soviet rituals in communist Russia like “Oktyabrin” and other things, as well as the prohibition in today's American schools to say “Merry Christmas” (Merry Christmas) - it is allowed to say “Happy Holidays” instead.

Initiation rites for senior SS officers included taking an oath before sixteen flaming altars at the Nazi "temple of honor" in Munich. The names of the dead sixteen Nazis were called out solemnly loudly, and the new officers had to answer in chorus: "here." Himmler himself believed in reincarnation, declaring to the people that he was the new incarnation of King Henry of Saxony. In 1937, the remains of the ancient king were solemnly transferred to Quedlinburg Cathedral. Historians believe that about a hundred million people were sacrificed to Hitler's "new order".

One of the modern prominent ideologues of the New Age, Randell Byer, tells in his best-selling books about a certain “spirit of cosmism”, about how “the cosmic gods paved the way for him to make it possible to perform the important work of realizing the revolution “New Age” and a single world order”. Curiously, Bayer, who claims that he wrote his books under the dictation of the spirits, often uses the ancient Illuminati symbol imprinted on the American dollar: “The spirits told me to take twelve quartz crystals and, laying them out in a circle, imprint another circle for the occult third eye, and hang a great pyramid over them."

As for the role of communist ideology in establishing the "new order" and creating a "new type of man", this role is all too well known to all of us. Despite the failure of the "Trotskyist-Leninist" attempts at a "world revolution", Stalin and his Politburo, even before the defeat of Hitler, began to secretly develop their own program of communist reorganization throughout the world. We know about millions of innocent people exiled to hard labor and destroyed behind the barbed wire of the Gulags.

Communism was a powerful and seductive ideology for the masses, but behind its promises of a "bright future for mankind" was a brutal reality based on merciless violence.

We have already said that from the very beginning, the main meaning of the murder of the Anointed King of God was the elimination of the restraining, external defender of the Church. And the main blow, while this ideology of deceit was in force in subsequent years, was inflicted precisely on the Church. We remember Stalin's promise that "by May 1, 1937, the name of God will be forever forgotten on the territory of the USSR", and the mass closing of churches during the Khrushchev era, who promised in 1980 "to show the last priest on TV." Today it has become obvious that Khrushchev's persecution was the last convulsions of dying communism.

And as the last relapse of communism, one can recall the rule of the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot in Cambodia, when the whole country turned into a concentration camp. Pol Pot is known to have been sentenced to death penalty all doctors, teachers, journalists, priests, cultural and artistic figures. If anyone wore glasses, his name was blacklisted because a person who wears glasses may be able to read. And if he can read, it is better to eliminate him.

But the communist era was only one stage of evil. Moreover, it can be said that in the Soviet Union in the last period of communism, life began to gradually return to normal. The Russian people, thanks to a thousand-year-old Christian culture, as the writer Valentin Rasputin put it, digested the poison of this ideology. However, few could have foreseen that the incomparably worse would come.

A new deception, unsurpassed in cynicism and cruelty, was established, which went beyond politics and acquired an all-encompassing, mystical significance. "By their fruits you will know them." The presence of the "father of lies" and "manslayer from the beginning" became too obvious after these events.

What happened in August 1991 politically? Did Russia have a historical chance, or was it intercepted by her enemies, who were afraid of her revival and, like a disturbed anthill, began to fuss? Now it became clear that this was an international, finely planned conspiracy, which had been gradually preparing for a long time. We will not fully recognize all this behind-the-scenes directing, and this is not the point. The bottom line is the global deception that affected absolutely everyone, because it exploited the feelings of people who suffered from the horrors of communist ideology. In 1991, even the putschists themselves were deceived, who were drawn into this staging, as if giving them the opportunity to act, but in fact, in order to show everyone their stupidity and slowness, the threat allegedly coming from them to “democracy” and personal freedom, all the inhumanity unpopular regime that compromised itself in 70 years. Everyone was so tired of the deception of the Soviet authorities, and the calculation was just for this - just when a person is so exhausted, tired, you can beckon him with promises that look like the truth that now everything will be fine. Wasn't the truth already told about the revolution, the truth about the murder of the Royal Family, the historical truth about the Decembrists, about Lenin, finally debunked, in the era of so-called glasnost? This means that they will continue to follow the path of truth (and freedom). Among those who believed in the deception and supported it, there were also worthy people who cared about what would happen to Russia, not like some hucksters. When "perestroika" began, Academician A. Migdal said: "If this time it's a hoax, I'll die." And he, indeed, died of a heart attack in the midst of it.

Everything went, as if on the rise. They scared people: “Do you want democracy or Bolshevik power?” Finally, the new authorities showed their face, and everyone was dumbfounded. They revealed themselves: the killers, and nothing more, were true neo-Bolsheviks, yesterday's communists. In order to finally seize power, which ensures the redistribution of good and evil in their favor, they went to any lengths.

In October 1993, the usual Bolshevik method was applied, as Lenin did in October 1917. And these so-called "new Russians" who came to power showed who they are. How the criminals in the camp - the authorities from the lesson - staged a bloody performance.

Many people after this execution seem to be still sick. A terrible time - we are in the hands of criminals, and all this is under the full control of the West. Everyone understood what the concerns about Russia of the “world community” meant. But by deceiving others, the West is first of all deceiving itself. “Russians are fools, let them do whatever they want, let them kill each other, this is very beneficial for us so far.” But sooner or later it will fall on their own heads.

The worst thing is that, thanks to the media, the majority of the Russian people do not understand what is happening at all. Doomed, with animal fear, as if ready for the slaughter, millions of people live. The word "genocide" as a definition of what is happening in Russia today has become commonplace even in the democratic press.

We hear the protest of some: “Again you are talking about the lies and crimes of politicians. But what does this have to do with the Church? Politicians tend to act like this, there is always corruption, theft, lawlessness in power, and how could it be otherwise? What does this have to do with Christian preaching, which should only talk about salvation? Leave these topics for publicists and mind your own business. Stop embarrassing the Orthodox people, don't deviate from what Scripture says."

And by the way, a significant part of the Holy Scripture speaks about the lies and crimes of politicians. Much of Scripture was written by or addressed to those who were at the head of the state. Many pages of the Bible are biographies, biographies, as we now say, of the national leaders of God's chosen people and other peoples. The Books of Kings and Chronicles give a chronicle of historical events in all their merciless reality. It is shown how God works through good or evil rulers. Great and small prophets addressed the leaders of the people, and their prophecies are deeply connected with the political and social life of their time, its relation to the Divine law. After all, the Apocalypse, like all Holy Scripture, is a book about the judgment of nations and their rulers.

Genuine personal piety cannot be blind to the events on which the fate of the nation depends. The day will come when we will have to give an account of what we said or did not say, what we did or did not do in the face of the evil that reigns in the world.

In January 1991 (the decisive year of "perestroika" in Russia), the then US President D. Bush announced the beginning of the war in the Persian Gulf. “The stake in this war,” he said, referring to Kuwait, “is not just one small country. There is a great idea here – the idea of a new world order.” How does it happen that these words coincide with Hitler's famous boastful speeches and with the communist promises of a "bright future for mankind" that turned into a nightmare? For us, Orthodox Christians, this phrase - "new world order" - evokes an association with the coming catastrophes, about which Scripture speaks prophetically. It will be the peace and security of a one world government, which will suddenly turn into ruin for all mankind (1 Thess. 5, 3).

What do these words "new world order" mean? What do they tell you when you hear them? Judging by the Scriptures and the annals of history (everything that happens testifies to the same phenomenon), the desire for world domination, whether it is dictated by good intentions or ordinary greed, is almost always associated with idolatry, atheism or Satanism. We have already mentioned Babylon, ancient Greece, Rome, Hitler, Stalin and their followers. It is always anti-Christian. Not anointing with Divine grace to build life on Christian foundations, but anointing with the satanic spirit in order to rob, kill and “destroy to the ground”.

It is quite clear that the time of the new world order is not an abstract future. We see its significant signs already now. Ancient Old Testament prophecies warn of the coming of this time. Christ Himself proclaims it as the time leading up to His Second Coming. This new world order will be led by the anointed of Satan, whom the word of God calls the Antichrist. When the world rejects the truth and the truth, only lies remain for it. When humanity refuses "the Light that enlightens every person who comes into the world," darkness sets in. When Christ is cast out of life and those who have the anointing from Him, Satan's anointed comes.

The mystery of iniquity is revealed through the ages. “My people, what shall I do to you? Christ calls. “You have always tried to get rid of Me, as the parable of the evil vinedressers testifies. You killed God-sent prophets, you killed the Only Begotten Son of God, saying, "This is the heir, let's go and kill Him, and the inheritance will be ours." You have always tried to stifle the word of God. Let it be the way you want. I will let you establish a new world order. You did not want to repent of your sins, you rejected the meek and pious King whom I gave you. The anointed of Satan, the Antichrist, will come to you to rule the earth with an iron hand, establishing a new world order. Rivers of blood will flow through the streets of your cities.”

Russia and the whole world experienced terrible trials in the 20th century. But if there is no repentance, worse will come. According to the Apocalypse, one third of all mankind will be killed, and the atrocities of Hitler and Stalin will fade before that. Long before computers made this possible, the Revelation of God described how the Antichrist would control all world trade. Every person living on earth will have to take a sign on his right hand and on his forehead. Without this sign, no one will be able to buy or sell - not a thread, not a piece of bread. The Antichrist will establish absolute control over all money, since under his command there will be a single world government and a single world currency. The Holy Church warns that in the end he will try to put himself in the place of God (2 Thess. 2, 4). Then the long-awaited new world order will come.

Here is a recent statement by the director of the World Health Organization at the UN: "In order to come to the creation of a one world government, it is necessary to free people from their individuality, from attachment to the family, national patriotism and the religion they profess." According to the prophecies, he is (at least partially) right. Four conditions must be met before this happens. And this means a war against the Church, against statehood and morality, against the family, education and patriotism, which the Antichrist is carrying out in history.

The four defenses of life, which were provided by the power of the Orthodox monarch, must be broken.

The first and foremost of them, of course, is the Church. The whole history of mankind in this sense can be defined as a war against the Church. All Scripture, all the prophets warn of a great persecution of the Church. There have already been recently unheard-of persecutions, and new, more terrible ones cannot be avoided. Why? Because the Antichrist claims absolute power, and Christians are citizens of the Kingdom of God, those who recognize only one absolute, supreme power — the power of God.

The Church is the power of God on earth, and where there is a claim to absolute earthly power, it is the main obstacle to the establishment of a new world order.

We have already said that, according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, the coming of the Antichrist is restrained not only by the grace of the Holy Spirit, but also by the lawful state power. After the removal of the Anointed One of God — power based on Christian principles — there is a rapid de-Christianization of power throughout the world with an ever greater loss of signs of the legitimacy of power.

And in essence, only the Church with her grace, the fortress of Divine life, remains holding back. It is necessary either to force the Orthodox Church to merge with all false teachings and deprive her of grace, or to eliminate her physically. After an unsuccessful attempt to wipe the Church off the face of the earth, the main task of the enemy of the human race is the destruction of faith and what constitutes its blessed content. Faith - trust in God, fidelity to Him and confidence in the invisible - must be destroyed first of all. “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

In the arsenal of means used against the Church by her enemies, one of the most important is the undermining of trust in pastors. “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” This was, for example, the meaning of the "Church and KGB" campaign carried out in the media at the beginning of "perestroika". This is the significance of constant "revealing" publications about the clergy in newspapers like "MK". Woe to us if we give even the slightest pretext to slanderers! But when the slanderers run out of material, the devil himself begins to speak through their mouths.

He needs to undermine confidence in the Church as such, in Orthodoxy. The enemies of Orthodoxy and Russia are trying, first of all, to create among the people an atmosphere of despondency, confusion, disbelief that an outcome from the present disaster is possible. That Orthodoxy will endure in the midst of a general disintegration under the pressure of new "spirituality" and confessions. A significant role is given here to neo-renovationism, which is called upon to create such an “Orthodoxy” that would conveniently merge with other Christian confessions and dissolve in them.

One of the first steps in this direction should be the prohibition of such a fundamental spirituality, which shows intolerance towards other spirituality (for example, paganism and Satanism). Thus, the unity of the new world order is achieved without fail at the cost of the sacrifice of truth.

The war against the Church in the so-called democratic society, which increasingly rejects Christian values, is planned to be waged through the media, television, through the education system, through the adoption of new relevant laws. And we see how this war is already being waged. Propaganda of sin as a norm in the media and in schools—what has become state policy in Russia—isn't this an open declaration of war against the Church? Is this not a war for the complete destruction of the Church and its spiritual and moral principles?

As for the adoption of new laws, let us turn to the experience of the United States, which is the standard of "democratic freedoms" for today's Russia and the entire civilized world. In 1990, the Congress passed the "Law against intolerance", which, in particular, contains a prohibition "to speak negatively about the sexual preferences of other people." According to the interpretation of this law, if a priest in a pulpit sermon calls homosexuality "an abomination before God", he will be a violator of federal law, and he can be fined or imprisoned. This is not something that is somewhere in the unclear future: it is happening now in the most democratic country in the world. There can be no doubt that Russia, unless radical changes take place in it, will also be “ahead of the rest of the planet” in this respect.

In one of the schools in the United States, a stand with the ten commandments of God was hung on the classroom wall. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was a violation of the constitution because it "restricts the free moral choice of students and violates the Separation of Church and State Act."

You can be indignant as much as you like: don't they understand that these ten commandments contain the basis of any culture and any knowledge, and it is impossible that children should not be introduced to this most important knowledge! But in fact, the whole horror lies in the fact that they understand this. They understand that, having abolished these commandments, they can freely do whatever they want. And freely gain power over the souls of these children. Here the question of power is the power to rule the world, all people.

We see from these examples that the war against the Church is inseparable from the war against education. The American National Education Association, founded by the Rockefeller Foundation, has openly declared that one of the main goals of education in America is to drive God out of the schools. Even now, children can read the "satanic bible" in school, but they are forbidden to hear about the ten commandments. Isn't the same thing happening in Russia, carefully copying American "achievements": there are many cases when teachers were expelled from schools for preaching Orthodoxy, while teaching yoga, occultism, magic and corruption flourishes in these same schools.

What about the "sex education" programs in schools, about the free circulation among children of pornographic magazines like "COOL", published weekly with a circulation of about 1 million copies? "Freedom of conscience" and "freedom from shame and conscience", just like "freedom of religion" and "freedom from religion" are not the same thing. The time is coming for a new, more terrible than any Nazism and fascism, dictatorship. You don't have to be a sage or a prophet to understand that when the ten commandments of God are expelled from school, and teachers distribute condoms to children, the path that humanity is following is complete destruction.

Here it is natural for us to move on to talking about the destruction of the third protection that the Orthodox monarchy provided - about the war against the family.

We have said many times that the Royal Martyrs are an icon of the Orthodox family. This is literally so - just look at the photographs of the Royal Family; this is also true in the spiritual-historical sense: the murder of the Royal Family was followed by the destruction of many millions of Orthodox families. The main task of the revolution, according to Trotsky - the destruction of the family - which was not fulfilled during the years of the revolution, is being carried out in Russia today. We are talking about the destruction of not only the Orthodox family, but also any normal traditional human family. Before establishing a new world order, Satan needs to bring about this destruction.

Where corruption becomes state policy, the goal of the state is to free children from the power of their parents (although the destruction of the family means nothing less than the destruction of the state itself). This process is rapidly developing all over the world. The failed communist experiment was only "flowers". Recently, the United Nations celebrated the International Year of the Child, in whose program this goal was clearly expressed.

Anti-Christian, anti-human nature of such aspirations. today has long ceased to be just a theory. Margaret Sanger, who founded the International Planned Parenthood Federation in the 1920s, funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, calls for the freedom of adolescent sexuality, as well as the sterilization of all "colored", "mentally retarded" and fundamentalist Christians.

The war against the Church, education (culture) and the family is inextricably linked with the destruction of the fourth "defense" carried out by the Orthodox monarchy - patriotism. As the Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt prophetically wrote, after “the removal of the Autocrat, who is harassed by a well-known public,” the enemies will try to destroy the very name of Russia. Today Russia in the eyes of the world is a defeated country. As they say, what Hitler could not dream of, the Democrats did.

We see how the Americanization of the whole world is taking place. A single standard “mass culture” is being implanted everywhere, so that a person living in Moscow and Ryazan is no different from someone living in New York or Seoul. In every nation, just as in every person, its uniqueness and uniqueness is revealed as the realization of truth and goodness in its life. Sin erases the features of the uniqueness and uniqueness of every person and every nation.

The true revelation of all natural gifts is possible only in Christ. Therefore, the fight against Orthodoxy in Russia is inseparable from the fight against patriotism (although professional politicians, whose only goal in life is to be re-elected, diligently exploit the pain of the people for the desecrated Fatherland, creating movements such as "Fatherland", "Derzhava", "Our Home is Russia" etc.)

In general, all these four “defenses” that we spoke about are one inseparable manifestation of the one who restrains. Indeed, if the very concept of the family is destroyed, what kind of Motherland can we talk about? “Who needs such a Russia?” Many now say that our enemies are ready to provoke a popular uprising in order to bring NATO or UN troops into the streets of Moscow and take control of nuclear weapons. But here is a school or a family where children, along with teachers or parents, watch a pornographic video. There is no need to bring in any NATO troops (or vice versa, why not bring them in): these details no longer matter where everything has already been conquered by the devil himself.

“Judging by the Scriptures and by the nature of today’s people, the end is near, at the door,” St. Silouan of Athos said 60 years ago. The appearance of the Antichrist will be sudden. The disintegration of life in all spheres - the financial and economic crisis, the decline of morals - will reach its limit. Within one hour, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, the World Council of Churches, the UN and other organizations like them will seal with their signatures an agreement recognizing the supreme power of the new dictator, whom everyone will honor as the only and last hope humanity. As the word of God testifies, the whole world will marvel at him and follow him.

Some, perhaps, will say: “You exaggerate too much, this cannot be. The Russian believer has always been characterized by an apocalyptic perception of the world. It can't happen so fast." We're not talking about timing, but two decades ago, learned professors of history in free Europe argued that the age of communism was coming. Many people remember the scandalous story with the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, when a Canadian journalist overheard him saying in an undertone at the reception that the Soviet Union was gaining strength and America's time had passed. In their lectures, professors of political science explained to students that it would take at least a hundred years before the Berlin Wall- a symbol of the fortress of the communist system. But the Berlin Wall collapsed in one day. And no one could have imagined that this would be followed by a crash Soviet Union. And now only the blind do not see the “acceleration of history”, when essentially the same forces are preparing the collapse of Russia.

The Word of God gives detailed description Satan's anointed. After a general catastrophe, within a short time, he will establish unprecedented prosperity and peace. Finally, it will be accompanied by great mystical spiritual phenomena. The Book of Revelation says that he will be wounded in the head and miraculously healed. All the mysticism of the New Age will be at his disposal. The great spiritual leader, described in the Apocalypse as a false prophet, will lead to the unification of all religions. Why do we need Christ? - people will say, - Look how many millions of people died in different wars (not excluding the persecution of the Church), fighting for Christ. And what did it give? Here is a man of the world, he is here with us, he was killed and rose from the dead. What more could we want!”

But after this, a time of unprecedented horrors will come. The Antichrist, the unifier of world religions, the one who put an end to all wars, will reveal his true face to humanity, sowing death and destruction around him. This will be the highest manifestation of cruelty and violence that has ever existed on earth.

The Antichrist is said to have been given "a mouth that speaks proudly and blasphemies." The time will come to accept the "seal of the beast." Many will say, “We have no other choice. We can't buy or sell without it." And when they accept this seal, they will lose their soul forever.

We find it hard to believe that some of those present here will live to see this. But it will be given to all of us to see the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He came for the first time as "A swaddled baby lying in a manger." The second time He will appear in glory as "King of kings and Lord of lords" and "His kingdom will have no end." For the first time, he stood before the court of the earthly power of Pilate and Herod. The soldiers mocked Him and spat on Him. The second time He appears in glory, Herod and Pilate and all the rulers of the world will appear before Him at the Last Judgment. Scripture says that "every knee will bow before Him, in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

The first time He was crucified on Golgotha, the second time He will appear in glory with holy angels to judge the living and the dead.

Do not be deceived by what is happening in Russia and in the world. Do not be horrified by the corruption of nations, the cruelty and magic of new politicians, the lies of the media and disturbing rumors about new, even more terrible disasters. Christ warned that all this would happen. And His promise is firm: "In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world."

Andrey ZUBOV, professor at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (University) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, head of the Department of the History of Religion of the Orthodox University in the name of St. app. John the Theologian, Moscow
Christ will not be taken away from us either in the republic or in the monarchy
An Orthodox person may or may not be a monarchist. Various political models have nothing to do with a person's faith. And they are related to the fact that this moment required by the society in which he lives. Let us recall the experience of the Old Testament: when the faith of the Israelite people weakened, people asked Samuel instead of judging (and saying political language- instead of direct democracy, in which people freely conformed their behavior to the will of God) to introduce a monarchy. And God said to Samuel: They did not reject you, but Me. Give them as they ask, but first tell them the king's rights (1 Sam 8:7-11). That is, people deliberately limited their freedom, because in this freedom it was hard for them to walk before God. And the monarchy arises precisely at this spiritual level of society. In other words, if the level is comparatively low, then a monarchy is preferable to a republic. If this level falls even lower, and people generally forget about God, saying that they will govern themselves according to their own will, then a secular republic is established that completely ignores religious and moral principles.
However, when a society begins to rise in its Christian self-consciousness, then the monarch eventually becomes unnecessary. Why? Because people can find their own ways in walking with God. And even with all the excesses associated with social relations, there are examples of such states in history: the Pskov Republic was a Christian political community of a non-monarchist type, or the Venetian Republic, or the Hanseatic Bremen. Therefore, I believe that the monarchy simply corresponds certain type society.
And finally, we must remember that the Christian monarchy as such is a kind of contradiction. For non-Christian communities, the monarch is the image of the heavenly god, the savior. This is how the monarch was understood, say, in the Sumerian state or in Ancient Egypt. But for a Christian, only Jesus Christ himself is always such a savior. It is no coincidence that Nathanael turned to Him: You are the Son of God, the King of Israel (John 1:49). And no human king can be a savior. Moreover, the Christian knows that "every man is a lie." And any historian will say that the vast majority of kings are sinful people who, despite all their anointing, are many times worse than their subjects. This, by the way, is also not surprising: all Christians are God's anointed ones, they will all be anointed in the sacrament of chrismation. But among them, and this is known to all, there are both righteous and sinners. So is the king. Therefore, the king in a Christian society is not a sacred figure, as in pagan cultures. It is rather a military leader or administrator. An analogue in Eastern societies is the grand vizier, the second person after the king. And now the king in a Christian society is just such a second. And above him is the true King and Savior - Jesus Christ. And no one will ever take Christ away from us, neither in a republic nor in a monarchy. And a Christian must be a subject of his true King - Christ. And the political model is chosen on the basis of what the society needs at the moment, and not on the basis of theological principles. Because in Christianity these principles are on the other side of the political regime.

Report at the Sergius Readings

There are two world orders: one will be led by the satanic anointed one, the Antichrist, the other by the true Anointed One of God - Christ, the Messiah.

The power of an Orthodox monarch is from Christ's anointing. The holy fathers say that the secret holding back consists not only in the preservation of the Church by the grace of the Holy Spirit, but also in the preservation of legitimate state power, especially that which is based on Christian principles. The meaning of the service of the Orthodox Tsar, as you know, was to protect the Church and the Orthodox faith from external threats.

I will begin my report with two quotations from the holy fathers of the Church, which I think are known to most of those present here.

The words of St. Theophan the Recluse are known: “The royal power, having in its hands the means to restrain the movements of the people and holding itself to Christian principles, will not allow the people to deviate from them, will restrain them. Since Antichrist will have to distract everyone from Christ as his main task, he will not appear as long as the Royal power is in force. She will not let him turn around, will prevent him from acting in his spirit. This is what it is restraining. When the Tsar's power falls and the people everywhere lead arbitrariness (republics, democracies), then the Antichrist will have room to act. It will not be difficult for Satan to prepare voices in favor of the renunciation of Christ, as experience showed during the French Revolution. There will be no one to say "veto" imperious. A humble declaration of faith will not be listened to. And so, when such orders are established everywhere, favorable to the revelation of antichrist aspirations, then the antichrist will appear. Until the same time, he will wait, he will hold on. (Bishop Theophan. Commentary on the Second Epistle to Thessalonica).

And here is how the holy righteous John of Kronstadt says about this: “Through the sovereign persons, the Lord watches over the good of the kingdoms of the earth, and especially the good of the world of His Church, not allowing godless teachings, heresies and schisms to overwhelm her, and the greatest villain of the world who will appear in lately, the Antichrist cannot appear among us because of the autocratic power that restrains the disorderly vacillation and the absurd teaching of the atheists. The apostle says that the Antichrist will not appear on earth until then, as long as the autocratic power exists. The mystery of the bo is already going on iniquity he says but until then it won't happen, until the sovereign is taken from us, - Until then, keep now from Wednesday it will be taken. And then the lawless one will appear, whom the Lord will kill with the Spirit of his mouth"(2 Sol., 7, 8). (From the book New Words Spoken in 1902).

With these two quotations, the topic of the Orthodox monarchy in this report, in essence, ends. The meaning of the report is not only to show the prophetic depth of these words using examples of ancient and modern history, but, so to speak, in a negative way - in the light of the construction of the "new world order" - to indicate the enduring significance of the Orthodox monarchy and the martyrdom of the last Russian Tsar.

* * *

On the eve of the third millennium, the phrase "new world order" begins to sound more and more often in the mouths of politicians, philosophers and theologians. The so-called perestroika in Russia was marked by the emergence of "new thinking".

Although the concept of "new world order" is nothing new. This was the basic principle on which Nimrod proposed to build the Tower of Babel almost four thousand years ago. The purpose of building the Tower of Babel was to reject God's authority to expel Him from human life. It was Satanism and demonic possession, and this was expressed in the occult symbols that decorated the tower.

In the twelfth century BC, the Babylonian kingdom became the first of the great empires that spread their power throughout the then civilized world. From a purely historical, "earthly" point of view, the Babylonian kingdom was the most magnificent and most vicious of all that have ever been in the world. The people of God keep the memory of this time as the "Babylonian captivity". We also know the great empires of the Medes and Persians, who in their turn aspired to world domination. Their kingdoms, based on idolatry, stretched from central Europe to India.

And according to many modern historians, the most progressive "world order" was established in ancient Greece, where democracy was carried out in its purest form. This experience of democracy was actually very brief and limited. More than half of the population of ancient Greece were slaves. And of those who were free, half were women who had no right to vote, own property, or testify in court. They were not counted even in the official census. The famous "pure" Greek democracy was beautiful in its lucky twenty-five percent. How is this not the idea of a "golden billion" that today's Western politicians are hatching?

The Roman Empire - the last ancient "world order" - became famous for its militant anti-Christianity. Under the emperor Nero, Christians were thrown to be torn to pieces by lions and lit like living torches in the garden where his amusements took place. It should be noted that St. John Chrysostom and other holy fathers called the Roman Empire, based on the famous Roman law, one of the main forces holding back. But at the same time, we can see in the disintegration of its statehood and morality (as in other “world orders” we are considering) the disintegration behind which the features of the future kingdom of the Antichrist clearly appear.

“The beast I saw was like a leopard; his feet are like those of a bear, and his mouth is like the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority” (Rev. 13:2). According to the interpretation of St. Andrew of Caesarea, the kingdom of Greece is signified by a trot, Persian by a bear, and Babylon by a lion; they will be ruled by the Antichrist, who, coming as the Roman king, will destroy their dominion.

In the end, Satan himself, tempting the Lord, offered him to establish a “new world order”: “I will give you all this if you bow down to me.” “The devil lied when he said this,” writes St. Irenaeus of Lyon, “for it is not he who rules the world, but God. The power was actually established for the benefit of the pagan peoples, not by the devil, who never has peace and even less desires that the peoples live in peace, but by God, so that people, fearing this power, would not devour each other like fish, but with with the help of laws resisted the manifold injustices of the pagans.

* * *

A vivid illustration of the connection of mysticism with politics over the past centuries is also the history of the so-called Illuminati. There are many exaggerated and unsubstantiated writings written about this organization. But you need to find the essence in order to separate fact from fiction. One thing is certain: the Illuminati really existed. It was an ultra-secret European organization of international financial power whose original purpose was to establish a world economic system. But thanks to her quick successes, and sometimes - strong resistance, she set herself a grander goal of world domination. It is known that the Illuminati took an active part in the Protestant movement against the official Catholic Church, as well as in the French Revolution. Their leadership was mostly atheistic, with the exception of a few "practicing" Satanists. In various periods of the last centuries, the power and influence of this organization among the world's financial and governmental circles has been tremendous. Real banking and government mafia.

Look at the back of the US dollar and you will see three Latin words: "Novus ordo saeclorum" (new world order - Lat.). These words are inscribed, as it were, on a fluttering banner under a pyramid made up of thirteen stones, above which is depicted the “all-seeing eye”. Some say that it means the Providence of God. Others believe that it represents the eye of the ancient pagan deity Osiris. This seal, approved by the US Congress in 1782, was drawn up by Charles Thompson, a member of the Masonic Order, Secretary of Congress.

In recent history, attempts to establish a new world domination are associated with the names of Hitler and Stalin. On the eve of the 1932 elections, Adolf Hitler addressed the people of Germany literally with these words: "If you choose me as the leader of this people, I will establish a New World Order that will last a thousand years." A collection of Hitler's speeches published in English abroad was appropriately titled My New Order.

Only after the Nuremberg trials did researchers begin to understand how deeply mystical, satanic was the conspiracy carried out by the leaders of Nazism. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, included in his program much of what we could directly attribute to contemporary New Age spirituality and culture. Himmler and his SS officers replaced the Christian sacraments and rites of Baptism, weddings and funerals with neo-pagan ones. The feast of the Nativity of Christ, for example, became "Julfest", "the feast of Julius", and was moved to December 21st. Compare this to the attempt to establish Soviet "ritualism" in communist Russia like "Oktyabrin" and so on, and to the prohibition in today's American schools of saying "Merry Christmas" - it's allowed to say "Happy Holidays" instead.

One of the modern prominent ideologues of the New Age, Randell Byer, tells in his best-selling books about a certain "spirit of cosmism", about how "the cosmic gods paved the way for him to make it possible to perform the important work of implementing the New Age revolution and a single world order. Curiously, Bayer, who claims that he wrote his books under the dictation of the spirits, often uses the ancient Illuminati symbol imprinted on the American dollar: “The spirits told me to take twelve quartz crystals and, laying them out in a circle, imprint another circle for the occult third eye, and hang a great pyramid over them."

Communism was a powerful and seductive ideology for the masses, but behind its promises of a "bright future for mankind" was a brutal reality based on merciless violence.

We have already said that from the very beginning, the main meaning of the murder of the Anointed King of God was the elimination holding back, the external protector of the Church. And the main blow, while this ideology of deceit was in force, was inflicted in subsequent years precisely on the Church. We remember Stalin's promise that "by May 1, 1937, the name of God will be forever forgotten on the territory of the USSR", and the mass closing of churches during the Khrushchev era, who promised in 1980 "to show the last priest on TV." Today it has become obvious that Khrushchev's persecution was the last convulsions of dying communism.

And as the last relapse of communism, one can recall the rule of the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot in Cambodia, when the whole country turned into a concentration camp. Pol Pot, as you know, sentenced to death all doctors, teachers, journalists, priests, cultural and artistic figures. If anyone wore glasses, his name was blacklisted because a person who wears glasses may be able to read. And if he can read, it is better to eliminate him.

* * *

What happened in August 1991 politically? Did Russia have a historical chance, or was it intercepted by her enemies, who were afraid of her revival and, like a disturbed anthill, began to fuss? Now it became clear that this was an international, finely planned conspiracy, which had been gradually preparing for a long time. We will not fully know all this behind-the-scenes directing, and this is not the point. The bottom line is the global deception that affected absolutely everyone, because it exploited the feelings of people who suffered from the horrors of communist ideology. In 1991, even the putschists themselves were deceived, who were drawn into this staging, as if giving them the opportunity to act, but in fact, in order to show everyone their stupidity and slowness, the alleged threat from them to “democracy” and personal freedom, all the inhumanity of an unpopular regime that compromised itself in 70 years. Everyone was so tired of the deception of the Soviet authorities, and the calculation was just for this - just when a person is so exhausted, tired, you can beckon him with promises similar to the truth that now everything will be fine. Wasn't the truth already told about the revolution, the truth about the murder of the Tsar's family, the historical truth about the Decembrists, about Lenin, finally debunked, in the era of so-called glasnost? This means that they will continue to follow the path of truth (and freedom). Among those who believed in the deception and supported it, there were also worthy people who cared about what would happen to Russia, not like some hucksters. When "perestroika" began, Academician A. Migdal said: "If this time it's a hoax, I'll die." And he really died of a heart attack in the midst of it.

Everything went, as if on the rise. They scared people: “Do you want democracy or Bolshevik power?” Finally, the new authorities showed their face, and everyone was dumbfounded. They revealed themselves: the killers, and nothing more - true neo-Bolsheviks, yesterday's communists. In order to finally seize power, which ensures the redistribution of good and evil in their favor, they went to any lengths.

* * *

In January 1991 (the decisive year of "perestroika" in Russia), the then US President D. Bush announced the beginning of the war in the Persian Gulf. “The stake in this war,” he said, referring to Kuwait, “is not just one small country. Here is a great idea - the idea of a "new world order". How did it happen that these words coincide with Hitler's famous boastful speeches and with the communist promises of a "bright future of mankind", which turned into a nightmare? For us Orthodox Christians, this phrase is "a new world order "- evokes an association with the coming catastrophes that Scripture prophetically speaks of. These will be the "peace and security" of a single world government, which will suddenly turn into ruin for all mankind (1 Thess. 5, 3).

What do these words "new world order" mean? What do they tell you when you hear them? Judging by the Scriptures and the annals of history, everything that happens testifies to the same phenomenon: the desire for world domination, whether it is dictated by good intentions or ordinary greed, is almost always associated with idolatry, atheism or Satanism. It is always anti-Christian. We have already mentioned Babylon, ancient Greece, Rome. Hitler, Stalin and their followers. Not anointing with Divine grace to build life on Christian foundations, but anointing with the satanic spirit in order to rob, kill and “destroy to the ground”.

It is absolutely clear that the time of the "new world order" is not an abstract future. We see its significant signs already now. Ancient Old Testament prophecies warn of the coming of this time. Christ Himself proclaims it as the time leading up to His second Coming. This "new world order" will be led by Satan's anointed, whom the word of God calls the Antichrist. When the world rejects the truth and the truth, only lies remain for it. When humanity refuses "the Light that enlightens every person who comes into the world," darkness sets in. When Christ is cast out of life and those who have the anointing from Him, Satan's anointed comes.

Mystery of lawlessness unfolds over the centuries. "My people, what shall I do to you?" Christ calls. “You have always tried to get rid of Me, as the parable of the evil vinedressers testifies. You killed God-sent prophets, you killed the Only Begotten Son of God, saying, "This is the heir, let's go and kill Him, and the inheritance will be ours." You have always tried to stifle the word of God. Let it be the way you want. I will allow you to establish a "new world order". You did not want to repent of your sins, you rejected the meek and pious King whom I gave you. The anointed of Satan, the Antichrist, will come to you to rule the earth with an iron hand, establishing a “new world order”. Rivers of blood will flow through the streets of your cities.

Russia and the whole world experienced terrible trials in the 20th century. But if there is no repentance, worse will come. According to the Apocalypse, one third of all mankind will be killed, and the atrocities of Hitler and Stalin will fade before that. Long before computers made this possible, the Revelation of God described how the Antichrist would control all world trade. Every person living on earth will have to take a sign on his right hand and on his forehead. Without this sign, no one will be able to buy or sell - not a thread, not a piece of bread. The Antichrist will establish absolute control over all money, since under his command there will be a single world government and a single world currency. The Holy Church warns that in the end he will try to put himself in the place of God (2 Thess. 2:4). Then the long-awaited "new world order" will come.

* * *

The four defenses of life, which were provided by the power of the Orthodox monarch, must be broken.

The first and foremost of them, of course, is the Church. The whole history of mankind in this sense can be defined as a war against the Church. All Scripture, all the prophets warn of a great persecution of the Church. There have already been recently unheard-of persecutions, and new, more terrible ones cannot be avoided. Why? Because Antichrist claims absolute power, and Christians are citizens of the Kingdom of God, those who recognize only one absolute, supreme power - the power of God.

The Church is the power of God on earth, and where there is a claim to absolute earthly power, it is the main obstacle to the establishment of a "new world order."

We have already said that, according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, restraining The coming of the Antichrist is not only the grace of the Holy Spirit, but also the legitimate state power. After the removal of the Anointed of God - power based on Christian principles - there is a rapid de-Christianization of power throughout the world with an increasing loss of signs of the legitimacy of power.

And in essence, restraining only the Church remains with her grace - the fortress of Divine life. It is necessary either to force the Orthodox Church to merge with all false teachings and deprive her of grace, or to eliminate her physically. After an unsuccessful attempt to wipe the Church off the face of the earth, the main task of the enemy of the human race is the destruction of faith and what constitutes its blessed content. Faith - trust in God, fidelity to Him and confidence in the invisible must be destroyed first. “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

The war against the Church in the so-called democratic society, which increasingly rejects Christian values, is planned to be waged through the media, television, through the education system, through the adoption of new relevant laws. And we see how this war is already being waged. Propaganda of sin as a norm in the media and in schools - what has become state policy in Russia - isn't this an open declaration of war against the Church? Is this not a war for the complete destruction of the Church and its spiritual and moral principles?

Here it is natural for us to move on to talking about the destruction of the third protection that the Orthodox monarchy provided - about the war against the family.

We have said many times that the Royal Martyrs are an icon of the Orthodox family. This is literally so - just look at the photographs of the Royal Family; this is also true in the spiritual-historical sense: the murder of the Royal Family was followed by the destruction of many millions of Orthodox families. The main task of the revolution, according to Trotsky - the destruction of the family - which was not fulfilled during the years of the revolution, is being carried out in Russia today. We are talking about the destruction of not only the Orthodox family, but also any normal traditional human family. Satan needs to bring about this destruction before establishing a "new world order."

We see how the Americanization of the whole world is taking place. A single standard "mass culture" is being implanted everywhere - so that a person living in Moscow and Ryazan is no different from living in New York or Seoul. In every nation, just as in every person, its uniqueness and uniqueness is revealed as the realization of truth and goodness in its life. Sin erases the features of the uniqueness and uniqueness of every person and every nation.

In general, all these four "defenses" that we talked about are one inseparable phenomenon. holding back. Indeed, if the very concept of the family is destroyed, what kind of Motherland can we talk about? “Who needs such a Russia?” Many now say that our enemies are ready to provoke a popular uprising in order to bring NATO or UN troops into the streets of Moscow and take control of nuclear weapons. But here is a school or a family where children, along with teachers or parents, watch a pornographic video. There is no need to bring in any NATO troops (or vice versa, why not bring them in): these details no longer matter where everything has already been conquered by the devil himself.

* * *

“Judging by the Scriptures and by the nature of today's people, the end is near, at the door,” said St. Silouan of Athos 60 years ago. The appearance of the Antichrist will be sudden. The disintegration of life in all spheres - the financial and economic crisis, the decline of morals - will reach its limit. Within one hour, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, the World Council of Churches, the UN and other organizations like them will seal with their signatures an agreement recognizing the supreme power of a new dictator, whom everyone will honor as the only and last hope of mankind. As the word of God testifies, the whole world will marvel at him and follow him.

Some, perhaps, will say: “You exaggerate too much, this cannot be. A Russian believer would always

1. One of the arguments in favor of the monarchy is the divine establishment of this form of government. But not everyone agrees with this.

God-established royal power stems from human nature itself. The Lord created man in His own image and likeness. Therefore, human society should ideally be organized in the image and likeness of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is unlikely that anyone will dare to say that republican relations are possible there.

Temporary earthly life is preparation for eternal heavenly life. Therefore, it must run at least in an effort to conformity with heavenly principles. When we pray with the words of the Lord's Prayer yes come kingdom Your" when we confess in the Creed " Its same kingdom there will be no end", we testify that the Kingdom is a God-established, eternal and universal PRINCIPLE.

The "Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church" wisely, deeply and balancedly formulated the current position of the Church on the issue of relations with the secular republican state. And in this document, reflecting the current specific historical situation, nowhere is it said about the “God-established republic”, however, it contains a quote from the 6th short story of St. Emperor Justinian, proclaiming the principle of God-established royal power: “ The greatest blessings bestowed on people by the highest goodness of God are the priesthood and the kingdom, of which the first takes care of divine affairs, and the second directs and takes care of human affairs, and both, from the same source, make up the decoration of human life».

Attempts to present the matter in such a way that the “kingdom” means any state power do not stand up to criticism. If we follow such vicious logic, then we can say that under the “priesthood” of St. Justinian does not mean the Church, but any sect. Of course, by "kingdom" is meant precisely the kingdom, that is, God-established royal power, and by "priesthood" - the true priesthood, that is, the hierarchy of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Contrary to popular belief, which was established as a result of not entirely successful translations of the Holy Scriptures (including the Synodal), not at all "all power is from God." The Slavic translation, which is closest to the Greek original, conveys to us the true meaning of the words of St. app. Paul: " There is no power, unless it is from God"(Rom. 13, 1). The Slavic word "asche" does not mean "which", but "if". Compare the Greek text "ου γαρ εστιν εξουσια ει μη απο θεου", the Latin translation of the Bible (Vulgate): " Omnis anima potestatibus subjecta esto, non enim est potestas nisi a Deo". (Romanos, 13, 1); Old English translation - King James Bible: “ Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God” (Romans, 13, 1), and you will see that in all translations the corresponding phrase means “if not”, and not at all “which”. The semantic difference is enormous.

Any monarchy, even pagan, not to mention Christian, itself proclaims that it has the divine will as its source. And the republic, on the contrary, itself denies the divine origin of power and considers the source of power not God, but the people.

Old Testament divine statement me The kings reign and the mighty write the truth"(Prov. 8, 15), the words of the Savior" Render therefore Caesar's to Caesar's, and God's Gods"(Matt. 22, 21) and the apostolic commandment" Fear God, Honor the King”(1 Pet. 2, 17), who put the veneration of the king on a par with the veneration of God, they say that the Orthodox teaching about royal power is by no means just some kind of theological opinion. It is no coincidence that the Church for many centuries openly proclaimed the 11th anathematism of the rite of the Triumph of Orthodoxy: Those who think that Orthodox Sovereigns are enthroned not by the special goodwill of God for them, and when anointed by the gift of the Holy Spirit for the passage of this great title, they do not pour out into them, and so daring against them to rebellion and treason, anathema».

No one has the right to anticipate the Judgment of God. The Lord, in His inscrutable ways, can save any person, no matter what delusions he adheres to and no matter what sins he commits. However, in order to understand how difficult it will be for a person who consciously rejects or belittles the principle of the kingdom in earthly life to join the Kingdom of Heaven, let us answer the question: Will it be easy for a person who consciously rejects or belittles the principle of the earthly Church to become a member of the Heavenly Church? But both the Church and the Kingdom are "from the same source."

2. However, if we recall the story of the giving of the king to the people, as it sounds in the Old Testament, one gets the impression that the monarchy is a forced form.

The references of opponents of the monarchy to the description of the establishment of royal power among the Hebrew people (and, by the way, not among people in general) taken out of context are untenable. The conflict of the situation lay in the fact that the Israelis then rejected the principle of Theocracy - the direct rule of God, which, in any case, of course, is higher than all possible systems of power. However, such direct Divine guidance took place only in relation to one nation and only at a certain stage in its history - from Moses to Samuel. The sin of the people of Israel was not in the desire to have a monarchy, but in the circumstances in which this desire was realized.

If we draw an analogy, then, for example, for any person the desire to have a family, “to be fruitful and multiply”, in itself, is not sinful. The denial of the sanctity and divine establishment of marriage is a heresy, cursed by the Apostles (see 1 Tim 4:1-3) and the Councils. But there may be, and, alas, more and more often there are circumstances when a specific attempt to create a family is associated with sinful motives and a lack of understanding of the moral foundations of marriage.

It is easy to be convinced that the monarchy is not a “forced form”, but a principle established by God and pleasing to Him, if one reads the Holy Scripture not in fragments, but sequentially, and does not pull out convenient quotations from it, as sectarians like to do, but consider the Word of God in system relationship. The king of Salem Melchizedek, who also combines the properties of a priest and a prophet, is a type of the Savior in the Bible when God's chosen people did not yet exist at all. Among the positive promises given by God to the forefather Abraham, we see the prediction: And kings will come from you"(Gen. 17, 6). The Holy Prophet Moses, who himself was the king of Israel during the period of the exodus from Egypt and wandering in the wilderness (Deut. 33, 5), commands his fellow tribesmen to put “ over the king»after coming to the promised land (Deut. 17, 14). And the Holy Scripture directly links the absence of the king, as cause and effect, with a lack of justice and law. This is stated in the Book of Judges, in its last words, which until then sounded like a refrain when describing various horrific atrocities: “ Israel had no king in those days; everyone did what he thought was fair"(Judg. 21, 25).

3. Sometimes some publicists are inclined to pass off the monarchy as the "natural order of things", but monarchies ancient world, as well as medieval monarchies, differed significantly from the form that the monarchical system acquired at the end of the 17th century. Absolutism is a late invention. The society was organized on the principle of communities, quite autonomous from the government, in a sense, such autonomy was not dreamed of even by many "democratic" states with a developed civil society. Speaking of the monarchy, what kind of its kind for Russia do you mean? There are absolute, constitutional (parliamentary) and dualistic monarchies. Is it possible to talk about "monarchism", about the restoration of the monarchy, and in this case, what should be restored: Eastern despotism, Nicholas Russia? What kind of monarchy? What kind of society could this be in political, economic, social terms?

You see, you yourself confirm that the monarchy has always evolved. There is no reason to suppose that if there had not been a revolution, it would have frozen in some forever predetermined form. Therefore, the restoration of the monarchy, if it takes place, will never be a return to some former reality.

The head of the House of Romanov, Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, answered your question best of all. In one of his first interviews, published back in the USSR, in the Ogonyok magazine, he said: Monarchy is the only form of government compatible with any political system, since the purpose of the monarch is to be the ultimate arbiter". Curiously, even such an enemy of the monarchy as V.I. Lenin: " Monarchy is generally not a uniform and immutable institution, but a very flexible institution capable of adapting itself to various class relations of domination.". (Lenin V.I. Complete Works. - T. 20. - M .: GIPL, 1961. - S. 359). I repeat once again: the monarchy is a timeless divine principle of power, and not a form inherent in any particular era.

4. What are the necessary objective and subjective conditions do you see for the restoration of the monarchy in Russia?

To answer this question, you need to write dozens, if not hundreds of volumes. And then reality will overturn all these assumptions and constructions. If you try to highlight the main thing, then the restoration of the monarchy can only happen by the grace of God and by the will of the people. If these two mandatory conditions appear, all the rest will be subjective. Facilitating conditions will be achievable, and obstacles - surmountable.

What is needed in order for God's mercy and the people's will to unite? His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, analyzing the reasons for the collapse of the monarchy and the possibility of its revival, impeccably points out that the implementation of the monarchical idea in practice is inextricably linked with a fairly high level of "the religious and moral state of society" .

Some are trying to interpret the words of His Holiness the Patriarch in such a way that a true monarchy is allegedly possible only in a perfect society, consisting almost entirely of saints. This, of course, is a crafty distortion of the thought of the Primate of our Church. If universal holiness were possible, then the need for an earthly state would disappear. The Kingdom of God would just come. But this will not happen until the Last Judgment.

To restore the monarchy, it is required that the religious and moral state of society reach at least the level of consciousness that godlessness and evil should not be justified and cultivated, but eradicated. Everyone cannot become saints, and holiness does not imply, as some erroneously believe, sinlessness. But the distinction between good and evil, the attraction to good and the desire to move away from evil is accessible to most people. And then comes the understanding of the need for power "according to God's will, and not according to the many-rebellious human desire."

5. Why does the monarchy seem to you to be the most optimal and most reflective of Christian principles political system?

Monarchy is a natural and human system, an image of the paternal power of God. The earthly king is the icon of the Heavenly King. An icon may be imperfect, but it never ceases to be sacred. The status of the monarch from a Christian standpoint was beautifully formulated by St. teacher Iosif Volotsky: “The Tsar by nature is similar to all people, but by power he is like the Most High God.”

The historical legitimate hereditary power of the sovereign, by the grace of God, is the most independent and, therefore, capable of embodying the interests of the whole people. We will achieve a correct Christian understanding of the monarchy if we listen to the classical definition given by the head of the Russian Imperial House, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna: “ Monarchy is not a political doctrine, but a political system and a system of historically established national values» .

The monarchy is steadily striving for the ideals of love, faith, hope, fidelity, justice and honor. It doesn't always work out, but it strives, by its very nature. And for the republic, these enduring from the point of view Orthodox Faith valuables, at best - funny souvenirs, and, as a rule, unnecessary rubbish, which only interferes with the notorious "competitiveness".

6. If we talk about a constitutional monarchy, what is the responsibility of the monarch to the people?

There are many myths about constitutional monarchy. Let's start with the fact that Great Britain is considered the ideal of a constitutional monarchy - a country where in fact there never was and there is no Constitution ...

If by constitutionality we mean the limitation of the monarchy by various laws designed to emasculate the essence of royal power, then such a monarchy, paradoxical as it may seem, is becoming less and less responsible to the people. Its responsibility shifts to parties, industrial and financial groups, international forces, and so on.

If we talk about the limitations inherent in royal power based on its nature, then any monarchy is constitutional. No Constitution composed by politicians and formally adopted by the majority, even the most remarkable one, can replace the natural Constitution of Faith, Conscience and Law.

You will say that this is idealism. But idealism is better than life without ideals.

Well, if you try to "land", then let's say that the responsibility of the monarch to the people is the same as the responsibility of the head to the body. The head can make wrong decisions. It cannot be ruled out - even harmful or fatal to the body! But then it will inevitably suffer and perish along with the body. And any head will think a thousand times before acting irresponsibly.

If your body is at the mercy of a temporary manager, even one chosen by you personally, it is much easier for him to send you to a hospital bed or to an anatomical theater than your own head.

A huge role in ensuring real, and not hypothetical, responsibility is played by the heredity of royal power. The sovereign, who has taken power from his ancestors and is aware that he will have to pass it on to his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, treats the country and people much more responsibly than a temporary worker, even the most honest and decent.

7. It is known that heaven on earth is impossible, therefore there is no ideal form of government, an ideal political system. What do you think are the disadvantages of a monarchy?

A real monarchy, like any human device, has a huge number of shortcomings. The main source of troubles is the mediastinum, which fences off and alienates the monarch from the people.

It arises according to the laws of dialectics. Hierarchy is necessary for any state. However, "arrogant descendants (...), standing in a greedy crowd at the throne", are trying to limit the national character of the monarchy with their arrogance, jealousy, intrigues. And when the monarchy pursues a policy of weakening the influence of the aristocracy, it is supplanted by the bureaucracy, which turns out to be even worse.

Elite is needed. But she, because of her self-confidence and pride, is more easily subjected to spiritual decay. Fish, as you know, go out from the head. In most cases, monarchies, including the Russian one, fell not under the blows of popular uprisings, but because of the betrayal of the elite.

Many qualities of a monarchy can be in some cases advantages, and in others - disadvantages.

For example, the lifetime and heredity of royal power allows you to make decisions for the long term, and not act only for the sake of the current moment, for the sake of winning the next election. This is a huge advantage.

But, at the same time, life can lead to the fact that the aging monarch, purely humanly, will get tired and fall into apathy. And legitimate heredity can give power to a weak or mentally ill person in the presence of energetic and healthy members of the dynasty.

You can also look from the other side. Many believe that the monarchy is unfair, since it gives the supreme power to a person by virtue of his blood origin, while in the state there may be people with much greater managerial abilities.

At first glance, this is a strong argument. But if we look closely, we will see that the indisputability of the power of a legitimate monarch is a huge stabilizing factor. A state can have many smart, courageous, experienced, enterprising, talented people, and so on. And everyone thinks that he is smarter, braver, more experienced and more talented than the rest. Maybe the legitimate hereditary monarch is indeed inferior to many of them. But if he does not exist, they will all fight for the first place and spend their talents not for the benefit of the country, but for mutual destruction. And when the first place, by definition, is occupied by the sovereign, who inherited power according to a law beyond the control of human will and who is the core of the system, then there are much more chances to place the rest in their proper places, where they maximize their best qualities.

It is no coincidence that the classic of state studies L.A. Tikhomirov wittily remarked that at any time and under any circumstances, treating the state by violating monarchical legitimacy is the same as treating headache by amputation of the head.

Louis XIV is still stigmatized for his phrase "The State is me". But isn't it a thousand times more terrible when every petty official from the immensely multiplied republican bureaucracy is convinced that "I am the state"?

All imperfections stem from general human imperfection. The question is not the presence of sins and shortcomings, but in relation to them. Monarchy is not a panacea for evil, but it is oriented toward curing moral and social ills rather than defending and spreading them.

8. There is an opinion that the constitutional monarchy is one of the most democratic political regimes, for example, English, Scandinavian, Dutch. In this case, it turns out that there is no contradiction between monarchists and democrats?

Patented "democrats" like to quote W. Churchill, who said that "Democracy is a very bad system, but mankind has not come up with anything better." But they forget that these words belong to Her Majesty's Prime Minister, a staunch monarchist. This I mean that real monarchists are real democrats. And vice versa.

Each nation has its own way of development. I do not consider it possible to condemn the Anglo-Saxon, Dutch or Scandinavian modifications of the monarchy. However, I cannot recognize any of them as suitable for Russia. We have our own tradition of harmonious combination of management methods.

Some monarchists are convinced that democracy is, by definition, hostile to monarchy. In fact, democracy or politeia (democracy, people's rule), according to the teachings of Aristotle, is one of the forms of government, along with the monarchy (monocracy) and aristocracy (the power of the best).

In life, none of these forms exists in its pure form. In any state, there are areas where autocracy and a strict hierarchy cannot be dispensed with (for example, the Armed Forces), where an elite aristocratic element is necessary (Armed Forces, health care, science, education, art) and where broad popular participation cannot be avoided (local self-government, organization economic activity, that is, everything that concerns Everyday life most citizens).

There must be a right balance between these forms of government. " (...) For the integral mass of the people, for that democratic idea, which is inextricably linked with the idea of a monarchist, for the entire national whole of Russia - the loss of the unlimited Tsar-Autocrat would be not only a disaster, but the end of an independent existence”, - L.A. Tikhomirov.

Democracy as the supreme power of an abstract people is a fiction and in practice has never existed anywhere, because power, as a manifestation of the will, is always personified. Democracy declared by the supreme power, however sad it may be to realize, is in fact a screen to cover up the power of the oligarchy. It is very accurately said that "Democracy is not the power of the people, but the power of the democrats." The difference between such “democrats” and monarchists is that monarchists offer honest relations, while “democrats” deceive the people, on whom, in fact, nothing depends on them.

Under a legitimate monarchy, democracy as an element of the state system, together with the supreme God-established monarchical power and the technocratic (modern manifestation of the aristocracy) power of professionals, not only has the full right to exist, but is also necessary.

“The monarchy in Russia collapsed because the religious and moral state of society ceased to correspond to the monarchist idea. Let's ask ourselves a question: does the religious and moral state of our society today correspond to the Orthodox monarchical principle? After all, if the monarchy were restored today by some miracle, and if, God forbid, the tsar made some mistake, then tomatoes and rotten eggs would fly at him just like some negligent city governor. Now people have no reverence for the monarchy as a sacred institution, and therefore, at the moment, the monarchy does not correspond to our moral state. I would very much like the moral state of our society to be restored, so that one day, perhaps, an Orthodox monarchy will really appear in our country. Interview with radio station "Mayak". Cit. by: What are the views of Metropolitan Kirill? - M., 2009. - 64 p., - S. 51-52

Krylov A.N. Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna: “I am not involved in politics” // Russian News, No. 30 (1785), 2005, August 31-September 6

Tikhomirov L.A. Parliamentary Russia / in the book Tikhomirov L.A. Christianity and Politics. - M.-Kaluga: State Unitary Enterprise "Oblizdat", LLP "Alir", 2002. - 616 p. - S. 351