Twenty-five years ago the Russian Orthodox Lands, ‘Rus’, for short, commemorated the millennium of their Baptism. At that time there began the great spiritual revival that has continued since. A generation on, in 2013, we can see how far things have moved on. The period of the abhorrent Gorbachev, who destroyed tens of millions of lives, that of the ephemeral gerontocrats before him, the period before that of Brezhnevian stagnation, and before that of the ignoramus and atheist fanatic Khrushchev, have been rejected, seen for what they were. That part of recent history has been rejected and even reversed, but the Russian Lands have still not worked their way through the Stalinist period before them. The recent debate in Russia about the role of Stalin in history, sparked by the 70th anniversary of Stalingrad, is indicative of this.

Opposed to those who see Stalin as a forerunner of Antichrist, there are nationalists who, blinded by their nationalism, see him as a great leader. They fail to see that it was not Stalin who won the War; it was the peoples whom he oppressed who won the War and so saved the West from Fascism. This proves that Stalin has not yet been exorcised from the national psyche. And it is only once he has been exorcised that the final barrier to full resurrection can be overcome. That final barrier is Lenin, whose mummy still lies in mockery by the Kremlin walls, and the thousands of statues, streets and places which still commemorate that demon and his fellow fiends. The Russian Lands are still on a knife-edge. They can still choose to go downwards ever further into the spiral of corruption and degeneration, abortion and alcoholism, emigration in despair and the ever-growing demographic crisis.

The mineral wealth of Rus, like its oil, gas, metals and timber also, are not for oligarchs to buy villas and mansions and waste their substance like the prodigal in London and Tel-Aviv, in New York and Paris, in Nicosia and Bangkok. That mineral wealth was destined by God to build churches in the Russian Lands, in Russian America (Alaska) and the English and Latin Americas, in Europe and Africa, in Asia and Oceania. The fortune of only one of these oligarchs would be enough. Others could pay for decent housing for Russian families, so that the young would not be afraid to have and bring up large families. The vast steppes of the Ukraine and Russia, before the First World War the breadbasket of Western Europe, were also given by God. They are not to be deserted and depopulated, left fallow, so that the Russian Lands have themselves to import grain. They are there to feed the world.

If there is no mass repentance, no return to the only true ideology of Rus, Orthodoxy, Sovereignty and the People, then the Russian Lands will be lost and broken up. Siberia will be occupied by the USA, China and Japan, which will ruthlessly strip it of its resources. Belarus will become a province of Poland. Georgia and the Ukraine will become more EU/NATO colonies, new Kosovos. And European Russia will be divided into various provinces on a divide and rule basis, in other words it will be Yugoslavised. As for the Russian Orthodox Church, it will be Constantinopolised and Antiochised, subjugated to the humiliation of not even being able to use its own calendar, the calendar of the saints and Fathers. And Air Force One will drop off the new puppet-Patriarch from the USA, the Orthodox Patriarch himself deposed and exiled, just like Patriarch Maximos V of Constantinople in 1948.

However, there is an alternative, but only one alternative. If mass repentance does take place, alcoholism, abortion and corruption ceasing with it, then Orthodox Rus can be restored. If there is mass repentance and the spiritual level does rise, then inevitably the Monarchy will be restored. This Tsar, perhaps the last before Antichrist, will be ‘what is restraining him now’ (2 Thess 2, 6). This Tsar will hold back the tide of evil that is now sweeping through the world. Anointed by the Church, he will restore the Church worldwide. To most, such a hope seems unlikely. We will agree that given the current state of the Russian Lands, humanly speaking, this all seems quite impossible. However, given the changes that we have seen since 1988, we cannot exclude the grace of God from the destiny of the Russian Lands, from the possible fulfilment of Orthodox Rus, of Holy Rus, of the light before the end.

Archpriest Andrew Phillips

The Sunday of the Last Judgement, 2013