Quench not the Spirit.
(1 Thessalonians 5, 19-21)
When I was a child, I did not believe in God, I knew God. He was – and is – a fact. I did not seek Him, I knew Him. Fifty years ago, in 1975, the closest disciple of St Silouan confirmed my experience that God is known by the Holy Spirit and that if someone has come to know God by the Holy Spirit, his soul will burn with the love of God by day and night and his soul will not be bound by any earthly thing.
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you (John 15, 19)
Five years later, in May 1979 in a deep and warm conversation at Philotheou Monastery on Mt Athos, the ever-memorable Fr Ephraim (now of Arizona) confirmed this to me. And so it was that forty years ago I went with fear to St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris to be ordained, believing that our purpose in life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, as St Seraphim of Sarov declared.
Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you (Matthew 6, 33)
Now the name ‘Antichrist’ does not mean he who is against Christ, but he who is in place of Christ. In other words, Antichrist does not appear to be outwardly against Christ, he is a substitute for Christ. From the world in which we now are we can conclude that we live in the time before Antichrist, where faith, the presence of the Holy Spirit, is being substituted by falsehood, ‘a den of thieves’.
Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away (2 Timothy 3, 5)
Thus, the most obvious thing that I have noticed about the last forty years of service at the altar has been the persistent determination of satan to destroy all that is spiritual, both directly and indirectly. He has always recruited his agents to substitute for the real Church, to set up a satanic church, where the Holy Spirit cannot abide and is replaced by the pseudo-spiritual, which stems from hatred.
You pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgement, mercy, and faith (Matthew 23, 23)
Forty years ago and more, I had seen how satan used such isms as ecumenism, modernism, liberalism and freemasonry to destroy and then substitute for the Church. They considered the Church had to be brought into line with the anti-spiritual ways of the world, secularism. All who challenged these movements against the Holy Spirit were slandered. Like others, I was one of them.
Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake (Matthew 5, 11)
Twenty years ago and more, I saw how the cunning and evil satan changed his tactics to destroy and substitute for the Church. He began using the opposite forces to the first, pretending to be pure, employing such isms as sectarianism, traditionalism, conservatism and the spirit of schism. All who challenged these movements were slandered. Like others, I was and am one of them.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore you are witnesses to yourselves, that you are the children of those who killed the prophets (Matthew 23, 29-31)
All the servants of satan, of both sorts, close churches and forbid missionary work on the pretext of ‘protocols’ or ‘covid’. They replace faith, which is built on real experience of the Holy Spirit, the Giver of life, Who speaks ‘by the prophets’, with mere ‘religion’, the ideology of hired servants. This substitution of ideology for any spiritual experience, which alone gives wisdom, is why faith is dying out.
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves (Matthew 7, 15)
Thus, Protestants predict that Protestantism in Western countries will die out within a generation, by 2050. Roman Catholicism in Western countries will not be far behind. Both are being replaced by the ideology of secularism, where anything goes, for they have lost their faith and follow the ways of the world. However, in the Church of God, the war against Orthodoxy is just as fierce.
Woe unto you, Pharisees! for you love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets (Luke 11, 43)
Satan is working against us in the Church in exactly the same ways. The temptations of power and wealth are the rewards for those who use either ecumenism, modernism, liberalism and freemasonry, or sectarianism, traditionalism, conservatism and the spirit of schism. We avoid power and wealth and all the isms, which they use in order to persecute us.
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers….My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves (Matt 21, 12-13)
We create life and community, where before there was death and darkness. We grow the culture of life, as pastors, the voice of the people, in our hearts there is no hatred. And we are victorious over the narcissistic, jealous, resentful, corrupt and effeminate, the Establishment elite who love the uppermost seats, who are of their father the devil…for he is a liar, and the father of it (John 8, 44).
The thief comes only to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly (John 10, 10)
Today, the Russian Church, just like the Church of Constantinople, has fallen under the influence of this world. We fight for Orthodox freedom from political deviations. Canon XV of the First and Second Council is clear about those worthy of honour: they have not broken the union of the Church with any schism, but on the contrary, have been diligent to rescue the Church from schisms and divisions.
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord (Romans 12, 19)
We fight for the Truth of God and the Righteousness of man from the middle ground, from the fourteen Local Churches between the extremes, but among those in the extremes there are many who agree with us. Our role is to ‘knock heads together’ to bring away from the extremes. Like Christ, Who was crucified between the extremes of the two thieves, we too are persecuted for this.
Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Jesus Christ will suffer persecution (2 Timothy 3, 12)
Rome is in crisis and has to recall its legions from the far-flung provinces to protect Rome. The governors of the provinces feel abandoned, threatened by the rebellions of the people against their untruths. But the rebels know what to do, for those who told lies about us have discredited only themselves. Rome will return to where it came from, for it is now known the world over to tell untruths.
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap (Galatians 6, 7)
Forty years ago I went to St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris to be ordained. I was mindful of the words that the pen is mightier than the sword, or as St Alexander put it far better: God is not in force, but in truth. Nearly ten years ago it was my joy to open a new church dedicated to St Alexander in my native East Anglia. I know that God is working through His saints to cleanse His Church.
That He might present Her to Himself as a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that She should be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5, 27)
Mitred Archpriest Andrew Phillips,
St John’s Orthodox Church,
City of Colchester.
27 January 1985 – 27 January 2025