Tag Archives: Church

Why We do not Fear the Future

Introduction

The Church stands at the centre of the Universe. This is because the Church is the Body of Christ, the Body of the Son of God, the Body of the Maker of the Universe. His redemptive sacrifice on the Cross and His Resurrection from the dead are unique and unrepeatable acts, once and for all events that save the whole Cosmos, providing only that the Cosmos accepts this salvation. The Church Alone believes in Orthodox wise in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit, according to the unchangeable Creed. Around the Church in concentric circles stands the rest of the world, nearer or further away.

Nearest the Church stands Catholicism, which fails to believe in Orthodoxy in the Holy Spirit, then comes Protestantism, which calls the Son of God the man ‘Jesus’, then the Non-Christian world, which however still believes in a Father. Those furthest away are those who have consciously rejected the Holy Spirit, Christ the Son, and God the Father, altogether. This is today’s atheist West, the once Protestant world now quite lapsed and secularised. The Church is Triumphant, having achieved two great victories, but the Church is also Militant, being engaged in two great battles. What are they?

The Church Triumphant

The Church, with some 220 million baptised, is said statistically to represent just over 3% of the world population. However, this overlooks the fact that the visible Church is only the tip of an iceberg. The statistics of this world overlook all the millions of saints and all the billions of faithful departed, who also belong to the Church. These are Her first great victory.

It can be said that the visible, earthly part of the Church actually grows smaller as history ‘progresses’, that is, as we approach the end of the world, whereas the invisible part grows larger. Hence the image of the iceberg. To see the Church as only 3% of the whole is a lack of faith, a worldly view, as it overlooks all the invisible part of the world, all the faithful departed and all the invisible creation of ‘the Maker of heaven (the invisible part of creation) and earth’, in Whom we believe.

The New Martyrs and Confessors Triumphant

The New Martyrs were martyred defending the full Christian Tradition against the ideology of materialism. The New Confessors lived and suffered defending the same Christian Tradition. We do not forget that the Revolution was financed and organised by the ruthless Western world. Some Russians and others naively believed in it under the Bolshevik yoke, until they finally realised that they had been manipulated by a fairy story.

Thus, the New Martyrs and Confessors provide us with the story of integral Christians defending spiritual values against the grossness of materialism, defending the Church against traitors and apostates who had sold out to Western materialism and idolatry. The New Martyrs and Confessors are Christian patriots. They defend the Truth against the idolatry of humanism that worships fallen humanity. After the aberration of the twentieth century, they are triumphant, for their enemies are now derided and despised by history. Their feat is the prefiguration of the final triumph of the Church and Her second great victory.

The Battle for Catholicism

The first great battle faced by the Church now is Catholicism. However, after fifty years of Protestantisation imposed by the Second Vatican Council, is there anything left of Catholicism? In Western Europe and North America, it is dying on its feet. However, in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, there is still faith. There, many of the parish clergy are de facto married, so Catholicism there is not discredited by the compulsory clerical celibacy scandal of the Western world. Now that the US has lost interest in Catholicism as a political tool – because the use of a Polish Pope and American dollars to overthrow Communism in Eastern Europe was successful – the battle for Catholicism is to take place.

After the hiatus of Pope Benedict XVI, the elderly caretaker Pope, we shall see whether Catholicism wishes to become 100% secular and so spiritually irrelevant, or if it wants to choose the path of return to the Church and Orthodoxy. The new Pope, his baptismal name supposedly ‘Peter’, ‘Petrus Romanus’, the last Pope according to the dubious 400-year old ‘prophecy of Malachi’, may not perhaps be the last Pope, but he may be the last Roman Catholic Pope. However unlikely it may seem, after over a thousand years of Non-Orthodox Popes of Rome, we may, even in our lifetimes, see once more new Orthodox Popes of Rome, if, that is, we are to see any at all in the atheist West.

The Battle for the Non-Christian World

The second great battle faced by the Church now is the secularist Western world, which is ever more conditioned by atheist aggression and so the desire for world domination, domination of the Non-Christian world. Using the myth that it fights for ‘liberty and democracy’ against tyranny, thirty years ago it set out on a two-pronged attack, firstly against Communism and secondly against Islam. After the fall of Communism and the domination of Russia by materialist traitors, Gorbachov and Yeltsin, the Western world tried to occupy Eastern Europe with the tool and bribery of the EU, with its military assets and Muslim terrorists in Yugoslavia, then with bribery in the Ukraine and Georgia.

Although failing in certain parts of this attack, it next set out to defeat the Muslim world, weakening Iraq (by entrapment, promising but then withdrawing the lure of Kuwait), Afghanistan (where it had already trained and armed fanatics), destroying Iraq, sowing division and chaos in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Mali and Syria (by financing and arming Muslim mercenaries). Its intention, if it can destroy Syria by reducing it to anarchic bloodshed as it has done elsewhere, is to occupy Iran, using the colony of Israel with its US armaments. From there, the Western world can attain its final goal of occupying Azerbaijan, the Caucasus and Siberia and controlling all their immense mineral resources.

Conclusion

Today, we see the battle lines being drawn for some final confrontation that must take place in the Middle East. We see the growing alienation of the ex-Protestant, now secularist and atheist, world from the rest of the world, both from the Church, and from the world outside the Church, be it Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. As we have seen even in this country in the last seven years, there are inevitably those who fall away from the Church, and are praised for so doing by the Western media and Western politicians, from Zbigniew Brzezinski to Madeleine Albright. Whose side are you on? Are you with the New Martyrs and Confessors – or are you with the materialist enemies of Christ?

Apostasy has made many mistakes in the last 100 years. First, it attempted to destroy Russia 96 years ago – and failed because of its New Martyrs and Confessors. Then it alienates China, now officially the greatest trading power in the world. Then it sets itself once more against the Muslim world, represented by Iran. Then against India. There are the faint-hearted who, drowning in faithless manipulations like that of ‘climate change’, despair. They despair because they do not know that God is Almighty and can change the climate in an instant. They do not know that the final battle is, as ever, between Good and Evil, between Right and Wrong, between Truth and Untruth. The faint-hearted do not know either that the final victory is Christ’s. We do not fear the future, even if it is apocalyptic sooner than we might think. Might is not Right, for God is in charge. As a great saint once said, God is not in worldly power but in a far greater power, He is in Truth.

The New Martyrs and Confessors
28 January / 10 February 2013

A Parable: The Story of a Ship

There was once a very fine and great ship that was sailing across the Ocean to Paradise. Other ships, smaller but also very fine, sailed near her, all steering in the same direction. Sometimes the great ship sailed very swiftly with favourable winds, but sometimes the winds were contrary or the ship was becalmed and made little headway. Then one day, the eye of a catastrophic hurricane passed right over the great ship. Seeing so terrible a storm nearing them, some passengers and sailors got off the great ship. With tears in their eyes they sailed away in the lifeboat, despite the many trials which they knew that awaited them ahead.

Those in the lifeboat found refuge in various distant foreign ports, at first enduring great poverty and suffering. Some at the foreign ports welcomed the lifeboat and helped the people in it, but many were hostile and wanted them only to abandon their lifeboat and become like themselves and forget all about Paradise. Faithful to the great ship and its course set for Paradise, the sailors and passengers stubbornly refused to do this. Not only this, but some local people in the foreign ports who also wanted to go to Paradise came on board the lifeboat.

Meanwhile, most people, including the captain, who had stayed on the great ship, were suffering immensely. The hurricane was terrifying and many perished. Some thought that the ship would certainly sink. Eventually, swept off course by the hurricane and in a desperate plight, the ship had no alternative but to take refuge in the nearest port. However, all suffered greatly in that port for it had been occupied by enemies and later came under attack from other ports. A great many perished. Nevertheless, after some time, many people managed to get back on board the ship and waited to set sail once more

Meanwhile, those in the lifeboat that had stopped at other ports, headed out into the Ocean. Finding the port where the great ship was moored, they waited in their lifeboat. Some on board called out to those in the great ship, others looked on sceptically at the damage to the great ship. Eventually, the great ship was ready to leave the port. Not without difficulty it reunited with the passengers and sailors in the lifeboat and got back on course for Paradise. However, even though the great ship and the lifeboat resumed the right direction together, they both needed repairs after the damage which they had suffered.

Today, the damage is still being repaired. Much has been done, but there is still much more to do and it takes time. But it is a miracle that both are still in one piece. Both ship and lifeboat have suffered from the hurricane and from ports, where they took on board local supplies which were rotten and should not have been brought on board. Gradually, these rotten supplies are leaking overboard, but it takes time to recognise that they are rotten and there have been several individual cases of food poisoning.

Despite these passing incidents, the great ship and the lifeboat are now sailing side by side and heading once more towards Paradise. There are exchanges of passengers and increasingly of crew, as people from the great ship get into the lifeboat and vice versa. As for the other smaller ships which had been sailing with the great ship before the hurricane struck, these too have suffered. However, now they have begun sailing again too. They are also heading in the same direction, but some of them are sailing very slowly because of the damage they also suffered after the hurricane, even though they were not in its eye. And some on board those smaller ships are also ill because of the rotten supplies that they also took on board. As these leak out, the ships are lighter and can sail more swiftly.

There are other ships in the Ocean too, but they have lost their compass bearings. Some of them are going round and round, others, quite big ones, which long ago lost their bearings, are actually sailing backwards. Some people from these ships have managed to get into the lifeboat and some have got into the great ship or the smaller ships. All are relieved that they are now going in the right direction, though sometimes they suffer from the damage and cases of food poisoning.

However, for those in the great ship and the lifeboat the joy of knowing that we are sailing to Paradise together is immense. Our only concerns are windless days and possibly other storms, perhaps even another hurricane. But for now we sail, gathering speed, seeking favourable winds and fair weather, more and more fearless, intrepid before the vast Ocean and the Sun all before us.