We who were born in the dark years of the Cold War and who hoped against hope for the restoration of Orthodox Russia suffered much. Three generations of an atheist regime in the former Russian Empire was followed by one generation of decadence, of ABCDE – alcoholism, abortion, corruption, drugs and emigration. But now, in 2014, and even before this, in 2007 with the reconciliation of the two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church, we have in recent days, weeks, months and years begun to see the light. Why has the wait been so long and the suffering so great?

We suffered because the treachery that brought about the ritual killing and martyrdom of God’s Anointed, Tsar Nicholas II, hung like a curse over the whole former Russian Empire and the world. For this reason those politicians and economists, Russian, European and American, who just over a hundred years ago predicted a brilliant future for the Russian Empire, that by 1950 it would dominate the world, were wrong. Equally wrong were those Western and Westernised liberals who predicted a brilliant future for Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – and for the same reason.

What has changed today? Those who read the Old Testament know what has changed. It does not require a higher degree in mathematics to understand it. Let us turn to the Book of Exodus: ‘Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me’ (Ex. 20, 5). Calculating a generation as 25 years and starting in 1914, we came to the end of the third generation of apostasy in 1989. Today we are at the end of the hundred year period, of four generations. Simple arithmetic indicates that we are now seeing the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. Restoration is at hand.