III: SIGNS
OF THE TIMES
By Righteous Hieromonk Seraphim Rose
In the following talk,[1] Fr. Seraphim speaks to us from almost twenty
years ago, and yet his words are quite relevant to our times as we
approach the end of the second millennium. Although some of the
individual examples he gives are now dated, there are now even more
extreme examples of the same phenomena of which he speaks. As always,
he humbles his understanding before the holy Scriptures and their
interpretation by the Orthodox Holy Fathers, and thus his teaching
about the times remains timeless, free of the intellectual fashions and
prejudices of this world. As time goes on, the Orthodox world view from
which he received his wisdom will become ever more necessary for the
spiritual survival of true Christians.
1. WHY STUDY THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES?
THE SUBJECT of this talk is watching for the signs
of the times. First of all, we have to know what it is meant by the
phrase "signs of the times." This expression comes straight from the
Gospel, from the words of our Saviour in Matthew 16:3. Christ tells the
Pharisees and Sadducees who came to Him, "Ye can discern the face of
the sky," that is, tell what the weather will be; "but can ye not
discern the signs of the times?" In other words, He's telling them that
this has nothing to do with science, or with knowing our place in the
world, or anything of the sort. It's a religious question. We study the
signs of the times in order to be able to recognize Christ.
During the time of Christ, the Pharisees and
Sadducees did not study the signs of the times in order to see that
Christ had come, that the Son of God was already on earth. There were
already signs that they should have recognized. For example, in the
book of Daniel in the Old Testament, there is a prophecy concerning the
seventy weeks of years, which means that the Messiah was to come about
490 years from the time of Daniel. Those Jews who read their books very
carefully knew exactly what this was all about, and at about the time
that Christ came they knew that it was time for the messiah.
But this is an outward sign. More importantly, the
Pharisees and Sadducees should have been watching for the inward signs.
If their hearts had been right with God, and if they had not been
merely trying to fulfill the outward commandment of the law, their
hearts would have responded and recognized God in the flesh when He
came. And many of the Jews did—the apostles, the disciples, and many
others.
This same passage in the 16th chapter of St. Matthew
speaks further about signs. Our Lord told the Jews, "An evil and
adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be
given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah." The events of the
Old Testament contain prefigurations of events in the New Testament.
When Jonah was three days in the belly of the whale, this was a
prefiguation of our Lord's being three days in the tomb. And this
sign—the sign of Jonah was given to the people of Christ's time.
Our Lord was telling the Pharisees and Sadducees
that an evil and adulterous generation seeks for spectacular events,
that is, fire coming down from heaven, or the Romans being chased away,
angels manifesting themselves and banishing the foreign government of
the Romans, and things of that sort. Christ told them this kind of sign
would not be given. An evil and adulterous generation seeks after this,
but those who are pure of heart seek rather something more spiritual.
And the one sign that is given to them is the sign of Jonah. Of course,
it is a great thing that a man should be three days in the grave and
the rise up, being God.
Thus, from our Savior's words, we know that we are
not to watch for spectacular signs, but we are rather to look inwardly
for spiritual signs. Also, we are to watch for those things which
according to Scripture must come to pass.
2. THE SIGNS GIVEN US BY CHRIST
We Orthodox Christians have already recognized and
accepted the signs of Christ's First Coming. The very fact that we're
Orthodox Christians means that we've done this. We know what these
signs mean: for example, the sign of Jonah, the 490 years of Daniel,
and many other things which our Lord fulfilled. Our Orthodox Divine
services are filled with Old Testament prophecies which were fulfilled
in the coming of Christ. These we all see and recognize—it all seems
clear. But now we have to look for different kinds of signs, that is,
the signs of the Second Coming of Christ. The whole teaching about the
Second Coming of Christ and the signs which will precede it is set
forth in several places in the Gospels, especially in the 24th chapter
of St. Matthew. St. Mark and St. Luke also have chapters about this.
This chapter of St. Matthew tells of how our Lord
departed from the Temple, and how his disciples came to him to show him
the buildings of the Temple. Of course, in those days the Temple was
the center of worship. Every Jew had to come to the Temple at least at
Pascha, the Passover, for this alone was where God could be worshipped
in the right way.
Our Lord looked at the Temple and told His
disciples, "See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you: There
shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown
down." To tell a believing Jew at that time that the whole Temple is to
be thrown down, that nothing is to be left of it, is like saying it's
the end of the world, because the Temple is precisely the place where
God is supposed to be worshipped. How are you going to worship God if
there's no Temple? So these words of our Savior made the disciples
start thinking about the end of the world. They immediately said, "Tell
us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy
coming, and of the end of the world?" In other words, they already knew
that He was going to come again and that this would be bound up with
the end of the world.
Then our Lord gives a whole set of signs which are
to come to pass before He comes again. First of all He says, "Take heed
that no man lead you astray. For many shall come in My name saying, 'I
am Christ'; and shall lead man astray." That is, many false Christs
will come. This we've already seen throughout the history of the
Church: those who have risen up against the Church, those who have
pretended to be God, pretended to be Christ.
Secondly, in the next verse He says, "Ye shall hear
of wars and rumors of wars. Se that ye be not troubled, for these
things must come to pass, but the end is not yet." Of course, from the
very beginning of the Christian era there have been wars and rumors of
wars, and even more so in our time. "nation shall rise against nation,
and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, and
pestilences, and earthquake in diverse places." Again, wars, then
famines, earthquakes. And He says, "All these things are the beginning
of tribulation."
Then comes the next sign, which is persecutions.
"Then shall they deliver you up unto tribulation, and shall kill you,
and ye shall be hated of all nations for My name's sake." So, first we
have false Christs, then wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes,
persecutions—and then a very important sign for our times concerning
the growing cold of love: "Because iniquity shall be multiplied, the
love of many shall wax cold." This is the most deadly of all the signs,
because the sign of Christians, as St. John the Theologian tells us, is
that they have love for each other. When this love grows cold, this
means that even the Christians are beginning to lose Christianity.
Then another sign, in the next verse of the 24th
chapter: "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole
world for a testimony unto all the nation, and then shall the end
come." This sign of the Gospel being preached unto all the nations we
see about us now. The Gospel itself is produced in hundreds of
languages now to almost all the tribes of the earth, and Orthodox
Christianity is being preached in almost every country of the world. In
Africa there are great missions: in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, the Congo,
and spreading out from there.
The a more difficult place: our Lord speaks
concerning the abomination of desolation which is spoke of by Daniel
the prophet. "When you see the abomination of desolation standing in
the holy place (let him that readeth understand)." That is, you're
supposed to understand this from something else. This is another sign.
It is concerned, of course, with the Temple in Jerusalem and some kind
of desecration of it.
Then, in the 21st verse, there is the sign of great
tribulation: "Then shall be great tribulation such as has not been from
the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall be." That is, it
will be the worst and most difficult time of suffering in the whole
history of the world. You can read history books and find that there
have been many times in the history of the world when there was great
suffering. If you read about what happened to the Jews when Jerusalem
was taken after the death of Christ, you will find that such suffering
as went on then was unparalleled. In other places there has been almost
as much suffering. And yet the great tribulation at the very end will
be much worse. Of course, it will be worldwide and involve everyone,
not just one people, and will be something of a very impressive
character. It will be called "such tribulation that the world has never
seen."
Just after this time, something even worse begins to
come. Verse 29 reads: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days,
the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and
the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall
be shaken." Such an event, of course, has never been before, and this
obviously refers to the time just at the end of the world, when the
whole of creation prepares to be annihilated in order to be
refashioned.
Finally, the next verse: "And then shall appear the
sign of the Son of Man in heaven," that is, the sign of the Cross will
appear in the sky. "And then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn,
and they shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with
power and great glory." That is, the very coming of Christ shall be in
the heavens with the sign of the Cross—and that is the very end of
everything.
After telling all this about the signs of the end,
our Lord gives a final command, saying, "Watch, therefore, for you know
not on what day your Lord cometh.... Therefore, be also ready, for in
an hour that you think not, the Son of Man cometh."
All this is in the 24th chapter of the Gospel of St.
Matthew. But all this, for anyone not thoroughly acquainted with
Scriptures and the writings of Holy Fathers, almost raises more
question than it solves. We must understand what is the meaning of all
these prophecies. How can we know when they are really being fulfilled?
And how can we avoid false interpretations?—because there are many
false Christs, false prophets, false prophecies, false interpretations.
How can we know what is the true interpretation and what are the true
signs of the times? IF you look about you and go to any religious
bookstore, you will see shelves containing many books of commentaries
on the Book of Revelation (The Apocalypse), books with interpretations
about the coming end of the world. In fact many Christians who are not
Orthodox have a very definite feeling that these are the last times,
but they all give interpretations based upon their own opinions.
3. THE BASIS FOR UNDERSTANDING THE
SIGNS
The first thing we must have if we are going to have
the true interpretation of the signs of the times is something we can
call basic Orthodox knowledge. That is, knowledge of the Holy
Scripture, both the Old and New Testaments (and not just according to
the way it seems, but according to the way the Church has interpreted
it); knowledge of the writings of Holy Fathers; knowledge of Church
history; and awareness of the different kind of heresies and errors
which have attacked the Church's true understanding of dogma and
especially of the last times. If we do not have a grounding in sources
such as these, we will find ourselves confused and unprepared. That is
precisely what our Lord tells us: to be ready, to be prepared. Unless
we have this basic knowledge, we will not be prepared and we will
misinterpret the signs of the times.
A few years ago a book was printed in English which
has become a fantastic bestseller for a religious book. It has sold
over ten million copies in America. It's called The Late Great Planet
Earth by Hal Lindsey, a Protestant Evangelical in Texas. In a rather
superficial style he gives his interpretation of the signs of the
times. He believes it's the last times we are living in now. He
believes that everywhere around us there are being fulfilled these
signs which our Lord talked about. If you read this book, you find that
sometimes he gets something more or less correct according to our
Orthodox understanding, sometimes he is totally off, and sometimes he
is partly wrong, partly right. It's as though he's just guessing,
because he reads the Scripture according to his own understanding. He
has no basic Orthodox Christian knowledge, no background in the true
knowledge of the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers. Therefore, if you
read this book seriously, you will find that you become very confused.
You don't know what to believe any more. He talks, for example, about a
millennium which is supposed to come before the end of the world. He
talks about the rapture, when Christians are supposedly gathered up
into the heavens before the end of the world, and then watch how the
people suffer down below. He talks about the building of the Temple in
Jerusalem as though this is a good thing, as thought this is preparing
for Christ's coming.
If you read such books as this (there are many other
books like it; this one happens to be a bestseller because the author
caught the imagination of people just at one particular time), and if
you take them all as truth, you will find that instead of recognizing
Christ—which is the whole reason for our understanding about the signs
of the times—you will be accepting Antichrist.
Take, for example, the very question of the Temple
in Jerusalem. It is true, according to Orthodox prophecies, that the
Temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem. If you look at people like Hal
Lindsey, or even the Fundamentalist Carl McIntire, they are also
talking about the building of the Temple, but they're talking about it
as though we are building it in order for Christ to come back and reign
over the world for a thousand years. What they are talking about is the
coming of Antichrist. The millennium, according to the Protestant
interpretation, as being a special thousand year reign at the end of
the world, is actually the reign of Antichrist. In fact, there have
already been people who have arisen and proclaimed their thousand year
kingdom which is going to last until the end of the world. The last one
was Adolf Hitler. This is based upon the same kind of chiliastic idea:
that is, interpreting the millennium in a worldly sense. The actual
thousand years of the Apocalypse is the life in the Church which is
now, that is, the life of Grace; and anyone who lives it sees that,
compared to the people outside, it is indeed heaven on earth. But this
is not the end. This is our preparation for the true kingdom of God
which has no end.
There are many books of basic Orthodox knowledge now
available. Those who are seriously concerned about studying the signs
of the times should first be very well versed in some of these books,
and they should be reading them, seriously studying them, and having
them as daily food. The best books to read are not someone's
interpretation of Revelation (the Book of Apocalypse), because right
now there's not really any Orthodox interpretation of this in
English.[2]
The best books are the basic spiritual textbooks.
First of all there are basic texts of Orthodox dogmas, the various
catechisms. One of the best is the eighth century work of St. John
Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith, which goes through the whole of the
catechism. An even earlier one is St. Cyril of Jerusalem's Catechetical
Lectures, that is, lectures prepared for people about to be baptized,
which goes through the whole Creed and tells what the Church believes.
There are many similar books of catechism, both in ancient times and in
more modern times. More recently we have the catechisms in Russian of
Metropolitan Platon and Metropolitan Philaret, which are a little
shorter and simpler.
Then there is a different kind of book: commentaries
on Holy Scriptures. There are not too many of these in English,[3] but
we do have some of the commentaries of St. John Chrysostom. This area
is a little bit weak in English, because there are many good books in
Russian which are not in English yet, including more recent books of
commentaries on the Scriptures, even on the Apocalypse. Archbishop
Averky's books are very good, but they're just being put into English
now. God willing, before too long, they will be out.[4]
Then, besides these two kinds of books—basic
catechism and commentaries on Scripture—there are all the books on
Orthodox spiritual life. These include the Lausiac History (which tells
about how the monks lived in Egypt, and how they fought spiritually),
the Dialogues of St. Gregory of Rome, the Lives of Saints, The Ladder
of St. John, the Homilies of St. Macarius the Great, the books of St.
John Cassian, the Philokalia, Unseen Warfare and St. John of
Kronstadt's My Life in Christ. These books deal with basic Orthodox
spiritual life, spiritual struggle, how to discern the wiles of the
demons, how not to fall into deception. All of them give a basic
foundation by which to understand the signs of the times.
Then there are the works of more recent writers who
are in the same patristic spirit as the ancient Holy Fathers. The main
examples are the two great writers of 19th century Russia, Bishop
Theophan the Recluse and Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov,[5] whose works
are now coming out gradually in English. Bishop Ignatius' book The
Arena and various articles by Bishop Theophan are in English.[6] These
two writers are very important because they transmit the patristic
teaching down to our times. They have already explained many questions
which arise concerning how to understand the Holy Fathers. For example,
the new Orthodox Word has a whole text of Bishop Ignatius on the toll
houses which the soul meets after death. Sometimes, in reading the Holy
Fathers, one has questions on such subjects and doesn't quite know how
to understand what the ancient Fathers say, and these more recent
Father explain these texts.
There are the histories of the Church, which tell of
God's revelation to men and how God acts with regard to men. It is very
instructive to read the stories of the Old Testament, because exactly
the same things repeat themselves in the New Testament. Then one should
read, along with he New Testament, the histories of the New Testament
Church. For example, there's a pocketbook of Eusebius' History of the
Church, which traces the history of the Church down through the first
three centuries, written from an Orthodox Christian point of view.[7]
It's very important to see what early Church writers saw was important
in the history of the Church: the martyrs, the apostles, and so forth.
So all these different kinds of writings help to
prepare us with basic Christian knowledge, that is, catechisms,
commentaries on Scripture, books on spiritual life, more recent
patristic books in this same spirit, and histories of the Church.
Before we do too much reading about what specifically the signs of the
times mean, we should have a basic background in all of these
categories of books. All of them prepare one to understand something
about the signs of the times. Once one has begun to prepare oneself
like this, it is not merely a matter of adding knowledge up in one's
head and being able to repeat by heart certain phrases, to have exactly
the right interpretation of a Bible verse, or anything of the sort.
4. SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT
The most important thing that one acquires through
reading such basic Orthodox literature as this is a virtue which is
called discernment. When we come to two phenomena which seem to be
exactly alike or very similar to each other, the virtue of discernment
allows us to see which of them is true and which is false: that is,
which has the spirit of Christ and which might have the spirit of
Antichrist.
The very nature of Antichrist, who is to be the last
great world ruler and the last great opponent of Christ, is to be anti
Christ—and "anti" means not merely "against," but also "in imitation
of, in place of." The Antichrist, as all the Holy Fathers say in their
writings about him, is to be someone who imitates Christ, that is,
tires to fool people by looking as though he is Christ come back to
earth. Therefore, if one has a very vague notion of Christianity or
reads the Scriptures purely from one's own opinions (and one's opinions
come from the air, and the air is not Christian now, but anti
Christian), then one will come to very anti Christian conclusions.
Seeing the figure of Antichrist, one will be fooled into thinking that
it is Christ.
We can give a few examples of how the virtue of
discernment can help us to understand some fairly complicated
phenomena. One such phenomenon is the charismatic movement. There is a
Greek priest, Fr. Eusebius Stephanou in Indiana, who is spreading this
movement in the Orthodox Church. He has a rather large number of
followers and sympathizers. He's even been to Greece and is going again
soon, and there too people are sometimes quite overwhelmed by him.
One can see that part of the reason for his success
is that he comes from an Orthodox church atmosphere in which people,
being born Orthodox, go to Orthodox church, receive sacraments, and
take the whole thing for granted. Since it becomes with them a matter
of habit, they do not understand that the whole meaning of the Church
is to have Christ in the heart, but that one can go through the whole
of Orthodox Church life without having one's heart awakened. In that
case, one is just like the pagans. In fact, one is more responsible
than the pagans. The pagans have never heard of Christ, while the
person who is Orthodox and does not know what spiritual life is simply
has not yet awakened to Christ.
This is the kind of atmosphere from which Fr.
Eusebius comes. Seeing that this is a spiritual deadness—and it's quite
true that much of what is in the Orthodox Church is spiritually dead—he
wants to make it come to life. But the trouble is that he himself
belongs to the same spirit. In fact, you very seldom see that he reads
the basic Orthodox books. He picks one or two that seem to agree with
his point of view, but he does not have a thorough grounding in the
Orthodox sources. He does not think that they are the most important
things to be reading.
If you look deeply at what he and other people in
the charismatic movement are saying—and our book The Religion of the
Future goes into detail on this subject—you see that what they call a
spiritual revival and a spiritual life is actually what more recent
Fathers like Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov carefully described as
deception, that is, a kind of fever of the blood which makes it look as
though one is being spiritual when actually one is not even grasping
spiritual reality at all. In fact, it's as different from true
Christian life, which is reflected in these very basic Orthodox books,
as heaven is from earth.
Quite apart from the details of how they pray and
what kind of phenomena manifest themselves at their services, you can
see that the very basic idea which Fr. Eusebius and these charismatics
have is a false idea. Yesterday we received an issue of Fr. Eusebius'
magazine, Logos. There he talks about the great outpouring of the Holy
Spirit in the last times preparing for the coming of Christ. All
Christians are supposed to be renewed, to receive the Holy Spirit, to
be speaking in tongues. This prepares for the coming of Christ, and
there will be a great spiritual outpouring before Christ comes.
If you read the Scriptures carefully, without
putting your prejudices into them, even without the patristic
commentaries you will see that nowhere is anything said about a great
spiritual outpouring at the end of the world. Christ Himself says the
contrary. First he gives His teaching concerning how we should pray and
have faith and not be faint. He presents the example of the woman who
goes to the judge and keeps begging him to intercede in her case, and
He tells us that this is how we should continue to pray and pray and
pray until God hears us and gives to us. This is a very solid example
about praying. Then He says, "Nevertheless" (that is, despite the fact
that I've given you this teaching and this is the way to pray),
"nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the
earth?" In other words, despite the fact you've been given all this,
there will be practically no one left who is a Christian at the end of
the world. "Will He find faith on the earth?" means He will find almost
no one left. There will not be flocks of people who are praying and
inspired with the Holy Spirit at the end of time. All Holy Fathers who
speak about this subject speak about the great terrible times at the
end, and say that those who are true Christians will be hidden away and
will not even be visible to the world. Those who are visible to the
world will not be the true Christians.
Today there are tremendous charismatic revivals at
Notre Dame University, and in Jerusalem there is every year now a
charismatic conference on the Holy Spirit. Sixty, seventy thousand
people come together and pray and raise up their hands, and they all
speak in tongues. It looks as though the time of the Apostles has come
back, but if you look at what goes on there, you see it's not the right
spirit; it's a different spirit.
Therefore, when Fr. Eusebius speaks about St. Symeon
the New Theologian, and about how you must know Who the Holy Spirit is
and receive Him consciously, this is fine, this is good teaching—but if
you have the wrong spirit, that teaching does not apply. And this is
not the right spirit. There are many signs evident that it is a
different spirit and not the Spirit of God.
Here is one case where, if you have discernment from
basic Christian knowledge, you can look at a phenomenon which claims to
be apostolic and just like the times of the early Church preparing for
Christ's Second Coming, and if you look closely you can see it is not
the same thing. In fact, if anything, it's just like those who want to
build the Temple for Christ. They're building for Antichrist; it's
totally the opposite.
Again, you can see how discernment enables us to
evaluate other phenomena which may not be identical with Orthodox
phenomenon, but are new things. When you first look at them, you wonder
what they are all about. This is characteristic of intellectual
fashions: something gets into the air, everybody grabs it because the
times are ripe for it, and then everybody begins to talk about it and
it becomes the fashion of the times. Nobody quite knows how; it's just
that everybody was ready for it, and all of a sudden somebody mentioned
it and it began to circulate everywhere.
5. THE DISTORTION OF CHRISTIAN EQUALITY
We have one particular idea right now that's taking
possession of people: the so called idea of women's liberation. This
takes the form of women priestesses in the Anglican Church, and also in
the Catholic Church, which is preparing for it now. Of course, if you
look at this seriously, sit down and think about it, and you read what
St. Paul says about women and so forth, you have no problems. It's all
very clear that this is some kind of crazy new idea. But it is also
very interesting to look at this more deeply and see where it comes
from—why is there such an idea, what is it, what's behind it?—because
if you understand the strategy of the devil, you're a little better
equipped to fight against it.
This particular idea of women's liberation can be
traced back at least two hundred years. Of course, you can go back even
before that, but its present from goes back at least two hundred years,
to the forerunners of Karl Marx, the early Socialists. These Socialists
were talking about a great new utopian age which is going to come when
all the distinctions of class and race and religion and so forth are
abolished. There will be a great new society, they said, when everybody
is equal. This idea, of course, was based originally upon Christianity,
but it distorted Christianity, and amounted to its opposite.
There was a particular philosopher in China in the
late nineteenth century who brought this philosophy to its logical
conclusion, as far as it could go. His name is K'ang Yu Wei (1858
1927). He's not particularly interesting except as he incarnates this
philosophy of the age, this spirit of the times. He was actually one of
the forerunners of Mao Tse Tung and the takeover of China by the
communists. He based his ideas not only on distorted Christianity,
which he took from the liberals and Protestants in the West, but also
on Buddhist ideas. He came up with the idea of a utopia which was to
come into being, I think, in the 21st century according to his
prophecies. In this utopia, all ranks of society, all religious
differences, and all other kinds of differences which affect social
intercourse will be abolished. Everyone will sleep in dormitories and
eat in common halls. And then with his Buddhist ideas he began to go
beyond this. He said that all distinctions between the sexes would be
abolished. Once mankind is united, there's not reason to halt
there—this movement must go on further. There must be an abolition
between man and animals. Animals also will come into this kingdom, and
once you have animals... The Buddhists are also very respectful to
vegetables and plants; therefore, the whole vegetable kingdom has to
come into this paradise, and in the end the inanimate world, also. So,
at the very end of t he world, where will be an absolute utopia of all
kinds of beings who have somehow become intermingled with each other,
and everybody's absolutely equal.
Of course, you read about this and you say the man
must be crazy. But if you look deeply, you see that this is coming from
a deep desire to have some kind of happiness on earth. No pagan
philosophy, however, gives happiness; no man made philosophy gives
happiness. Only Christianity gives hope for a kingdom which is not of
this world. The idea to have a perfect kingdom comes from Christianity,
but since the early Socialists did not believe in the other world or in
God, they dreamed of making this kingdom in this world. That is what
communism is all about.
We see what happens, of course, when this idea is
put into practice. You have the experiment of the French Revolution,
which had apparently good ideas—liberty, equality, fraternity—or the
Bolshevik Revolution, or in more recent times the various other
communist revolutions. Last of all you have Cambodia, a poor little
country which for three years suffered absolute communism and found
that at least one fourth of its population was exterminated because it
didn't fit. Everyone who had more than a high school education had to
be eliminated, everyone who thought for himself, and so forth. Now the
regime has been overthrown by people who are a little less ruthless,
but there's nothing much to cheer about.
This shows that once you try to put these ideas into
operation, you get, not paradise on earth, but more like hell on earth.
In fact, the whole experiment in Russia for the last sixty years has
been a proof of this, that there is no paradise on earth, except in the
Church of Christ, with sufferings.[8] Our Lord prophesied that already
in this life we would receive back a hundredfold what we give, but it
must be with persecutions and sufferings. Those who wish to have this
happiness on earth without suffering and persecutions, and without even
believing in God, make hell on earth.
6. "CHRISTIAN" INTEREST IN UFOs
A second example of a new phenomenon, which at first
sight one doesn't know what to make of, is the now very common
phenomenon of UFOs, flying saucers.
There is a particular Protestant evangelist, the
above mentioned Carl McIntire, who is extremely strict and righteous
and very Bible believing. He has a radio program, the Twentieth Century
Reformation, and a newspaper. He is absolutely upright—you have to
separate from all people who are in apostasy—and his ideas are very
nice. He's anti-communist. He calls Billy Graham an apostate, together
with everyone who deviates from the strict line of what he thinks is
right. From this point of view he's very strict, and yet you see the
strangest things in his philosophy. For example, he's building himself
the Temple of Jerusalem, in Florida. He has a model of the Temple, and
he wants to build it so as to make it compete with Disneyworld. People
will come and pay to see the great Temple which is soon going to be
built for Christ to come to earth. This is supposed to provide a good
opportunity to witness Christianity.
He goes in for the flying saucers, also. In every
issue of his newspaper there's a little column called "UFO Column," and
there they talk, to one's great astonishment, about all the wonderful,
positive things which these flying saucers are doing. The give
conferences and make movies about them.
Just recently there have been several Protestant
books about UFOs, showing quite clearly that they're demons. The person
who writes the column in this newspaper got upset about this, and said
that some people say that these beings are demons, but we can prove
they aren't. He says that maybe a couple of them are demons, but most
of them aren't. He cites a recent case in which some family in the
Midwest saw a flying saucer. The flying saucer came down, landed, and
the family saw inside little men—they're usually four and half feet
tall or so—and they sang "Hallelujah." They stopped and looked and then
they flew away; I guess they didn't talk to them any more. And that set
the family to thinking; they began to think "Hallelujah"; they began to
think about Christianity; they looked in their Bibles, and they finally
ended up going to a Fundamentalist church and being converted to
Christianity. Therefore, he says, these beings must be some kind of
people who are helping God's plan to make the world Christian because
they said "Hallelujah."
Of course, if you read Bishop Ignatius
Brianchaninov, you will know about all the deceptions which the demons
perpetrate: the demons "pray" for you, the demons make miracles, they
produce the most wonderful phenomena, they bring people to church, they
do anything you want, as long as they keep you in this deception. And
when the time comes, they will suddenly pull their tricks on you. So
these people, who have been converted to some kind of Christianity by
these so called outer space beings, are waiting for the next time they
will come; and the next time their message may have to do with Christ
coming to earth again soon, or something of the sort. It's obvious that
this is all the work of demons. That is, where it's real. Sometimes
it's just imagination, but when it's real this kind of thing obviously
comes form demons.
This is very elementary. If you read any text of the
early Fathers, any of the early Lives of Saints or the Lausiac History,
you find many cases where beings suddenly appear. Nowadays they appear
in spaceships because that's how the demons have adapted themselves to
the people of the times; but if you understand how spiritual deception
works and what kind of wiles the devil has, then you have no problems
in understanding what's going on with these flying saucers. And yet
this person who writes the UFO column is an absolutely strict
Fundamentalist Christian. He is looking, actually for new revelations
to come from beings from outer space.
7. WHY WE MUST HAVE AN ORTHODOX WORLD
VIEW
So, to repeat the first point: we watch the signs of
the times in order to recognize Christ when He comes, because there
have been many false Christs, many more false Christs will come, and at
the very end of the world there will finally come one who is called
Antichrist. The Antichrist will unite all those who are deceived into
thinking he is Christ, and this will include all those whose
interpretation of Christianity has gone off. Often you can look at some
people who confess Christianity, and it seems that many of their ideas
are correct—they go according to the Bible. Then you look here and
there, and you see that here's a mistake, there's a mistake.
Just recently Fr. Dimitry Dudko, in the little
newspaper he puts out, said there came to him someone who claimed to be
Christian. As he began to talk to him, he began to feel that this
person wasn't Orthodox, and he said, "What confession are you?" "Oh,
that's not important. We're all Christians. The only important thing is
that we be Christians." He said, "Well, no, no, we have to be more
precise than than that. For example, if you're a Baptist and I'm an
Orthodox, I believe that we have the Lord's Body and Blood, and you
don't." We must be precise because there are many differences. It's
good to have the attitude: I have respect for you, and I won't
interfere with your faith, but nonetheless there's a true way of
believing and there are ways which go away from the truth. I must be
according to the truth.
In the same way we can see that many people who are
not Orthodox have many good things about them, and then they go off in
some respect. In the end it's up to God to judge, not to us. But we can
see what will happen if all these little ways people go off now are
projected into the last times, if people still believe that way when
the last times come. These mistakes cause people, when they see
Antichrist, to think that he is Christ. There are very many sects now
which believe that Christ is coming to rule for a thousand years form
the Temple in Jerusalem. Therefore, when the Jews start building the
Temple, these sects will only rejoice because, to them, this is the
sign of Christ's coming. On the contrary, we know that this isn't he
sign of the Antichrist coming, because Christ will no more come ot the
Temple. The Temple has been destroyed. Christ comes only at the end of
the world to begin the eternal kingdom of heaven. The only one who will
come to the Temple is Antichrist.
So, this is why the correct Orthodox Christian
understanding and preparation based upon this understanding are
absolutely necessary. The closer we get to the very last times, the
more indispensable this understanding and preparation are.
8. A LOOK AT SPECIFIC SIGNS
Now let us look for just a moment at some of the
signs in our times that the Second Coming of Christ, preceded by the
coming of Antichrist, is close. Concerning the prophecies set forth in
the 24th chapter of St. Matthew—first of all, the false christs who
will come, then the wars, famines, earthquakes, persecutions—it is
difficult to judge, because all these things have been happening for
almost two thousand years now. It's true that they are now an a bigger
scale than ever before, but it is also true that they can be much worse
yet. These signs are the beginning of signs, and are not yet so severe
that we can say we are right in the very last days.
One sign, however , is very interesting and very
indicative of our times, that that is that Christ is now depicted on
the stage. In previous times it was never allowed that Christ should be
depicted on the stage, because an actor gives his own human
interpretation, and Christ is God. In Orthodoxy there is perhaps no
particular canon about this, but the whole Orthodox Christian outlook
is against it; and nay Protestant or Catholic until the last few years
would have been horrified at the idea of some actor playing the part of
Christ. Now this has become common, and not only in religious contexts,
but in contexts which are far from religious. Godspell, Jesus Christ
Superstar, and so forth: all these are actually blasphemous parodies
which present Christ in secular form for people to see.[9] This is very
symptomatic of our times because it presents even to unbelieving people
an image of Christ so that when Antichrist comes they will say, "Aha, I
saw on the stage something like that. Yes, that must be it."
9. THE GROWING COLD OF LOVE
Another very symptomatic sign of our times is the
next one mentioned in this chapter of Matthew: that the love of many
grows cold. This seems to be a definite characteristic of our times, to
a quite greater degree than at any time in past history. One can see
this in what can be called nihilism. People commit crimes for no
particular reason, not for gain but just for a thrill because they do
not have God inside them. In all kinds of places now, one can see the
lack of normal human relationships in families, which produces cold
people. It is this kind of people who, in a totalitarian society, are
used as slave drives, working in the concentration camps and so forth.
Recently we had the tragedy in Jonestown, which was
composed of American citizens. The people there were idealists who
devoted themselves utterly to a cause. Although it's come out now that
it was actually a communist commune, still the people were supposed to
be Christians. The leader was a minister of the so called Church of
Christ, one of the mainline denominations. And yet these people,
supposedly having some awareness of God and Christianity, coldly killed
each other. Those who drank and administered the poison to their
children did so with calm faces. There's no problem: that's just your
duty, that's what you're told to do. This kind of coldness is what
Christ is talking about. Any kind of normal human warmth has been
abolished because Christ has gone out of the heart; God is gone. This
is a frightful sign of our times. In fact, they very thing that
happened in Jonestown is a warning because it looks as though much
worse things are going to come. This is satan's work, quite obviously.
Just a year or two before that occurred, we heard of
what happened in Cambodia. A small party of men—some ten or twenty
altogether—took a whole country in their hands and killed off at least
two million people quite ruthlessly, based on some abstract ideas.
We're going to get back to the country, they said; therefore, everybody
is to leave the cities. If you can't leave the city, you die. People in
the hospitals had to go from their operating tables, and if they
couldn't go, they died—they were shot and left in a ditch. Corpses were
piled up in the cities—it was frightful.
This was the same kind of thing as what occurred in
Jonestown: coldness based upon the idea—which looks idealistic—of
brining communism to earth. It turns out that Dostoyevsky was right. In
his book The Possessed, written in the 1870s, there was a Russian
character named Shigalov, a theoretician, who had an absolute theory of
how communism could come to earth. He believed that the ideal state
upon earth will be true communism. Unfortunately, he said, in order to
make sixty million people happy, you have to kill a hundred million
people. But those sixty million people will be happier than anyone else
has ever been happy, and the hundred million people will be like
fertilizer for the future world paradise. It so happens that in Russia
there have been exactly a hundred million people missing since 1917, of
which at least sixty million were killed by the Soviets themselves.
So this sign is very, very present in our times:
that love grows cold. This occurs among Christians also, not just in
the world at large.
Then another sign, which in our times has reached
greater dimensions than every before, is that the Gospel is being
preached in the whole world. This, of course, is true in that the very
text of the Gospel is being spread in almost all the languages which
are spoken on the earth now—at least a thousand languages, I think.
Moreover, the Orthodox Gospel is being preached all over Africa now. We
send our magazines to Uganda and Kenya, and receive letters back—very
touching letters from young African boys who are converts to Orthodoxy.
They have the utmost respect for their bishop; they go to seminary.
It's obvious that a very Orthodox feeling is being given to these
people in Africa. They are very simple people. Orthodoxy does not have
to be complicated if there are very simple people to preach the Gospel
to. It's only when others come in to challenge it and to say that the
Scripture means something else, trying to give over literal
interpretation which mean doing away with priests and bishops, etc.,
that the people begin to get mixed up. If they're preached the Orthodox
Gospel, simple people respond now in the same way that they've always
responded in the past. The problem is, rather, with complicated people.
10. THE TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM
Then there is the sign of the abomination of
desolation and all that relates to the Temple in Jerusalem. For the
first time in history, this has now become a possibility. The
rebuilding of the Temple was tried only once before, in the fourth
century. Knowing about this is a very good example of how reading
Church history enlightens one. We can find several sources about it
from the fourth century: St. Cyril mentions it, as do several of the
Church historians at that time. Julian the Apostate, because he had
such a passion to overthrow Christianity, decided that, since Christ
had prophesied that not one stone of the Temple would be left on the
other, if he rebuilt the Temple, he would prove that Christ was an
impostor, and therefore paganism could be restored. So he deliberately
invited the Jews back to Jerusalem, and they began building the Temple
with the blessing of Julian the Apostate. They would build a little in
the daytime, and the next morning they would come and all the stones
would be on the ground. They tried again and balls of fire began to
come out of the earth. All the historians agree on this. In fact,
modern rationalist historians, because they see that they cannot deny
the texts and that something did actually happen, begin to say things
like, "They must have struck oil," or "There were underground gas
flues." It was obviously a miracle of God to keep the Temple from being
built, because it was not the time—the Temple is to be built only at
the very end of the world. Anyway, they finally failed in their attempt
and gave up the operation. Of the few stones that remained, not one was
left on the other. So the prophecy was fulfilled in the time of Julian
the Apostate.
But now, since 1967, the site where the Temple was
before is now in the hands of the Jews. Therefore for the first time,
it becomes quite possible that the Temple could be built. The only
thing interfering is the great mosque which the Moslems have there. If
that's destroyed, there will probably be a war.
Only since 1948 has there been a separate state of
Jews in the Holy Land. It is to the unbelieving Jews that the
Antichrist will come. He will come first to the Jews and then to the
whole world through the Jews; and only as this is happening will the
faithful remnant of Jews finally be converted to Christianity in the
very last times. So this sign of the Temple is a very big one. When we
see the Temple being built, then we know that the time is at hand,
because that is definitely one of the signs of the very end. So far, of
course, it's not being built, but there are all kinds of rumors that
plans have been laid, that stones are being gathered, etc. It's obvious
that the Jews are thinking about it.
11. OTHER SIGNS
Another sign is the fact that when Antichrist comes
he is to be the ruler of the world, and only in our times has it been a
practical reality that one man can rule the entire world. all world
empires up until now have been only over part of the earth, and before
modern communications it was impossible for one man to rule the entire
world.
Furthermore, with increased communications, with
atomic bombs and more advanced weapons, the possibility of a worldwide
tribulation now becomes much greater than ever before. It's obvious
that the next war will be the most destructive in the history of
mankind, and probably will cause, in its first few days, more damage
than all the wars in history. Besides atomic weapons, there are various
bacteriological weapons for spreading plagues among people, poisonous
gases and all kinds of fantastic things which in an all out war could
come into play.
Also, the fact that all the peoples of the world are
bound up more with each other means that when some great catastrophe
comes to one country—a depression, or something of the sort—then all
the rest of the world will be affected. This we already saw in the
1930s when there was a Great Depression in America and it spread to the
rest of Europe. In the future it's obvious that something much worse
can occur. If one country begins to starve, or if the crops fail one
year in Canada, Australia, America and Russia—all those four great
countries which supply what—just imagine how the whole world is going
to suffer.
12. A WARNING TO THOSE ATTRACTED TO
GLOOM AND DOOM
All these signs of the times are very negative. They
are signs that they world is collapsing, that the end of the world is
at hand and that the Antichrist is about to come. It's very easy to
look at all these negative signs of the times and get into such a mood
that we look only for negative things. In fact, one can develop a whole
personality—a negative kind of personality—based on this. Whenever some
new news item comes in, one says, "Aha, yes of course, that's the way
it is, and it's going to get worse." The next one comes in and one
says, "Yes, yes, it's obvious that's what's going to happen, and now
it's going to be worse than that." Everything one looks at is seen
merely as a negative fulfillment of the horrible times.
It's true that we have to be aware of these things
and not be unduly optimistic about contemporary events, because the
news in our times is seldom good. At the same time, however, we have to
keep in mind the whole purpose of our watching the signs of the times.
We watch the signs of the times not just so we can see about when
Antichrist is going to come. That's rather a secondary thing. We watch
the signs of the times so we can know when Christ is going to come.
That is a very fundamental thing we have to keep in mind so we do not
get overwhelmed by gloom, depression, or stay to ourselves, storing up
food for the great calamity. That's not a very wise thing. We have to
be, rather, all the more Christian, that is, thinking about other
people, trying to help others. If we ourselves are cold and gloomy and
pessimistic, we are participating in this coldness which is a sign of
the end. We have to ourselves be warm and helping each other out.
That's the sign of Christianity.
If you look at history (in fact, this is another
good reason for reading Church history), you see that throughout the
whole history of mankind, throughout the Old Testament, the New
Testament and all the Christian kingdoms afterwards—and if you look at
the pagan world, the same story—there's a continual time of sufferings.
Where Christians are involved there are trials and persecutions, and
through all of these Christians have attained the kingdom of heaven.
Therefore, when the time of the persecutions come,
we are supposed to rejoice. There was a good little incident related in
Fr. Dimitry Dudko's little newspaper. A woman in Russia was put in a
psychiatric clinic for making the sign of the Cross in the wrong place
or for wearing a cross, or something like that. Fr. Dimitry and his
spiritual children traveled to Moscow, went to the clinic, made an
appointment and talked to the doctor, and they finally persuaded him
that she shouldn't be there. Fr. Dimitry says, "They're actually afraid
of us, because when you press them about it, they say they haven't
really got any law by which they can keep her there." So finally they
agreed to let her go, after she had been there for a week. When she was
there they gave her various drugs and "inoculations," trying to break
her down and get rid of her religion. When she came out she was a
little shaken up. She sat down on a bench someplace outside the clinic
and began to talk. "You know," she said, "when I was there and they
were treating me so awful, I felt calm because I felt there was Someone
there protecting me; but as soon as I got out here, all of a sudden I'm
afraid. Now I'm all upset and scared that they are going to come after
me again, that the secret police are looking right around the corner."
It's obvious why this is so. When you're in conditions of persecution,
Christ is with you because you're suffering for Him. And when you're
outside, then there's the uncertainty of whether you might not get back
into that condition. You begin to go back to your own human
understanding. When you're there you have nothing else to rely on, so
you have to have Christ. If you haven't got Christ, you have nothing.
When you're outside, you begin to calculate and to trust yourself, and
then you lose Christ.
[1] A talk given at St. Herman's Women's' conference in Redding,
California, in the summer of 1980. This talk, which has never before
appeared in print, was transcribed from the tape archives of the St.
Herman Brotherhood. Fr. Seraphim gave another talk on the same subject
in May of 1981, at the University of California, Santa Cruz. That talk,
entitled "Signs of the Coming of the End of the World," is available on
cassette tape.
[2] Fr. Seraphim gave this talk before the publication of his
translation of Archbishop Averky's Commentary on the Apocalypse, first
in The Orthodox Word, and later as a separate book.
[3] Since Fr. Seraphim's repose, Orthodox commentaries on the
Scriptures by St. Cyril of Alexandria and St. Theophylact the Bulgarian
have been published.
[4] In addition to translating the whole of Archbishop Averky's
Commentary on the Apocalypse, Fr. Seraphim translated some portions of
his Commentary on the Gospels and epistles.
[5] Later canonized by the Church in Russia.
[6] St. Ignatius' book On the Prayer of Jesus is also in
English. Since Fr. Seraphim's repose, his Brotherhood has published
three books by St. Theophan in English: The Spiritual Life, The Path to
Salvation, and Kindling the Divine Spark.
[7] Eusebius lived in the 4th century.
[8] Cf. Mark 10:30.
[9] The movie The Last Temptation of Christ, which came out
several years after Fr. Seraphim's repose, is more blasphemous than
even these examples.
Reprinted from The Orthodox Word
Vol. 34, Nos. 3 4 (200 201) May August, 1998