Foreword
Come from the country, from a very small town in North Essex, I have been asked why I am where I am today: a mitred archpriest of the Russian Church and rector of one of the largest Orthodox churches in England, which is in my native city. I have been persecuted and slandered by cruel and evil men for telling the truth, and sent by Divine Providence to the Moldovan part of the most hospitable and friendly Romanian Church, whose Moldovan Archbishop is the kindest bishop I have ever met. As one of our many Russian parishioners, who has known me for over sixteen years wrote to me just now: ‘You have gone from thorns to the stars’. However, the answer to the question why I am here is in four revelations that came to me long ago.
Revelation One: Childhood
In childhood I was influenced of course by my parents, my two elder brothers, grandparents, relatives, friends, schoolteachers and fellow pupils. The third child of a third child father and a third child mother, a great many of my relatives were Victorians from the century before last. From them and from all the local people, especially from the older ones, I obtained a keen historical sense. In childhood three people influenced me especially, an aunt and two elderly people, who were unofficially called saints by others. Although they were all Christians, they would not have called themselves Protestants or Catholics. They had been illuminated from on high. There were five other local people who influenced me in particular in early childhood, who were officially called saints by others. These were: Sts Albright (794), Cedd (664), Osyth (c. 700), Edmund (869) and Audrey (679), who had all lived in England’s golden age of holiness, within 250 years of one another.
I asked myself why there had not been any saints in England for nearly a millennium? Why had the Holy Spirit, whose fruit is the saints, dried up? What had gone wrong in the history of England? Why did the Establishment version of English history begin with the catastrophic defeat of England by Papally-blessed Norman Viking thugs in 1066, when I knew about King Alfred the Great, who loved other peoples and had converted the English Vikings to Christ nearly 200 years before? Why did the Norman-founded Establishment insist on calling the English ‘Anglo-Saxons’, when they never called themselves that? Why did the English write afterwards that the Norman massacres were so terrible that it seemed as though ‘Christ and His saints slept’? And how was Old England overlaid and concealed by a disreputable Britain and then British Empire? Here were questions to which I sought to find answers in many places and from many people.
Revelation Two: The Wars
Born in the middle of the last century, I grew up with my grandfather, who told me about his First European War in Baghdad, Jerusalem and Thessaloniki. And I grew up with my father, who told me stories of his Second European War in Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Italy, Austria and elsewhere. Snatched from a quiet and peaceful country home for military service and sent abroad, he saw what the British Empire actually was. He had had no idea what it was and had only been told something about a civilising mission. Instead, he found in Egypt, Sierra Leone and South Africa a thieving, corrupt and racist crime regime, which exploited the native peoples. Yes, the British drank tea from China in ‘china’ cups, but it had been paid for with African slaves and Indian opium and millions of lives had ruthlessly been destroyed. That was the Empire. My father also explained to me that the then British Prime Ministers are only puppets of the Zionist Empire – as they still are, all come from the same factory.
Revelations Three and Four: Christ and Russia
At the end of childhood, when I was twelve years old, I received a double revelation, when I saw my future. This came to me when I saw a film which opened with a scene of spiritual immediacy. This was a scene with a Russian priest conducting a funeral. After this, I simultaneously read the Gospels and began to teach myself Russian. All had become clear to me, except for the details.
Afterword
Aged twelve, I knew God’s will for me, my destiny, though I did not know when and how, who and what. The rest has only been putting two and two together. Fundamentally, nothing has changed. Today I am still waiting for the Russian Church to find its freedom. It has wonderful saints and martyrs, but its pastors have been suppressed by politicians and I am unlikely to see it free in my lifetime. 300 years have passed, but it is still subject to the rule of Caesar, to Imperialists, to Soviets, to the CIA, to the evil anti-missionary careerists, and to all the rest who oppose Christ. The greatest saint and missionary of the Russian emigration, St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, was essentially martyred by the ecclesiastical politicians of the USA.
Those who would like to know more can obtain the book Paradise Just Beyond: Fragments of an Autobiography, 1956-2026, 168 pages, A5, spiral-bound. This will be available in August from frandrew_anglorus@yahoo.co.uk for £5 or $10 from overseas, payable by Paypal.