Category Archives: The Ukraine

On the Non-Inevitability of Modernism

Once upon a time the pseudo-science of Marxism used to proclaim that its claims, like death and taxes, were inevitable. In a similar way the supporters of the theory of evolution used to proclaim that it too was the only ‘truth’ that counted, until real scientists pointed out that it was only a theory among many. Similarly, the EU used to proclaim that its aim of a United States of Europe was also inevitable, ‘like a man riding a bicycle you have to carry on towards it, otherwise you will fall off’. Actually if you are cycling (especially towards a cliff edge), you can easily stop without falling off and turn back, which is exactly what the pragmatists of Brexit have done. Modernists also use the same pseudo-scientific argument of inevitability to justify themselves. In a post-modernist world, their argument is particularly absurd and old-fashioned.

Thus, forty years ago I remember a priest of a modernist Western diocese of the old Patriarchate of Moscow (who later defrocked himself, ran away from his wife and then committed suicide) using exactly the same argument. ‘The Catholics had Vatican II, and we will follow them. It is inevitable. We will get rid of the iconostasis, have women around the altar table, have deaconesses, do away with clerical clothing and be modern like the Protestants and then the Catholics. It is just that we Orthodox are behind the others’. I have been reminded of his words recently, as a member of the Paris Archdiocese has said that since one of their priests in Belgium already accepts homosexual ‘marriage’ and that a priest under Constantinople in Finland actually does such ‘weddings’, ‘the rest of the Church will follow’. Inevitability? As in Crete?

A member of the Constantinople Archdiocese in North America has also recently questioned why New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo was recently given the ‘Patriarch Athenagoras Human Rights Award’. After all, Cuomo is well known for his outspoken advocate of the pro-death (erroneously called pro-choice) movement. On 17 July 2014, Governor Cuomo referred to the defenders of the pre-born child as: “these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life … they have no place in the state of New York.” It seems a strange criticism when two years ago Vice-President Biden, who so lavishly praises the present Patriarch of Constantinople and has also tried hard to further the Church schism in the Ukraine and is another politician who is openly supportive of abortion, also received the same dubious masonic award.

To some it seems that an Orthodox Church accepting everything that liberal Protestantism and liberal Catholicism accept, including homosexual clergy, teenage girls ‘dancing’ around the altar and guitar ‘masses’, is inevitable. After all, they say, ‘we are all subject to the same sociological processes’. Such people, inherently secularist and faithless, have no understanding that this is a typically Catholic/Protestant/Secularist/Western attitude. The Church is precisely the only organism (not organization) that is not subject to ‘sociological processes’ (four Local Churches resisted Crete), but to the processes of the grace of God, processes of the Holy Spirit. If the apostles and martyrs had been subject to ‘sociological processes’, they would have censed the demons (‘gods’) as they were asked to. Instead, they refused – and became saints, the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

The point is that none of the incredible secularization undergone by Protestantism and Catholicism in the last fifty years (or in the previous centuries either) is inevitable. However, this is true only as long as long as we have the Holy Spirit and not empty-hearted rationalism, that is the ‘fleshly wisdom’ of the spirit of the world – and we know who the prince of the world is. As the apostate scholastic Abelard wrote 900 years ago in the Prologue to his work ‘Sic et Non’: ‘The Fathers had the Holy Spirit, but we do not’. For the interest of the apostate descendants of Abelard, the word ‘Fathers’ means ‘the (Orthodox) Church’, in other words: ‘The (Orthodox) Church has the Holy Spirit, but the others do not’. There is nothing inevitable about modernism, just as there is nothing inevitable about any other form of apostasy.

What Will Replace the EU?

When Guy Verhofstadt, a former Prime Minister of Belgium who now heads the alliance of ‘Liberals and Democrats for Europe’ in the EU Parliament, described British political figures leaving the EU ‘as rats leaving a sinking ship’, he revealed what he really thought. Like other EU bureaucrats, he knows that time is up, that the EU is indeed a sinking ship. Its disappearance into the dustbin of history is not a question of if, but only of when. The post-War invention of the EU (though not at that time under that name) was clearly only a temporary accommodation provoked by the USA. It is amazing that it has gone on for so long, especially after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and then of the Soviet Union exactly 25 years ago, the existence of which, like that of NATO, was the EU’s only raison d’etre.

The deception perpetrated on the British people in 1972 by the then Prime Minister Edward Heath (then awarded a £40,000 yacht for his treason and now being investigated for pedophilia) in submitting the United Kingdom to the alien authority of the Treaty of Rome could not stand. Let us remind ourselves that it was another Belgian politician, Paul Henri Spaak, who had been entrusted with drawing up proposals for a European Common Market. Spaak was a revolutionary who had held talks with Trotsky. His right-hand man in the project was one Baron Robert Rothschild (not to be confused with the New York banker of the same name). In 1954 Rothschild had been appointed Spaak’s chef de cabinet at the Belgian foreign ministry and for two years worked with Spaak on the Treaty of Rome.

Not only did Spaak and Rothschild draft the Treaty, they also had the opportunity of deciding where it would be signed. They chose the main first-floor room of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the southern peak of the Capitoline Hill in Rome as their venue. They knew that the Palazzo had been built in the Middle Ages right on top of the Temple of Jupiter. The site had immense pagan, spiritual and political significance. Every year, the pagan Roman Senate used to hold their first meeting in the Temple. Jupiter was the protector, the ‘Conservator’ of Rome. Not only that, he was the Roman successor to the head of the Greek pantheon, Zeus, and if the altar to Zeus in Pergamos was said in the New Testament (Revelation 2, 13) to be ‘Satan’s Seat,’ this was Rome’s satanic equivalent.

However, although the teeming millions of Europeans (condemned by the judases as ‘populists’) will rejoice when the hated tyranny of the EU finally does disappear, this does not answer the question as to what will replace it. However, before such a question can be answered, another question must first be answered: What will replace the Soviet Union? After all, the EU only ever came into existence as a US-designed, anti-Soviet and anti-Russian bloc. Clearly, the present hotchpotch of unviable countries that replaced the Soviet Union is not going to last. They too, like the temporary Soviet Union, are only temporary. In order to find positive answers to both these questions, it seems to us that we must search in history before the First World War which ruined the Paris-Berlin-Saint Petersburg axis of unity.

It is clear that the countries included before 1917 within the Russian Empire form a territory that needs some sort of loose confederal unity and economic co-operation. Clearly, this does not mean the sort of centralized, tyrannical ideological unity of the Soviet Union, nor does it mean recreating the Russian Empire as such. There are already the beginnings of such a loose unity and such voluntary co-operation in the countries that form the Eurasian Economic Union. However, in 1914 in the western tip of the Eurasian Continent there were then empires and countries of Europe that were never part of the Russian Empire and have now mostly been absorbed into the failed European Union. Strangled by the political and monetary ideology of the EU, the peoples of these countries now look to freedom.

Surely they need look no further than the selfsame Eurasian Economic Union. Western Europe has in its pride and arrogance for a thousand years lived in self-chosen isolation from the wider Eurasian Continent. As it now faces collapse beneath the weight of its own spiritual and ideological bankruptcy, known as Secularism, and the self-inflicted invasion of Islamism, which will never recognize Christian values, it is now time for it to reintegrate the Eurasian Continent. This, vitally, contains the roots of its Christian Faith and thus its spiritual and so cultural identity. However, even more than this, Eurasia also contains its political and economic salvation. Eurasia, stretching to the Pacific, contains the mineral and energy resources which alone can save it from its dependency on the unstable and ever-warring Middle East.

The dream of many a European politician, not least of Charles de Gaulle, was a Eurasia from Lisbon to Vladivostok. This is now becoming possible. In the East, the bankrupt ideology of the German Jew Marx was abandoned 25 years ago. It is now for the West, the remaining countries of the EU, to give up its bankrupt ideology of Secularism. The time for isolation is over. It is now time to return to roots. The dream of a Eurasian Confederation of Free and Sovereign Nations, voluntarily working together, is possible. The alternative is what the EU has created in the Ukraine: a land of inherent corruption, inflation and self-inflicted civil war. The only question is whether the EU leaders will have the courage to repent before their folly reduces their countries also to the state of the Ukraine, creating a Europe-wide Ukraine.

Christian Civilization versus Western Civilization

In his monumental 7,000 pages of historical erudition entitled ‘A Study of History’, Arnold Toynbee, the famous British historian, made an attempt to categorize all the civilizations in the history of the world, both present and past, and followed their rise and fall. He deemed that only five Civilizations are alive today. These are: Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, (Orthodox) Christian and Western, with Western Civilization dominating them all. (Orthodox) Christian Civilization was at the time of his writing, more or less three generations ago, centred in Russia. However, it was in a dying and fragmentary state, since it had been divided and oppressed by imported and imposed Western ideologies such as Fascism (National Socialism), Capitalism and, above all in the centre itself, Communism (State Capitalism).

Today, Orthodox Christian, or simply Christian, Civilization is reviving, with the shackles of both Fascism and Communism long since thrown off. However, what exactly does this term of ‘Christian Civilization’ mean, what are the values of Christian Civilization, what are the differences between them and those of Western Civilization and why does the latter so utterly misunderstand them? It should be said that those who misunderstand them even include Anglican Protestants who, like Uniats, use a form of the Orthodox rite, but still assert that we mainstream Orthodox Christians are not even Christians! This misunderstanding clearly proves that we are not saved by an imitated rite, but by the Orthodox faith which should behind it, for that alone preserves the integrity of the rite, and that they do not share our faith.

This issue has once more come to the fore with last week’s appeal in The Financial Times to Russian oligarchs to overthrow the very popular government of President Putin. Here we see the essence of Western Civilization. It is not based on popular will (‘freedom and democracy’ are a principal Western myth, as we saw with the refusal of EU bureaucrats to allow European peoples to vote on leaving the EU), but on the power of the wealthy few (in Greek ‘oligarchs’). This can be clearly seen in the USA (ruled by a few shadowy billionaires from the military-industrial complex) and in Western Europe (ruled by a few unelected EU bureaucrats). In Western democracy the people are given a choice between two oligarchs or their puppets – and though this is called freedom, it is clearly not.

Clearly, it is the will of the Western elite, and among them are those who run The Financial Times, that (Orthodox) Christian Civilization must be destroyed (just as the Western world destroyed its own original (Orthodox) Christian Civilization during the second millennium of its history). The Western elite intends to do this by turning Christian Civilization into a series of dismembered vassal states or colonies, a process called Balkanization and which it practised in the 19th century. But this became crystal clear already long ago, in the destruction of New Rome by Western barbarians in 1204, in the plundering of the Teutonic Knights in Russia in the 13th century or in the alliance between Western nations and Islam and in the invasions of Western Civilization like those of Napoleon, the Anglo-French-Ottomans, Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler.

As a result of this destruction and dismemberment the natural resources of Christian Civilization can be taken over and ruthlessly exploited by the Western world, so that it can parasitically support itself, just as it does on the resources of the rest of the world. Here, essentially, we see that Western Civilization is a Civilization of Mammon, of materialism. No clearer example of this can be seen today than in the Ukraine, a part of Christian Civilization that the West is now trying to control and colonize. Having overthrown the government elected by a majority of its people, the West has now appointed a group of corrupt oligarchs, each with his own feudal fief, to rule it. These oligarchs, their funds controlled by Western and Israeli banks, are the spiritual descendants of warring princes and later corrupt boyars centuries ago.

In the 18th century these were succeeded by Westernized aristocrats who introduced serfdom, enslaving the people after the Western model. In the 19th century these aristocrats, just like the boyars who in the early 17th century had acted to please Polish invaders, tried to seize power under British and French influence in 1801 (the assassination of Tsar Paul I) and in 1825 under the Decembrists. When the aristocrats lost some of their power as serfdom was abolished by the Tsar-Liberator Alexander II in 1861, they became ever more aggressive and they revolted again, in 1905 and, in 1917, this time successfully. What is happening in the Ukraine today is simply a repeat of the old scenario of foreign meddlers operating through local traitors. Simply today the meddlers are not greedy Poles, British or French, but Americans.

So what is the sign of Christian Civilization (called ‘Byzantine’ or ‘Orthodox’ by Western historiographers)? It is simply in the implementation of the two Gospel Commandments given by the Saviour, to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves. These Commandments are quite alien to Western Civilization, for they mean that progress is defined not as technological, as materialist and consumerist, but as our repentance and spiritual transfiguration in preparation for the inevitable meeting with God at the Last Judgement. And the state of our progress can be seen in our non-exploitative and non-aggressive relations with others, for we do not invade other people’s countries or arrogantly instruct them on how to live, but cultivate good relations with them as good neighbours.

This does not mean that we are weak or that we do not resist evil, it means that we defend all those who are weaker. Christian Civilization exists not to exploit others, but to fight evil. The prime example of this today is the defence of Syria by the Russian Federation. This is Christian Civilization at work, unlike Western Civilization that meddles, invades, destroys and exploits, as in countless colonies in Latin America, Asia and Africa, or as today in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine, parading its troops, planes, drones and ships off the Russian coasts and along its borders, constantly sabre-rattling and supplying terrorists with training, arms and finance. Russians, however, send their ships through international waters, even though pestered by Western ships which try and impede their route.

The aim of Western Civilization is to strip the world’s natural resources until they are exhausted. This will inevitably lead to the end of the world, the apocalypse. This is done under the excuse of ‘freedom and democracy’ (freedom for the oligarchs to asset-strip and democracy to vote for one Western oligarch or another, but not to vote for an anti-oligarch). On the other hand, Christian Civilization appoints an Emperor (Monarch or Tsar) who is called on to carry out the will of God on earth, in consultation with the people over whom he reigns. This consultation is represented by the words Conciliarity and Catholicity, meaning that the Monarchy is a popular one, neither absolutist – which is the tyranny of a man-God – nor constitutionalist – which is the tyranny of the few behind a puppet monarchy.

Unlike Western Civilization, Christian Civilization is multinational, not nationalistic, chauvinistic and xenophobic. Such abuses do occur, but only in periods of decadence or in backward provincial areas outside the centre. Examples are in today’s schismatic Western Ukraine, Estonia, Montenegro, Macedonia and also in Greek nationalist Constantinople. In all these cases local nationalism rules in contradiction to Christianity. As a result of following the Gospel Commandments, and not the ideology of Western Civilization, Christian Civilization sees no difference between faith and life, for faith is not a mere abstract ideology to justify guilt, but shapes life in harmony with the Incarnation. The aim of such life, patterned by faith, is holiness, the kingdom of heaven on earth, for the spiritual is more important than the material.

Christian Civilization does not encourage individualism, for our common aim is salvation together, as a community. Our political life is determined by a people’s monarch who is called to be a representative of God on earth, defending the Church and our Christian values. It is clear also that the people belonging to such a Civilization show their patriotism for such a Civilization, which is heaven on earth and we defend it against the Western forerunners of Antichrist like the Teutonic Knights, Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler and those who today admire these tyrants as bearers of ‘Western Civilization’ and are intent on destroying our reviving Christian Civilization. We live in perilous times but, by the grace of God, we shall triumph because we are not afraid of you, however much you try to censor us and intimidate us.

From Charlemagne to Obama: The False Empire

The Frankish kinglet Karl the Tall (he measured 1 meter 90), better known in English under his French name Charlemagne, was crowned ‘Holy Roman Emperor’ by Pope Leo III in Rome in the year 800. This was absurd. He was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an emperor, but a semi-literate barbarian, iconoclast and filioquist heretic who had rejected the Seventh Universal Council of the Church in 787. The real Roman Christian Emperors and Empresses, the heirs of the first Christian Emperor, St Constantine the Great, reigned in New Rome, a city deliberately founded by St Constantine away from pagan old Rome, the city of Christian martyrdom, on the very edge of Europe and Asia. The symbol of this Christian world unity was and is the double-headed eagle, combining and balancing both east and west, so avoiding being one-sided and provincial.

The ‘empire’ of Charlemagne, essentially western Germany, France and northern Italy, occupied about 5% of Europe. However, it was to become the basis for a series of nationalistic, pseudo-Christian, revolutionary empires, with Hildebrand, Frederick Barbarossa, the self-crowned ‘Emperor’ Napoleon and Hitler, who both invaded Russia with multinational, ‘globalist’ armies, with the EU and with today’s Obama. All these neo-pagan tyrants have over the last twelve centuries tried to destroy the real Christian Empire, that was founded in New Rome (later called Constantinople) and then, when this had been sacked by barbaric Roman Catholics and finished off by Islamists, was transferred to the New Rome in Moscow. All these tyrants are forerunners of Antichrist, who have inherited and continued the false empire and still proclaim it to be the true Empire of Christ.

Thus, in 1941 the Austrian tyrant Hitler invaded Russia, calling his campaign ‘Operation Barbarossa’ and one of his sadistic SS divisions was called ‘Charlemagne’, whom he celebrated. Thus, under Chancellor Adenauer (1876-1967), Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne called the US-instigated Cold War and its threat of nuclear holocaust ‘the realization of Charlemagne’s ideas’ and every year since 1950 the EU and its predecessors have awarded a ‘Charlemagne prize’ for implementing the tyranny of the US-run Fourth Reich. Little wonder that the Russian poet Tyutchev (1803-1873) wrote long ago that: ‘In Europe there have long been only two real forces – Revolution and Russia…As a result of the struggle that has arisen between them, the greatest of struggles, has depended for many centuries the whole political and religious future of mankind’.

Today the usurpers of the one-sided, westwards-looking, false Empire are still at work in their self-justifying Revolution, emptying the Middle East of worshippers of Christ in conjunction with their Islamist allies and pushing the borders of the heresies and nationalism of Europe ever more eastwards infecting the Balkans and the Ukraine. When will the West stop claiming to be superior to the rest of the world? Only when the West has forgotten the founding myth of the semi-literate barbarian Karl the Tall, renounced his iconoclasm and filioque heresy and at last accepted the Seventh Universal Council of the Church. Only when it accepts the real Christian Emperor, the heir of the first and last Christian Emperors it so despises, thus renouncing the myth of the superiority of ‘the West’, accepting its rightful place as a subject of the real Christian Empire.

The Meaning of our Life is to Postpone the Coming of Antichrist

The last two weeks have brought a series of very important pieces of news.

Firstly, there has been the failed Crete meeting. Far from being a ‘Pan-Orthodox Council’, let alone the ‘Eighth Oecumenical Council’, it turned into disagreements about a series of narrow ‘Zizioulasisms’, philosophical modernisms approved by the US State Department that runs the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Many of the most respected bishops present in Crete, let alone those representing the other 80% of the Orthodox world and not present, refused to sign the documents proposed. This meeting, so secretive that most media were excluded from it, has no authority or acceptance anywhere in the monasteries and parishes in the real Orthodox world. The mismanaged forum, fortunately largely unreported by the mass media, turned it into little more than a damp squib. It does, however, mean that the Church has resisted the secularization that the powerbrokers of this world wanted to impose on Her, as they had imposed on the Vatican. She will not merge with the world in order to welcome the coming Antichrist.

Secondly, there has been the Brexit vote, the people’s bid for freedom from the dying European Superstate and the corrupt Unionist British Establishment which was so enthusiastic about the EU that it had imposed it on the people. And this was in spite of, or perhaps because of, the manipulation of the assassination that preceded the referendum. Some believe that other countries and institutions, even religious ones, may also wish to escape the straitjacket of the EU. Amid all the new opportunities this opens up there has, however, also been much insecurity and even panic and chaos. Freedom comes at a price. The whole UK political Establishment, as usual totally out of touch with the people it was supposed to represent, not least the Labour Party infiltrated and stuffed with careerist Blairite MPs, is being transformed with the resignations and eliminations of several well-known politicians. Brexit, so much resisted by the bullying of Obama and Merkel, has delayed the move towards One World Government by Antichrist.

Thirdly, there has been the long-delayed publication of the Chilcot report which makes clear that the whole of the British Establishment was guilty of the war crimes in invading and occupying Iraq. Its arrogance and hubris have been revealed for the whole world to see. This opens up UK responsibilities for other recent disastrous massacres and chaotic injustices in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Ukraine and the Yemen. In the Ukraine British Army equipment is now being used by the Kiev puppet regime in its massacres of the population in Eastern Ukraine. Moreover, the UK Establishment is actively participating in the meeting in Warsaw of the US-led and financed NATO. Russians nervously fear a NATO invasion, as German and other tanks once more mass on the borders of Russia, just as they did 75 years ago. If such a threat did take place, which does seem highly unlikely, it would be one step nearer the One World Government that the neocons in Washington have so ardently been working for ever since they came to power under Clinton in the 1990s.

Two steps forward, one step back? Perhaps. Perhaps there will be a real Orthodox Council that will reject the compromises of Crete. But perhaps not. Perhaps the elite will not allow the UK to leave the EU and the electorate will be browbeaten, bribed and blackmailed into voting again and again until it gets the ‘right’ result. But perhaps the Unionist EU – and the Unionist UK – will collapse and relatively soon. And perhaps then England, freed from the Norman yoke after 950 years, will take its rightful place as an equal among the nations. Perhaps the old Norman-British habit of arrogantly invading, enslaving and exploiting other countries of the world, not least England itself, because it is ‘in the national interest’, that is, in the interest of the elite, will forever pass into the dustbin of history. Perhaps NATO will collapse as the antiquated Cold War structure it is. Perhaps the Christian Emperor will be restored in Russia. But perhaps NATO will invade Russia. There is no point in predicting. We do not know what will happen. What we do know is that if we wish to influence the future, the only thing we can do is to pray – for the meaning of our life is to postpone the coming of Antichrist.

Stories of the great miracles narrated by the rector of St. Elijah’s Church in Chernobyl, Archpriest Nikolay Yakushin

(Received from the Ukraine)

A chapter from the book “Teraturgima, or Miracles of the New Century”

The first great omen of the Chernobyl disaster, which shook the entire planet in 1986, was revealed at a time of the rapid development of nuclear energy, long before the explosion of the 4th reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Witnesses recall it happened exactly ten years before the accident, on April 26, 1976. It is interpreted as a sign sent by the Lord and Our Lady 40 years ago. A local newspaper “Prapor Peremohy” (“The Banner of Victory) published an article at the time, titled “Fairytales of Clergymen.” An author referred to a cloud of an unusual shape appearing in the sky that day, which the clergymen interpreted as an apparition of the Virgin Mary. However, it was not merely an atmospheric oddity.

That evening many locals witnessed an unusually shaped cloud floating above the ground. The figure of the Virgin Mary could be discerned in it, with her face and brightly coloured raiment clearly visible. She was holding a tuft of dried wormwood, which the locals also call “chernobylnik.” Holy Mary dropped the wormwood over the town. Then the bright radiant cloud moved towards the forest and stopped over the church of the Holy Prophet Elijah. Blessed Virgin Mary faced the church and blessed it twice with both hands. As she appeared in the sky, it stopped raining and the weather became warm and mild. This phenomenon was interpreted by the local priest, Father Alexander Prokopenko. He explained that only Mother of God may give her blessing with two hands. Bishops also have the privilege of blessing with two hands; however the vision in the sky was not that of a male.

The locals interpreted this phenomenon as a forecast of a dry summer and a poor harvest. Some people have found and picked up pieces of wormwood that fell from the sky. Many years later it became clear that this was a prediction: exactly ten years later the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded. But when the disaster struck, nobody made a connection between the events ten years apart. People recalled the story much later and came to recognize it as a sign from God.

In 2002 His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and All Ukraine blessed the creation of an icon which captured the apparition of Blessed Virgin Mary over Chernobyl. It was painted by a servant of God, an artist from Kiev named Ioan, who also created the rest of the artwork in our church. Ioan, who is an orphan, is very religious, pious and earnest. He had been fasting and took communion before starting the work. The icon portrays the church of St. Elijah with the Queen of Heaven and Archangels Michael and Gabriel on both sides, rising in the sky above it. She holds chernobylnik (wormwood) in her hands. Two capsules with wormwood picked in the Chernobyl area are affixed on both sides of the icon. His Beatitude Vladimir blessed the image as one of Chernobyl’s locally revered icons.

A vision of the Chernobyl Saviour icon is revealed to the leader of the Chernobyl Power Plant Communist party section on his deathbed

Another famous icon of St. Elijah’s church is the Chernobyl Saviour, which has a special history. This icon is said to have originated directly from the local people. They have survived one of the greatest tragedies of modern history. After the initial panic subsided, people were looking for support and sympathy. Many of them became very ill.

Yuri Andreev, who is now deceased, was the leader of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Communist party section at the time. A Communist with a strong attachment to his party’s ideas, he became very ill after receiving huge doses of radiation. He was suffering greatly; the doctors did not expect him to live much longer. Yuri kept seeing a recurring dream: an image of an icon. He described it to the artist and gave instructions on how it had to be painted. He also told of his dream to me, and I passed his message to His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr. Being seriously ill, the Communist leader kept asking for the icon to be painted. He saw the image with his inner spiritual vision and felt a strong need for it to be created. His Beatitude gave his blessing.

The icon was painted at the Trinity-Sergiev Lavra in 2003 and sanctified at Kiev-Pechersk Lavra on the feast day of the Dormition of the Mother of God. When His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir blessed the image of the Chernobyl Saviour, three signs appeared in the sky. A dove flew above the icon before hundreds of witnesses, then a rainbow appeared in the sky, and finally the sign of the cross became visible, with the sun shining at its centre. Curiously, Yuri Andreev, the terminally ill leader of the Communist party section of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, greatly recovered after this event. The Lord healed him. It is surprising that a staunch Communist, later the president of the “Chernobyl – Ukraine” Union, was chosen for this mission. Thanks to him the icon of the Chernobyl Saviour came into the world, and the Lord has continued to heal the sick and afflicted people who come to venerate this image.

Vladislav Goretsky, a well-known iconographer, was chosen to create this icon. The image is truly sublime, expressive and spiritual. It is also exceptional in that it depicts ordinary people alongside the image of God for the first time in the history of iconography. The souls of the survivors of the Chernobyl tragedy are portrayed on the right, while the souls of the deceased victims are on the left. His Beatitude Vladimir requested the permission of Patriarch Alexiy II to paint the images of the people in the icon. Permission was granted.

The subject of the icon is deeply symbolic. It is a visual rendition of a theme from the Book of Revelation. At the centre of the image is a “star of wormwood” falling from the sky against the backdrop of the ominous glow of the explosion. Another focal point is a crucifix-shaped pine tree. This extraordinary sign of the upcoming tragedy grew on Polissya’s land decades before the accident. This large, old tree was fully grown before the Second World War. Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant was built just two kilometres away from this huge living cross, growing at the forest edge.

After the tragedy, when the so-called “red forest” poisoned by radiation was cut down, an opening revealed a stunning spiritual vision: two symbols of the universal disaster – the exploded fourth nuclear reactor and the giant tree-cross – became connected in one.

This vision is reminiscent of the Old Testament cruciform tree watered by Lot, which was to become Christ’s cross two thousand years later. The tree is believed to have grown from the three staffs given to Abraham by the Holy Trinity, Who was revealed to the forefather in the form of three angels. Four thousand years later the Chernobyl Cross arose as a symbol of the nuclear crucifixion that would come in 1986. To the left and right of the cross are the living and the deceased liquidators of the nuclear catastrophe. Above them is the Lord Jesus Christ with a scroll of the Apocalypse, open on the page that holds the prophecy, as well as the Holy Virgin and the Archangel Michael. This is the exact vision that came in a dream to the Communist leader of the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

The Chernobyl Saviour icon mystically communicates that the One holding the scroll holds the keys to the grand design and to every detail in the lives of those born into the world, as well as the events and defining moments of history, including the tragedy of Chernobyl.

The Saviour looked at the priest every night, leading him to where His image was hidden

There is another extraordinary icon, which I have never mentioned before. It is the image of the Saviour from St Michael the Archangel’s church in the village of Krasno, located in the exclusion zone.

This wonderful icon has an unusual history. After the accident all the villagers from Krasno were evacuated due to very high levels of radiation brought on by the radioactive cloud moving towards Belarus. One of Krasno’s inhabitants ended up in St. Petersburg, where he became a priest at one of the local churches.

Eleven years ago he found my phone number and called. “Father Nikolay, I’d like to ask you for a favour,” he told me. “I have a recurring dream, in which I see the eyes of the Saviour from an icon left in the exclusion zone in Krasno. I would like you to find it – it is a large icon of Christ painted on wooden board.” “How will I find it?” I asked. “I’ll tell you where to go,” he responded.

He described the location with great precision. He named the house and the place in the house where the icon was hidden. One had to be a local to give such exact instructions for navigating the village that by now had become contaminated and abandoned.

The priest’s grandfather used to serve in St Michael the Archangel’s church for many years. The extraordinary old icon of the Saviour had been stolen from the church once, but was later miraculously restored by the Lord. The remarkable wooden church itself, built in 1800, was plundered after the Chernobyl disaster. But the grandfather, now deceased, had an opportunity to hide the antique icon, although the location remained unknown. The Lord Himself gave a sign and taught how to find the sacred icon that was dear to Him.

Thousands of kilometres away, in St. Petersburg, a priest and a native of the Chernobyl zone began to dream of this icon, the Saviour looking at him every night. I drove to the village and found the abandoned house as it had been described over the phone. Everything turned out to be true. I pulled the icon from the attic and brought it to our local church. When the icon was restored, the priest from St. Petersburg came to our church to worship and to witness his dream, which became reality.

The image of Jesus Christ in this icon is truly alive and unforgettable, his gaze forever vivid in your memory.

Angels lead a church service in the exclusion zone

The old church in the village of Krasno has long been abandoned. However, we have had multiple witness accounts of church services being held there by the angels and the heavenly host. Staff members of the Chernobyl police force have come to me on multiple occasions between 2005 and 2009, asking to explain the meaning of what they had witnessed.

Police officers have recounted the following events. On one occasion a police unit that patrols the exclusion zone approached the village church and heard voices. They thought it was an illusion, since settlers had long left the village. There is also an abandoned checkpoint at the entrance to the village. The surrounding forest has grown thick and dangerous, making it impossible to get into the village by any other route.

The patrol vehicle moved forward towards the church. Officers could hear beautiful singing coming from the church and saw a mild glow of the lights inside the building. The men came out of the car and froze, overcome with religious fear. The Chernobyl police unit is a well-trained professional force, prepared to respond to a variety of emergency situations. Yet, these hardened men felt so overwhelmed with fear that they left the scene immediately. They went back to the same location again, but this time the church looked quiet. They did not dare enter the church and sent a report to their chief.

The police officers later came to my church and asked me to explain the nature of the event they had witnessed. I told them that the history of the church has multiple accounts of such events. Angels do not leave the holy altar until the end of time. When people have to abandon a church for any reason, angels come to worship there instead. The church in Krasno has special significance to them, since it is dedicated to the Archangel Michael, the head of the heavenly host. The place, although burned by lethal doses of radiation, still remains a sacred site, where God’s grace abides. The Lord’s will was to bring responsible witnesses to recount this miracle to the wider world. All subsequent witness accounts of the liturgy in the empty church were identical to the first description.

I have been going to the church in Krasno to lead services on feast days ever since. During one of my visits I found an icon of the Archangel Michael. I went into the loft between the church’s cupolas. It is a difficult spot to reach and quite dangerous to walk through, because of the rotting old floor boards. I prayed and walked as far as I could go, when I suddenly felt as though someone was looking at me closely. I raised my head and saw the icon of the Archangel Michael with a fiery sword in his hand, placed on a decrepit old shelf. The church had been previously plundered by looters, but this icon had remained mysteriously concealed from their sight. The icon was placed there to protect the church. It is unknown who hid the image; perhaps, the angels themselves.

The Apparition of St Seraphim of Sarov and the blessing of the annual liturgy in Chernobyl on April 26th

This event happened in 2001 and shook me deeply. I have seen many things in my lifetime; however, this story was important unlike anything else. It helped me understand the place of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the history of the Church and the life of the universe as a whole. There is a deep spiritual interconnectedness between this explosion, the history of the Church and the history of the world at large.

The fishermen who were in their boats on the Pripyat River at night on April 26th saw a bright explosion of light above the church of St. Elijah the Prophet, followed by another explosion above the nuclear power plant. This was a sign described in the book of Revelation as “a great star, blazing like a torch” (Rev. 8:10-11).

When I came to serve in this church after the tragedy, the building and grounds required a lot of restoration. We worked hard to rebuild the church, and I conducted regular liturgies, even though there were very few parishioners. On April 26th, my first anniversary of the tragedy at this church, I prayed and went to bed. There were people keeping vigil in town and remembering the victims through secular rituals, concerts and feasts. I fell asleep.

My window overlooks a cliff above the Pripyat River. I remember suddenly waking up at night and looking out of the window. I saw an old man in white robes with a white beard and a staff walking towards my house. I recognized St Seraphim of Sarov, his face, gait and bearing looking exactly as depicted in the icons. St Seraphim approached my house, stopped in front of my window and looked at me closely. He hit the ground three times with his staff, then turned towards the river and walked off through the church gates towards the power plant. Then I remember finding myself in bed again. I turned on the lights and saw it was 1.30 a.m. – the precise time the nuclear disaster struck. The Lord has sent St. Seraphim to wake me up and call me to prayer and vigil that night.

I immediately had an insight: the nuclear catastrophe was one of the watershed events in human history, described in the Book of Revelation: “The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water – the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter” (Rev. 8:10-11). Wormwood is a wide-spread plant in this area, also known as “chernobylnik,” hence the name of the town.

There is also a direct link between the apparition of the Holy Virgin above Chernobyl ten years before the tragedy. This land was meant to be a place where the Holy Scriptures culminated, and the Lord’s word split human history into “before” and “after” the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. I kept trying to understand why the Lord has chosen St Seraphim to reveal the spiritual meaning of the tragedy and wrote a letter to Patriarch Alexiy II. We corresponded for two years. As a result, our church officially received part of St. Seraphim’s holy relics, which I personally brought from Diveyevo. St Seraphim was a devout monk, but also an active participant in all the important events of his time. He began his spiritual journey in Kiev, where he worshipped at the holy places and the saints of the Kiev Caves monastery. He wanted to join the brothers at the monastery and received a blessing to go to Sarov. He always remained involved in the affairs of his homeland.

Ever since St Serpahim’s apparition on the anniversary of the tragedy we have conducted all-night vigils and the Holy Liturgy on the night of April 26th in Chernobyl. Numerous archbishops, bishops and members of the clergy have joined us over the years to remember the victims. Among them is Pavel, the Metropolitan of Chernobyl and the bishop of the Kiev Caves Lavra, who ordained me to the priesthood. I believe the Lord has purposefully made him the first church leader in Chernobyl.

Numerous pilgrims are also drawn to Chernobyl on this day. We usually go to the cemetery to have a funeral service for the firefighters who were the first to face the blazing nuclear reactor. Thus, through St Seraphim, the Lord has blessed us to stay awake and pray during the hour our planet suffered a nuclear explosion. In 2016 this tradition will be 30 years old.

It is unlikely we will ever be able to grasp the fullness and the importance of signs and events surrounding the history of the nuclear tragedy in Chernobyl. Yet, there is clearly a direct spiritual link between all of them. The Lord reveals all that is necessary in His own time. We must remain patient and steadfast in our prayer, as we wait to receive His knowledge.

Comments from a Correspondent in Wales

‘And the Ukraine, then and now? Who will answer for the murders of laypeople and priests? Who set up the violent demonstrations on Maidan Square in Kiev? Was it not the Uniat clergy? And the Pope? Of course, he is completely innocent. He only cares about Christians in the Middle East, but he could not care a less about the Orthodox Slavs, he has more important things to do like not upsetting the gays and flattering the Jews, ‘his elder brothers in the faith’. Even infants know that all the recent popes have been puppets of those who hold global power behind the scenes. Their task is to level Orthodoxy down because it is the only power in the world that can stop Antichrist’.

Priest Savva Mikhalevich

http://ruskline.ru/special_opinion/2016/fevral/katolicheskaya_cerkov_i_genocid_serbov_vo_vtoroj_mirovoj_vojne_i_posle/

Below we quote comments from a letter from a correspondent in Wales. We quote from it because it raises some very relevant questions, to which we give answers, which may be of interest to all our readers.

Comment: First, on occasions you have written apologies/explanations of your positions which, whilst providing new looks at the development of these thoughts/positions, are not really required: it is clear to any neutral or good-willed reader that you are a Truth seeker and that you are a servant of the Church. Those readers that don’t belong to these groups – we can only pray for.

Answer: You would be surprised how many people there are who are neither neutral, nor of good will, but, very sadly, are full of fantasy and spite.

Comment: On the ‘historical’ meeting of Patriarch Kyrill and Pope Francisco: I think I can see where your position comes from….There are two ways of looking at it, a diplomatic-humanitarian way and an Orthodox way.

Answer: That is why, as I said, a diplomatic or political agreement is binding only on the signatory and no-one else. It is a personal opinion and no more. What you call a diplomatic-humanitarian way’ says ‘we love the sinner’, but there is also a need for what you call ‘an Orthodox way’, that is, a dogmatic statement, which says ‘we hate the sin’.

This situation reminds me of the publication of the heretical ‘Thyateira Confession’ forty years ago by Archbishop Athenagoras of Thyateira. I remember a young convert at the time who told a pious Greek granny that her Archbishop had said that all religions were the same and therefore he was a heretic. She simply replied: ‘If that is so, I will go to church and light a candle for him’. The convert, who came from a Protestant background, was not satisfied. Why? Because those of a Protestant and literalist background do not have the concept of hierarchy, of the episcopate. When they disagree with their ‘church’, they simply go off and start a new ‘church’.

This is why old calendarist sects have not had much ‘luck’ in developing in Orthodox countries, but much more in Protestant countries or in ex-Protestant Africa. This Protestant mentality is alien to the Church. Just because we disagree, we do not leave the Church. Did St Gregory of Nyssa leave the Church? Did St Maximus the Confessor leave the Church? Did St Mark of Ephesus leave the Church? Of course not, they stayed and defended the Church and became saints of the Church, they did not go off and start new ‘churches’. The spirit of sectarianism, phariseeism, intolerance and the ghetto is not part of the Church. We stand and fight as soldiers of Christ inside the Church. All that is permitted is to change dioceses.

In other words, the personal opinions of individual members of the clergy as such do not concern us. We do not have a clericalist view of the Church like the heterodox. The Church is not the clergy, let alone the bishops. The Church is everyone. On the other hand, it is true that if a priest or a bishop or a Patriarch says that he believes AS A DOGMA that all religions are the same and that we do not need the Church for salvation, then of course he is a heretic.

This is why we need not worry about diplomatic and political PR documents signed by clergy, but we do have to worry about the draft document on heterodoxy that is being proposed for the Crete meeting next June, because that claims not to be a diplomatic or a political document, but a document expressing the Orthodox Faith. It is completely unacceptable as it stands because it claims in its first words that there is only One Church, the Orthodox Church and then goes on to contradict that statement in a haze of vagueness.

But even here we should be reassured. More and more simple parish clergy, people and monastics are speaking out against this draft document, let alone bishops like Metr Vladimir of Kishinev or Metr Athanasius of Limassol. One thing we have to understand is that the teachings of the Church are always set out very clearly, without any diplomatic fudging, which is the problem of the draft documents for the June meeting. They are written in Chancelleryspeak, they have no dogmatic clarity and are therefore not Church documents.
I think that the June meeting, if it happens, could be very useful, however. This is because all meetings can be useful, though not always in the way intended. Let us take the so-called ‘Council’ of Florence as an example. What was the use of that? First of all, it revealed the traitors who publicly shamed themselves. All became clear who they were. But above all the ‘Council’ of Florence was useful because it revealed St Mark of Ephesus and he revealed God’s Will. What do we remember about the ‘Council’ of Florence? Only St Mark of Ephesus, who defined the Truth. God can always make good out of bad.

Let us look concretely at what good can come of this June meeting and how even it could become by the grace of God a real ‘Council’ by ‘dogmatizing’, clarifying and defining the Truth.

First of all, it is clear that everything that needs to be said has already been said at the Seven Universal Councils. (We do not talk about ‘Ecumenical’ Councils because that word has been corrupted in modern English. Therefore we speak of ‘Universal Councils’). Roman Catholics like to attack us, saying ‘the Orthodox Church is dead, they have not had a Council since the eighth century – the proof that they need the Pope to give them life’.

Of course, this is nonsense. We have not needed to have a Universal Council because the truths of the Faith have been expressed for all time by the Seven Councils. There will never be an ‘Eighth Universal Council’. On the contrary, Roman Catholics constantly need new councils because they are always changing, ‘updating’, their beliefs, reinventing themselves – because they lost their apostolicity when they invented themselves in the eleventh century and consciously rejected the integrity of the Church heritage of the first millennium.

The Seven Councils dealt with the truths of the Faith for all time. They began by defining the first articles of the Creed, that is, by defining the Holy Trinity and then went on to the Person of Christ and His two natures and then to the Holy Spirit. Yes, it is true that there was the anti-filioque Council of Constantinople in 879, agreed on by all the Patriarchs, including the Pope of Rome, and the so-called ‘Palamite’ Council of 1351, which some pious Greeks unofficially call the ‘Eighth and Ninth Universal Councils’. However, in fact, these simply elaborated on earlier Councils, defining in detail the relations between the Persons of the Trinity, especially the Son and the Holy Spirit, and then in 1351 the nature of the Holy Spirit.

Thus, in the Orthodox Church we have local councils, at which only some bishops are present, that can elaborate on, explain and affirm aspects of the Faith expressed by the Seven Councils. In other words, these councils elaborate on the words of the Creed. And this is what needs to be done today, only not as regards the beginning and middle of the Creed (that has already been elaborated on), but as regards the end of the Creed. There will never be any ‘Eighth Universal Council’, but there could be a ‘Council of Crete’. But what will it be about?

We do not need meetings of hundreds of bishops to tell us that fasting is important or to administrate the granting of autonomy etc. What we need today is a Council to elaborate on one of the last articles in the Creed, concerning the Church. ‘I believe…in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’. This article is what is misunderstood today. In technical terms, what we need is a statement on Ecclesiology. For we believe in ONE Church; there are no Churches, not two or three Churches, only ONE. To say otherwise and talk as the heretics do of ‘the two lungs of the Church’ or ‘the Invisible Church’ or ‘the division of the Churches’ is to reject the Creed. It is as simple as that.

If the present anti-dogmatic diplomatic language and vagueness continues at Chambesy or elsewhere, I can foresee a time when a petition is going to circulate around the 80,000 or so Orthodox parishes of the world, saying: ‘There is only One Church, the Orthodox Church and we do not recognize any statements to the contrary’, and it will be signed by all and then presented at Crete. This is what the present vagueness and haziness could easily lead to. There is only one ‘Undivided Church’ – the Orthodox Church, which lives today because it is the Church of Christ, there is no other, there are merely fragments that have broken away from Her. I hope our bishops are listening.

I have no time to draw up such a petition. I am too busy doing Orthodoxy, looking after grandchildren, doing the washing up, baptizing, visiting the sick, blessing homes, celebrating services and visiting and confessing those in prisons throughout the 5,000 square miles of my three counties of parish. I have covered 300 miles in the last three days alone. But there are those who have more free time than I.

Comment: Metr. Nikodim’s end, at the feet of the Pope, is symbolic…’

Answer: I totally agree. But Metr Nikodim is dead and actually largely forgotten. Personally, I do not even know anyone who prays for him – perhaps they do that in the Vatican. But the real meaning of the Cuba meeting was not about old-fashioned ecumenism. It was firstly to ward off a World War in Syria, secondly to defeat Uniatism in the Ukraine, thirdly to prepare the world to see the leader of the Orthodox Church as the Russian Orthodox Church before the meeting in Crete, and finally it was part of a very successful pastoral visit by Patriarch Kyrill to the Russian Orthodox flock in Latin America, including meeting three local Presidents (completely unreported by the secular media).

And I think that was successful. Syria is all the talk and the Saudis and Turks have been warned off invading Syria to the fury of the neocons, the Uniats are also furious, as are the American diplomats who stand behind the scenes at the Phanar, whereas the Orthodox flock in Latin America is delighted. I think we may now at last see great Orthodox missionary developments in this very, very neglected part of the Orthodox world.

Comment: Do we really believe that the Vatican and the (Jesuit) Pope, those examples of strict hierarchical organisation based on careful cultivation of all levers of power and manipulation, have no influence on the Ukro-Nazi Uniats who are burning and stealing Orthodox Churches? Or on the Ustashoid Catholic church in Croatia?.…Some complaints or discontent of the faithful papist flock after the Cuban meeting should be interpreted cautiously; most likely they are simply down to the effectiveness of Jesuit tactics…

Answer: I think the Uniats really are very disillusioned. Of course, apart from them, we can ignore the sincerity or insincerity of expressions of discontent elsewhere. They are not our problem.

The Road from Cuba to Crete

Now that the Patriarch’s meeting in Cuba is over, we can begin to look at the deeper significance of the encounter and look ahead beyond the minor details to the big picture.

Firstly, it took place at an airport, on neutral territory.

Secondly, the Havana Declaration was signed in front of an icon of the Kazan Mother of God, which is associated with the expulsion from Moscow of the Catholic Poles 400 years ago.

Thirdly, it was signed by ‘Francis, Bishop of Rome, Pope of the Catholic Church’, not by someone pretentiously claiming universal authority.

Fourthly, the agreement is unanimous in its condemnation of liberal Western values, with their consumerism and exploitation, which are ruining the world environmentally, politically, economically and socially.

Fifthly, with this Declaration the much weakened and humiliated traditional West, in the form of the Vatican, is today in fact asking Russia for help. The Church has gained an ally in Roman Catholicism in defending traditional values.

Sixthly, there is the significance that this meeting took place in Cuba, the location of the largest Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Latin America. This symbolizes the universality of the Orthodox world, in particular of the Russian Orthodox world, on today’s planet.

Finally, given that about one fifth (not one half, as Roman Catholic journalists absurdly claim!) of Russian Orthodox live in what is called ‘the Ukraine’, as we predicted, the Uniats in the Ukraine (living mainly in a small area which formerly belonged to Poland) are very disappointed. According to the Havana Declaration they are more or less destined to die out as a grievous mistake in the dustbin of history.

There is more than this, however. Cuba is where in 1962 US aggression almost started the Third World War and avoided doing so only by removing its missiles that it had deliberately and threateningly sited by the Russian border in Turkey, at which point the Soviet Union removed its response from Cuba. And today we see another and similar risk of a Third World War, beginning only a hundred miles or so from the Holy Land and Armageddon, in Syria. Here US-controlled and NATO Turkey, having already illegally shot down a Russian plane and committing genocide against the Kurds, is now invading. The other US ally, that well-known beacon of freedom, democracy and multiple beheadings, Saudi Arabia, is threatening the same, having been routed in the Yemen and miserably failed to bankrupt Russia by drastically lowering the oil price.

The Western-founded and -trained and Saudi-and Qatari-financed Islamic State organization is facing rout at the hands of Syria and Russia. The latter are successfully defending Aleppo and are freeing areas of Syria from terrorist control. Of course, the Western State media have, on orders from their masters, gone berserk, relaying anti-Russian propaganda on behalf of the terrorists. Apparently the Russians are bombing hospitals and killing children – exactly what the USA did in Afghanistan last year. Once again the Western propaganda machine is talking about itself and imputing to others its own crimes. This reflects the equally nonsensical propaganda spouting forth from the bankrupt Galician Uniats and sectarians whom the US put in control of Kiev two years ago and the hysteria that NATO hawks are self-justifyingly whipping up in the Baltics about some mythical Russian invasion.

Beyond all this, there is even deeper significance. This year two events are due to occur in the Church: the first event is this February’s meeting between the de facto leader of the Church and the head of Roman Catholicism that has already taken place on the island of Cuba. The second event is the meeting due to occur in June on another island – Crete. That meeting was supposed to have taken place in Turkey in premises no doubt bugged by the CIA and taking place according to the agenda of its puppets. If the meeting does take place, it will now take place in different, bug-free premises and according to an agenda very different from the humanist one, redolent of the 1960s, that had been set by powers alien to the Church.

It is now clear that the meeting in Cuba, decided last September and with its pre-arranged Havana Statement, has in fact been preparatory to the Crete meeting. There is now no longer any ambiguity as to who leads the Church on earth and who will in fact lead the meeting in Crete. And so it is equally clear that the US-appointed clericalists on the fringes of the Church will not be even setting the agenda at the meeting in Crete, let alone taking decisions. The Church is awake and we the people are now having our say.