St Sergius Theological Institute in Paris on the Verge of Bankruptcy.

An appeal for assistance has recently appeared on the Institute’s website. It noted that the Institute, which may soon celebrate the 90th anniversary of its founding, is well-known for several Russian philosophers and renovationists. These were expelled from Russia in the early twenties of the last century, but had mainly died out by the 1950s. At present, the St Sergius Institute is experiencing a financial crisis that threatens its existence, though not for the first time. Now teachers’ salaries have not been paid for several months.

This difficulty comes on top of the fact that its jurisdiction is now a deanery under the Greek Metropolitan, since it no longer has any bishops. Thus, no ordinations are taking place.This is the direct result of the anti-monastic current in the Rue Daru jurisdiction and cultivated at St Serge over the decades. Having recently lost St Nicholas Cathedral in Nice, which had been on loan from the Russian Mother-Church, and with other properties possibly having to be returned to their lawful owners, the Rue Daru splinter group seems unlikely to be able to continue for much longer.

This is all the more the case when there is a real Russian Orthodox seminary in Paris and a new Cathedral and spiritual centre are to be built there. In this context, the old Russophobic factionalism and infighting of this tiny St Petersburg emigration to Paris seems increasingly irrelevant in the 21st century world of a united and large-scale Russian Orthodox Church and world-view.

Ethiopia and Russia

Between 1880 and 1910 the Western European Empires completed their bloody invasion and occupation of Africa in a mad and immoral scramble for power, territory, resources and prestige. Only two African countries remained relatively free of this imperialism. One was Liberia – ‘the Free Country’ – effectively a US-founded dumping ground for unwanted ex-slaves, the other was Ethiopia, for which Italy and Great Britain vied in their envy.

The latter was unique – the only Black African country with an ancient Christian tradition, close in many ways to the Church. As such, it was therefore the only African country which attracted the interest of the leader of the Orthodox world, the Russian Empire. It understood that if Africa were to be converted to the authentic Christ, it would be through an Orthodoxy with practices similar to those of the Ethiopian Miaphysite (more exact than Monophysite) Church.

Russians had first had contact with Ethiopians in Jerusalem, certainly at latest in the 15th century. This distant interest remained constant until 1718 when Peter I tried to establish direct contact with Ethiopia. Meanwhile, at this time a part-Ethiopian courtier appeared in Russia – the ancestor of the greatest Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

However, in 1874 and 1876 Emperor Yohannes IV called on Russia to help it against an Egyptian invasion and asked to enter into communion with the Church. His letters went unanswered until 1887 when they were at least acknowledged. Clearly, until then, the Russian Emperor had no intention of getting involved in Africa. Unlike the Emperor, the Church had other, spiritual, interests. Already in 1867 the messianic Russian missionary in the Middle East, Fr Porphyry (Uspensky), had called for the Ethiopian Church to unite with the Orthodox Church. His report was approved by the Holy Synod.

From this period on, sympathy for the Ethiopians increased in Church circles in Russia. Devoid of any type of anti-black racism, unlike Western Europeans, and devoid also of any sense of colonialism, to which Russia was vehemently opposed, Russians felt that Ethiopians were ‘Black Orthodox’. They had been isolated from the mainstream of the Church and the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, thus keeping certain Judaising customs, but otherwise they were relatively closer to Orthodoxy.

Notably in 1888 the distinguished Russian Professor Bolotov (1854-1900) made a serious study of the whole question. He noted that Ethiopians had already clearly rejected the aggressive, colonising and militaristic missions of the Roman Catholics and Protestants, but if Orthodox missionary work were to be successful, it would take patience and understanding, i.e. love. The greatest problems, in his view, were Ethiopian nationalism and politics, with their desire to obtain military technology to fight off Western imperialism. Above all, there was the fact that, officially anyway, apart from its Jewish characteristics, the Ethiopian Church did not recognise the true humanity of Christ.

It was between 1889 and 1898 that Russia began to take a special interest in Ethiopia. Then the Metropolitan of Kiev sent a delegation to Emperor Menelik. It was headed by a Guards Officer, Lt Vasily Mashkov. The mission had a spiritual meaning and, arriving in October 1889, Lt Mashkov spent most of his time with Ethiopian clergy. In January 1890 Russia was swept by a wave of indignation against Italy which was trying to colonise Sovereign Ethiopia. Such were the cultural and spiritual ties then that it was felt that Russia should send an advisory mission. Mashkov returned in February 1891 only to set out on another mission, with a grant from the Russian Geographical Society and was accompanied by two monks and an interpreter. This mission was to last for one year. This was followed in January 1895 by another mission under a Captain Eliseiev.

These missions were all successful and the latter mission was followed by a visit of an Ethiopian mission to Russia. This consisted of the Ethiopian Bishop of Harrar and a group of nobles. The Ethiopians were impressed by the warmth and sincere esteem of the Russian welcome and their lack of colour prejudice. On 4 July the embassy was received by Tsar Nicholas II, who was awarded the Order of Solomon by the Ethiopians and given rich presents. Russia wished to see the ancient Christian kingdom unmolested by colonialism, for Russian anti-colonialism was absolute, as was later seen in the universal and popular Russian defence of the Boer cause and the Russian volunteers who fought on the Boer side.

After this, Russian expeditions and medical missions arrived in Ethiopia, preserving tens of thousands of lives, right up until 1906. The first diplomatic mission opened in October 1897. Its head, was told to promote economic and political relations and to bring about co-operation between the two Churches. It had some thirty members. Unfortunately, however, these Russian efforts in Ethiopia came too early. Ethiopia was locked in its own ancient mindset and Russia was to be distracted from missions in Ethiopia, as also from its missions in Tibet and Siam (Thailand), by the Western-backed Japanese aggression in 1904 and, in 1914, by direct Western European aggression. It remains to be seen whether the 40 million and more Ethiopian Christians of today will ever be brought back to Orthodoxy.

A Centre for the Christian World

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Department for Church and Society of the Russian Orthodox Church, believes that Russia is moving in the direction of greater self-sufficiency, which would allow it to become the centre of world Christianity. As he wrote in an article published in the newspaper Sovereign Rus, ‘It is no coincidence that many today see Russia as a defender of Christian ideals and traditional morality, as a place that can offer a real alternative to the world’s golden calf and its destructive concepts of freedom. To begin with, Russia should act as though it were the centre of the Christian world. That is the only way it can work. Anything else, firstly, is petty, and, secondly, self-destructive’.

Fr Vsevolod went on to say, ‘During the past few months, Russia has shown the world that she can speak confidently, as a strong and independent nation with a tradition and experience of life that gives it the right to its own path. Russia is not only entitled to defend its vision of social order, but also it can offer it to the world’. He also pointed out that fringe groups based on foreign ideologies are trying to pressure the Russian authorities. They claim to act ‘on behalf of Russia’s future’, in the name of the ‘other Russia’, for the ‘real Russia’, but they accomplish nothing.

Fr Vsevolod noted, ‘Today, despite the West’s objections and reproaches, we mean it when we say, ‘We insist that we must protect our children from premature sexual awareness, and even more, from the promotion of homosexuality. We hold that the adoption of Russian children by foreign families at a time of demographic crisis is a highly irrational move. We do not want perverts to adopt these children, so that they will lose the faith into which they were baptised, to lose the hope of a normal life’’.

1 July 2013

Interfax-Religion

http://interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=51775

Saint Petersburg, Vienna, Paris: The Vestiges of Europe a Century on

When he was illegally deposed in 1917, the anointed Tsar-Prophet Nicholas II recorded that all around him were ‘treason and cowardice and deceit’. With these words he defined the attitude towards him of the elites of three nations and groups of nations and with these words he defined the whole history of the coming hundred years.

In speaking of treason, he referred to the majority of the Westernised upper classes in Saint Petersburg, who hated the Russian Faith and were so jealous of the Tsar that they blasphemously sought to seize his sacred authority for themselves, thus destroying their country and condemning themselves to death or exile, where many of them later apostasised from the Russian Church altogether.

In speaking of cowardice, he referred to the government in Vienna, and behind it in Berlin, which had sparked off the First World War through cowardice, the fear of granting justice to their peoples, and thus destroyed their countries, their empires and their monarchies, condemning them to abolition and themselves to collapse by 1945.

In speaking of deceit, he referred to Paris, and behind it London and Washington, who though supposed ‘Allies’, had hypocritically undermined Russia, even after the sacrifices of the Russian Armies, who had faced twice as many enemy soldiers and lost far fewer of their own than the Western Allies, miraculously saving Paris on the Marne in 1914 and the forces on the Western Front several times after this. By operating the palace revolution in Russia in early 1917, the Western Allies would bankrupt themselves, becoming colonies of foreign bankers in the USA.

Saint Petersburg, Vienna and Paris are the three centres of the old European culture.

Miraculously delivered and rebuilt after the destruction of Bolshevik atheism and of the later Nazi siege, Saint Petersburg still stands firm because of its Orthodox culture. Vienna, like Berlin, is much weakened, supported only by the vestiges of Orthodox culture feebly conserved in Catholicism. For the same reason Paris is even weaker – though not as weak as London and Washington, which have only the feeble vestiges of Catholicism, feebly conserved in secularist Protestantism.

Today in 2013, one hundred years on from 1913, the year before Europe fulfilled its death wish, the question is this:

Does Europe really want its new culture of atheist Apostasy, with its tyranny and perverted values, or does Europe still want its old culture of believing Tradition, with its freedom and Christian values?

The victory of the old culture of believing Tradition, however unlikely it may seem, is possible, but only if Europe refers back to its spiritual roots. This is why we Orthodox are being called on to gather together not only the faithful remnants among the peoples of Europe, but also to gather together the saints of Old Europe, who were faithful to Orthodoxy, so that they may intercede for Europe and for us. However, little time remains, for, as prophesied, all around are ‘treason and cowardice and deceit’.

What will happen to the Patriarchate of Constantinople once Russia has freed Istanbul?

In the nineteenth century France and Great Britain began a war of aggression in order to stop Russia freeing Istanbul and ‘Turkey in Europe’, i.e north-eastern Greece. This event, the Crimean War (= the second unprovoked and allied Western invasion of Russia of the four between 1812 and 1941), prevented the liberation of Constantinople. Even more dramatically and treacherously, in the twentieth century the British, with French and US support, carried out the coup d’etat or so-called ‘Russian Revolution’ of March 1917, partly in order to stop this same liberation, to which the Western Powers had hypocritically already agreed

However, all the prophecies, not least those of Elder Paisios of Athos, are unanimous. The liberation of Constantinople will happen, once Turkey has been split apart by the absurd policies foisted on it by the Western Powers, above all, the USA. Then the last liturgy in the restored Church of the Holy Wisdom, Agia Sofia, will be completed. Then the Kurds, the Armenians, the Greeks and the Syrians will all see justice. And the Turkish people themselves will find their rightful place. The question therefore that arises is what will happen to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, once the City has been liberated by Russia?

Clearly, Russia will hand it and the surrounding territory over to the Greek Nation, to whom it belongs. Russia will have no interest in keeping it, since its real interest is Jerusalem and the Holy Land, where one million Russians live. Once Constantinople has been restored to the Greek people and become their capital again, the historic injustice committed by the British in 1833 will be righted. This was when, under British pressure, the Church of Greece was split away from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In this way the Patriarchate of Constantinople will once more become what it really is – the national Church of Greece.

In this way fantasies of modernistic world jurisdiction over Orthodoxy, foisted on that Patriarchate after 1917 firstly by British and then, from 1948, by American, imperialism, will utterly fade away. Then the remaining thirteen universally recognised canonical Orthodox Churches will be united under by far the largest of them, the Russian Orthodox Church. With this, we can expect the Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria to become internationally Orthodox, and so much stronger, and the Church of Cyprus will enter into a fuller communion with the Russian Orthodox Church, with the Russian base in Paphos.

The Roads Not Taken

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Four roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one least travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

With Apologies to Robert Frost

Introduction: Four Roads

Reflecting over the last twenty five years of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), we can in hindsight see clearly the four roads that the Church faced then and how the Church, in Her faithful bishops, clergy and people inspired by the Holy Spirit, came to reject three of the roads and take the fourth road, a road that time has proved to be profoundly right. Here we should not forget that it is only seven years ago, at the historic Fourth All-Diaspora Council in San Francisco in 2006 that the Church definitively chose this road under the saintly leadership of the Ever-Memorable Metropolitan Laurus. What were these three roads that the Church did not take and the road we did take?

1. The Sect

Sometimes to do nothing is actually right. However, when there is clear and radical change, for example the world-changing event of the collapse of the Soviet Union, to continue as before would have been absurd. To do nothing, not to react, the choice of passivity, would soon have become the choice of passivism and so the path of the sect and the nationalist ghetto. This became clear during the 1990s when Metropolitan Vitaly, already affected by Alzheimer’s, heavy medication and a sectarian and nationalistic entourage, accepted into the Church Outside Russia little groups inside Russia, and this to the horror of educated ROCOR clergy and laity. This act, which seemed quite uncanonical even then, proved to be disastrous in establishing tiny sectarian groups, sometimes led by rightly defrocked clergy.

Similarly, at that time an infamous and incredible decree was issued in the Metropolitan’s name, using, or rather abusing, his signature. This decree forbade the use of English, including in parishes where there was not a Russian in sight! That this was the path of the sect and the nationalist ghetto was clear to the vast majority then and the decree was quietly but universally ignored. Moreover, that this was the path of the sect and the nationalist ghetto has been further borne out even more by all those tiny and mostly elderly groups, already dying out, often consisting of ungrounded neophytes, quite uneducated individuals or else CIA operatives, with peculiar names and even more peculiar theology, which left the Church Outside Russia between 2001 and 2007.

2. Go Under Moscow

Given that ROCOR was clearly part of the whole Russian Orthodox Church, which clearly had grace and sacramental life, a few considered submitting to the authority of Moscow and actually abolishing ROCOR. This would have been a huge mistake for a number of reasons. Firstly, there was the fact that the Church had been founded by St Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, who as a former Bishop of San Francisco, well understood the need for a politically independent Church outside Russia. Thus, self-abolition would have been contrary to the wishes of this saint. Secondly, many of the parishes under the Patriarchate of Moscow outside Russia were scandalous. Many of their clergy were uncanonical or else had been defrocked by ROCOR and then reinstated by Moscow (the OCA used to do the same).

Thus, several of their bishops, especially in Europe) had morally scandalous lives (Archbishop Basil Krivoshein stands out as an exception). Paris and London are well known and most know the almost burlesque story of the former priest of the Australian Diocese of ROCOR, defrocked on any number of accounts, not least of which was adultery, who was welcomed into the arms of Moscow and ended up as ‘Metropolitan of Vienna’ and a proven KGB agent! But thirdly, it would have been a terrible error to lose the unique, multinational Church Outside Russia with its pastoral experience and linguistic abilities, which is now proving itself in teaching Patriarchal churches how to live in a multicultural and globalised world, while retaining the best, pre-Revolutionary Orthodox traditions.

3. Go Native

A ‘third way’ or radical alternative would have been to divorce altogether from the Mother Church, to renounce the Russian Church, despite all our history and canonicity as an integral if politically separate part of the Church, and go native. Thus in Western Europe there would have been founded a ‘European Orthodox Church’, in the USA an ‘American Orthodox Church’ and in Australia an ‘Australian Orthodox Church’. The justification for such an out of character and quite uncanonical operation would have been that as the flock was losing Russian as a native language, it was time to use instead the native languages of the countries wherever the Church existed, flying in the face of real pastoral needs and realities, let alone the canons of the Church.

Apart from a few recent converts, most were not at all attracted by this concept, since it would have destroyed the multinational unity of the Church out of phyletism and would also have led to the sect and the nationalist ghetto. Unlike in the first road, this sect would have been liberal and the nationalism would have been European, American and Australian, but still it would have been a sect and a nationalist ghetto. After all, the OCA, Paris and convert parts of the Antiochian Diaspora had already taken this erroneous road and proved this point. Furthermore, a new Local Church can only be created through blood, tears and sweat, monasticism and martyrdom, not through the superficial inanities of modernism, which is but a passing fashion without a future in the real, post-modernist world.

Conclusion: The Fourth Road

In reality none of these three choices attracted more than a few. In reality, the way of the Church, the fourth road, prevailed. This was to recognise the repentance of the hierarchs of the Church inside Russia, so wonderfully expressed in their August 2000 Jubilee Council and then gradually implemented. This was after all what the faithful monastics, clergy and people of the Church inside Russia, the real judges of the situation, had recognised. Once this had been done, it would be possible to negotiate and reunite the two parts of the Church, becoming a universally canonically recognised autonomous Metropolia of the whole Church. Thus, we would have our future and continue our unique multicultural and multilingual mission worldwide, in faithfulness to the Russian Orthodox Tradition.

For the Faith, the Sovereign and the People: The Spiritual and Incarnate Centre

The West hates Russia for its attachment to what is alien to it, that is, to Orthodox Civilisation. Western Europeans believe that they are the chosen heirs of Israel, Greece and Rome…Russia inherited – together with Orthodoxy and the title of the Third Rome – this hatred from the West.

Arnold Toynbee

The most important obstacle in achieving the aim of establishing the kingdom of Antichrist has been Orthodox Russia – the only strong and powerful bulwark of the true Christian Orthodox Faith in the world.

Archbishop Averky of Syracuse

There always have been and always will be those who are on the sectarian fringes of the Church. It is the Centre that holds these fringes together, patiently preventing them from falling away from the Church. At the Centre of the Church we believe in Orthodox Christianity. This is the Faith in Christ made Incarnate through the Sovereign in the People. The spiritual, Orthodoxy, the intellectual, the Sovereign, and the physical, the People, are key to the understanding of Christianity.

Thus, if there is no authentic Christianity, no Orthodox Christianity, but only some distortion of Christianity, some heterodoxy, the spiritual will be marred by impurity. If there is no authentic Sovereignty, no Sovereign under God, but some manmade distortion of Sovereignty, the intellectual will be marred by impurity. And if there is no authentic People, no faithfully believing humanity, but some distortion of the understanding of the People, the physical will be marred by impurity.

Thus, on the diplomatic and liberal left hand fringes of even the Church, Orthodoxy may be understood as some ecumenical Faith, little more than some mixed and compromised, disincarnate and pseudo-spiritualised, heterodox Catholicism/Protestantism. Sovereignty may be understood at best as a sort of liberal constitutional monarchy, a Sovereign subject to mob rule and bribery. And the People may be understood as some humanistic mixture of semi-faith and even faithlessness.

Thus, on the ritualistic and superstitious right hand fringes of even the Church, Orthodoxy may be understood as some conformist philosophy, little more than a Spiritless conformism fit only for the museum of nationalism. Sovereignty may be understood as some authoritarian and reactionary oppression, without any Divine sanction, not as a Sovereign beneath God. And the People may be understood as some mere nationalistic ideology, no more than a narrow and nationalistic race-worship.

Outside the Church, they believe spiritually not in the New Jerusalem, but in enthroning Antichrist in the Old Jerusalem, in devil-worship made universal, the creation of the Religion of Antichrist; they believe intellectually not in the Third Rome, the Christian Empire, but in pagan Rome made universal, the creation of Antichrist’s Global Empire; they believe physically not in the defence of the People’s Faith and Home, but in the destruction of the Sovereign Empire of the People.

However, inside the Church, we understand Orthodoxy as the bimillennial Tradition of the Church as the Body of Christ, Apostolic, Martyric and Patristic, inspired by and confessed in the Holy Spirit. We understand Sovereignty as the Sovereign Ruler subject to God who protects the Church and prevents the coming of Antichrist. And the People we understand as composed of all the people of the world who are faithful to Christ and His uncompromised and ever-pure Church.

One Step Closer to Armageddon

With two wars lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, Western governments are apparently intending to continue their folly by meddling in Syria. Eighty people die there every day, as thousands of foreign Sunni mercenaries massacre the Christian, Alawite and Shia population. The terrorists are financed by Sunni Saudi Arabia and Qatar and trained by the USA, Britain and France. Now the West has fabricated ‘evidence’ of the use of chemical weapons – just as it fabricated ‘evidence’ of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq.

Iraq itself is now divided into three and racked by terrorist bombs; full-scale civil war draws ever closer. Iraqi deputies have asked for the heads of state of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to be tried at the international court in the Hague for supporting extremist terrorists and their unspeakable atrocities, notably in Iraq, Syria and the Yemen. As for Turkey, along whose borders there are training camps for the terrorists in Syria, trained by US, UK and French ‘Special Forces’, it has now too been racked by civil revolt.

The Jordan, once virtually a British colony and now a US protectorate ruled by King Abdallah II, nicknamed ‘Play Station’, has allowed hundreds of tons of arms and munitions to be transferred to its territory at the behest of the dictatorships of Qatar and Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies. Arms shipments have been organised by the CIA, notably from Croatia. As a result, Jordan is now facing the same unrest as has broken out under the dictatorial regime in Turkey and may yet face territorial division.

Meanwhile, Egypt faces economic and constitutional chaos with daily demonstrations. The persecuted Copts are leaving in their tens of thousands, just as 80% of the Christians had to leave Iraq. In Libya, tribes and militias have divided the country into three and massacre one another daily, not least in Tripoli. Towns and cities of Tunisia are under curfew every evening and Tunisian soldiers are fighting Islamist terrorists near the Algerian border. As for Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Yemen and Bahrein, they are all in a state of unrest.

Two lost, bankrupting and disastrously disturbing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left NATO forces fleeing for their lives (with ‘exit strategies’) from the hornets’ nests which they have stirred up through their meddling. However, the whole Middle East is now in a state of chaos after the Islamist winter, so absurdly called an ‘Arab spring’ and so encouraged by the mixture of purposeful cynicism, self-righteous naivety and stupid greed of Western governments. The Middle East is moving one step closer to Armageddon.

The Main Ecclesiological Problem of Roman Catholics is their Tendency to Nationalism

In reply to Cardinal Koch and his provocation, not his first, made at the Ukrainian Catholic University in L’viv, as reported by the CWN news agency on 11 June, it can be said that the main problem of Roman Catholicism is its nationalism.

Its schism from the Orthodox Church, justified by the filioque heresy, was based on pure Western nationalism, centred in pagan Rome and implemented by Germanic popes. The fact that Roman Catholicism has constantly tried for centuries to undermine and destroy the Russian Orthodox Church, the centre of the Orthodox Christian world, proves this nationalism. The fact that Roman Catholicism has constantly encouraged politically-inspired nationalism to enter into the Local Orthodox Churches, also proves its nationalistic spirit. The fact that its Ukrainian Uniat (Greek Catholic) branch, centred in L’viv, is a pit of nationalism only reinforces the evidence.

Cardinal Koch’s statement is the most anti-ecumenical and aggressive attack made on the Church of God for several years. We should thank God for it. It may be that his provocation will lead deluded Orthodox on the fringes of the Church – who actually believed in ecumenism! – back to their senses.

How do we Explain the Present Crises in Turkey and the Czech Lands?

At the present time Turkey is being rent apart by street protests against the current regime there. As for the Czech Republic, it is facing extremely serious flooding and parts of Prague are being evacuated at this very moment. We can explain these catastrophic events through politics, geography etc. But perhaps we should be looking at spiritual reasons for these crises.

As regards Turkey we have the incredible statement made on 29 May made by the arch-Conservative Prime Minister Erdogan, an anti-Chrsitian, pro-American puppet who has sided with Israel against Syria and allows his country to be used as a training ground for anti-Christian Islamist mercenaries and fanatics. On that day, 29 May, the 560th anniversary of the fall of the Christian Roman Empire in 1453 (the pagan Roman Empire fell a thousand years earlier in 476), Erdogan called Christian Rome ‘a dark chapter’ in history and called the Muslim massacre and succeeding grim 560 years of oppression and genocide ‘a time of Enlightenment’. (Source: kath.net). Since that day Turkey has been rocked by rioting in what looks like more ‘Arab spring’ type events, which could easily end in civil war.

Meanwhile, the Czechoslovak Orthodox Church has in the last three months seen its first hierarch, Metropolitan Christopher, atrociously slandered and deposed in a vicious political and financial attack on the pro-Russian and Russian-founded Church. Since then there has been an attempt by American politicians to influence the Church through its US-financed Greek puppets in Istanbul. The injustice cries out to heaven. Since then almost all the Czech Lands have been flooded.

Our conclusion? When a country falls into national sin, it loses the protection of God’s grace. Some call this Divine retribution; we call it the spiritual law. Both countries have attacked their spiritual backbone; both therefore are under threat of spiritual destruction. A country which loses its spine collapses like a skeleton without a spine. It is not complicated.