Converts

There is a Russian-American saying about converts, based on the fact that the Russian word ‘konvert’ means an envelope. The saying is: The trouble with ‘konverty’ (envelopes) is that they are often empty and often come unstuck’.

If this sounds unfair and racist we should remember first of all that today’s Russian Church is a Church of converts, about 150 million (including those now departed this life), who were all baptised there over the last 30 years.

I would also like to recall how a certain person, trying to justify the imbecilities of a certain priest said to me recently: ‘Yes, but he’s ‘a cradle Orthodox’ (an awful expression – there is no such thing). To which I replied: ‘So was Stalin’.

It is noticeable that nowhere do the apostles refer to themselves as converts, nor were they seen as converts. And yet they were. So what is the difference between a convert and an Orthodox?

Converts, in the sense that the word is used here, are neophytes, that is, they are new to the faith. The question is then, how do we stop being new to the faith and make the faith into an instinctive part of our nature, how do we become ‘old to the faith’?

It is sometimes said that ‘converts have zeal, but Orthodox have knowledge’. This is incorrect. If it were true, it would mean that you could simply become Orthodox by reading many, many books. It is just the opposite (1). In fact, converts have zeal, but Orthodox have experience. So, in order to stop being a convert, you have simply to obtain experience. This means mixing with Orthodox, senior to ourselves, who have experience, and following them in practice, not in theory.

A very simple example is how some converts think that they can ‘become Orthodox’ by copying the externals of monastics. I remember 40 years ago how, for some reason I could not understand then, male converts seemed to believe that they had to have a beard and long hair and female converts had to dress in dreary long black skirts and put huge cloths over their heads. Both sexes had to wrap prayer-knots around their wrists and wear some sort of strange boots. This was the uniform of the convert and you could spot them a mile away. It was anything but elegant and seemed to owe more to hippydom than anything else.

The strange thing was that none of the Orthodox did any of this: Orthodox men (apart from clergy) were always clean-shaven and Orthodox women dressed in brightly-coloured, just-below-the-knee-length skirts and dresses and wore small and modest head-coverings. All the converts had to do was look around themselves and copy, rather than shut themselves away into convert ghettoes and hothouses, guru clubs and cliques.

The apostle Paul says that men should cut their hair (1 Cor, 11, 14). He writes this in a context where he rebukes effeminacy. This is right, we agree with him. St Paisios of the Holy Mountain would take a pair of scissors to laymen who came to him with long hair and a long beard.

At this point some Protestants, of the Methodist or Baptist sort especially, may ask the question, why then do Orthodox monks (and also some monastic-minded priests) have long hair and long beards? The simple answer is because they are under obedience. They are not doing it out of some delusion that they are holy, they are doing it out of obedience, to their Abbot. In this sense, male monastics are not ‘men’, for they belong to a different order, outside the world.

Orthodoxy is not some weird sect, where people dress strangely. It is a way of life. It is in fact quite simply the Christian way of life, where people’s actions are the only thing that counts. It is as simple as that.

Note:

  1. On the subject of books, we would advise the following in this order: Read the Gospels, your prayerbook, the Epistles, the Psalter, the Lives and writings of the Saints, the rest of the Old Testament, the Lives of Orthodox elders (still uncanonized – but make sure that they are real elders, popularly venerated, and not self-proclaimed frauds). There is also a host of peripheral introductory books about the Church: Timothy Ware (for Anglican academics), Metr Antony Bloom (for intellectuals from an atheist background) Olivier Clement (for French intellectuals), Fr Sophrony Sakharov (for philosophers), Fr Alexander Schmemann (for educated ex-Protestants), Fr John Meyendorff (for historians) etc etc. But none of these is essential reading.

 

 

On the Christian Understanding of Patriotism

A British man, who was forced into joining the Patriarchate of Constantinople as he was not allowed by his government employer to join the Russian Orthodox Church (so much for freedom in the UK), asked me about patriotism and nationalism and how we can be British but also ‘support Russia’.

Nationalism is an artificial, manmade construct of the State and entails racist dislike and even hatred for everyone who is not of your own ‘nationality’. It is therefore not Christian. Though there are examples everywhere, Nazism and Zionism are prominent examples of racism. The United Nations agrees.

Conversely, patriotism entails a love for the positive sides of the country where, by God’s will, you have been born. It is, in other words, a love for God’s creation and inspiration. It also implies the innate ability to love the positive sides of other countries where others have been born.

As Christian patriots, we ‘seek the kingdom of heaven first’. This means that we obey our governments only inasmuch as they obey the Gospel. In other words, we are first of all patriots of God. We do not put any Establishment/Deep State, those artificial constructs, first. However, in obedience to the Apostle Paul, we do pray for Non-Orthodox secular authorities. Moreover, if they are Orthodox Christian, we pray for them by name.

Some people who claim to be Orthodox, but in fact are still pagans, are shocked that we pray for Non-Christian authorities, for example, for enemies of Russia, Greece, Romania etc. These people have not yet understood that the very definition of Christian is someone who not only loves his friends, but also loves (and so prays for) his enemies – so that they may stop doing evil.

Therefore, the old words of the German national anthem ‘Deutschland ueber alles’ (Germany above all) are a piece of pagan blasphemy. (The French national anthem is even worse – it is full of a barbaric desire for bloodshed). As for the 18th-century invented British imperialist national anthem ‘God save our gracious Queen/King’, it seems a good wish, but when the anthem goes on to proclaim ‘Scatter her/his enemies, And make them fall; Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks’, we begin to sense nationalism.

As for ‘supporting Russia’ (or Romania or Greece or any other ‘Orthodox country’), this is only possible if that country is actually Christian. (Obviously, I use the word ‘Christian’ as a synonym for ‘Orthodox’). Thus, I have no time for today’s corrupt oligarch Russia, created by the consumerist West, just as I had no time for Soviet atheist Russia, nor for the pre-Revolutionary aristocratic traitors who carried out the anti-Christian palace coup (‘Russian Revolution’) of February 1917. Inasmuch as the ‘Reds’ were atheists, Orthodox could not support them. However, according to St John of Shanghai and a host of others in the emigration (and I can confirm this from my own experience), 90% of the ‘Whites’ also had no time for the Church.

In other words, we are patriots of God, patriots of the Church, patriots of Orthodoxy. Our patriotism for countries is strictly limited to their Christian content. Thus, I am a patriot of Christian (= Orthodox) England, but also of Orthodox Scotland, Wales and Ireland, as also of Orthodox Russia, Orthodox Lithuania, Orthodox Greece, Orthodox Argentina or Orthodox anywhere else. But I have no time for anti-Orthodox Britain or for anti-Orthodox Russia.

An Independent and Sovereign Russia Must Be Destroyed!

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Abraham Lincoln

http://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2018/03/17/nezavisimaya_i_suverennaya_rossiya_dolzhna_byt_unichtozhena/

For over a week I have resisted requests to write on the Skripal subject, but readers have asked me too often. The provocations and slanders against Orthodox in this country are now beginning. We have to say the words of truth against the barrage of lies coming from British Establishment mouthpieces like the BBC and the tabloid press.

An Independent and Sovereign Russia Must Be Destroyed! The order went out in London and New York in 1916 and the legitimate Russian government, deemed too powerful for the West, was duly overthrown in 1917 with the active and visible collusion of the British government of the time. The USA entered the First World War within weeks, as had been agreed. Lloyd-George, the then British Prime Minister, openly rejoiced in Parliament, one of his ‘aims’, achieved. Evil Russian-speaking terrorists, harboured by the West for decades, were sent to destroy Russia from Britain, Canada, the USA, Germany and Switzerland, and so the Western-financed atheist Bolsheviks came to power. But the plan backfired.

So then came the encouragement of London of the Western-financed Hitler to invade the Russian Lands in 1941, leaving 27 million dead. After 1991 the UK took part in the destruction of the sad remains of the Russian Empire and Russian-speaking oligarch-thieves were welcomed to London. Meanwhile, the UK helped dismember Yugoslavia, invaded Afghanistan and Iraq (again), wasting tens of thousands of lives and tens of billions of pounds. But the plan backfired.

So then the spy Litvinenko was assassinated by polonium in London. Clearly, the Russian government had no interest in doing so; spies are assassinated in ways that do not incriminate those who order their assassinations. The SIS, that does the dirty work for MI5 and MI6, assassinates about 100 people a year, according to my South African informants. Clearly, Litivinenko’s cruel death was ordered by others, who wanted to try and incriminate Russia. Meanwhile, NATO divided Montenegro and Kosovo from Serbia and threatened Moldova and surrounded Russia’s borders with its missiles. But the plan backfired.

So then the UK encouraged US-trained Georgians to invade Russia, accusing Russia of invading Georgia! Then the UK encouraged the violent toppling of the democratic government in the Ukraine and replacing it with a genocidal junta in Kiev. Russia was accused of invading the Ukraine! The people of the Crimea voted massively and freely in favour of returning to Russia; Russia was accused of ‘annexing’ the Ukraine! The madmen in control in Kiev then shot down a civilian airliner; the UK blamed Russia and armed the junta! Then it paraded its troops and armour along the Russian border with Estonia. When Russia prevented World War III from erupting in Syria (the words of Lord Owen), the UK regime (elected by fewer than 40% of the voters) armed the terrorists (‘rebels’ in BBC speak).

Having failed abysmally to disrupt the imminent Russian elections, all the UK regime (at best eccentric, at worst malign) could do was send the clown Johnson there and openly support the anti-Russian traitor Navalny. Then, it helped to ban a few drug-taking Russian Olympic athletes, although its own athletes also take drugs, as they do in all major countries, in support of the political and commercial interests of all modern international sport.

The dreadful attack on the retired British spy (not ‘Red’ spy, as the tabloids had it), Skripal, is simply Litvinenko II. The Russian secret service had no motive to kill him; even if it had, it would have done it in a discreet and professional way, as do all secret services. Most likely, the rare poison to kill the spy (and bungle his death) in the highly-militarized city of Salisbury came from nearby Porton Down, the top secret chemical warfare establishment where they have invented and store thousands of deadly poisons and viruses. And it all comes just before the elections in democratic Russia and before the World Cup. So they expelled 23 Russian ‘spies’. But if they were spies, why were they allowed into the UK in the first place, or not expelled before?

It need not have been this way. It could all have been so different. It will all end up so badly – for the UK. Ever a threat to world peace and popular governments all around the world, the British Establishment, which has already invaded nine out of ten countries in the world (including of course Russia, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9653497/British-have-invaded-nine-out-of-ten-countries-so-look-out-Luxembourg.html), has now started another Cold War with Russia. Ignoring its chronic poor infrastructure (roads and hospitals, for example) and its staggering and unpayable National Debt of £1.8 trillion, it prefers to start wars abroad. Such is the legacy of the British Establishment, which will ‘never, never, never be slaves’ – even if the British people and the rest of the world will be. An Independent and Sovereign Russia Must Be Destroyed!

 

MI5 Kills Another Spy

http://www.fawkes-news.com/2018/03/le-mi5-empoisonne-un-autre-actif-russe.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FawkesNews-PlusOnEstDeFawkesMoinsIlsRient+%28Fawkes+News+-+Plus+on+est+de+Fawkes+moins+ils+rient+%21%29

(Non-French speakers use Translate option)

https://www.fort-russ.com/2016/01/litvinenko-what-really-happened/

Who will be saved?

Q: Who will be saved?

A: This question is dangerous as it may contain the pride of the pharisee. Really we should not even be asking it. It may imply that somehow we want to take on God’s role as Judge of the Universe. The only valid question we may ask is: Will I be saved? Salvation is personal. And our own salvation is the only thing that we can do anything about.

The fact is that no external label can save us: Orthodox, Catholic, Evangelical or whatever. God is the only Knower of hearts, for only He knows what truly is in our heart and He judges by that.

Some people will tell you, for example, that cradle Orthodox (an absurd term invented by converts with an inferiority complex) will be saved. This is also absurd. Stalin was a ‘cradle Orthodox’ (and also an expelled seminarian). Arius and Nestorius were ‘cradle Orthodox’ (and also had clerical rank). The fact we are baptised as babies makes no difference. What is important is that we were brought up as Orthodox and then, above all, remain Orthodox. (Quite a few priest’s children were brought up as Orthodox but do not remain in the Church, including many priest’s children who became infamous Bolsheviks and persecuted the Church in Soviet Russia).

Moreover, the Mother of God and the apostles were not ‘cradle’ Orthodox!  They were ‘converts! But they are saints. And here we come to the key point. When you are depressed by various clerical scandals, always remember what is vital: Follow the saints! We know that the saints have been are saved. This has been revealed to us. The rest is speculation. Forget it.

Our Credo

We Orthodox Christians are chosen by God to fulfil our appointed destinies. In this age it is our destiny to defy all who deny the Holy Trinity, whether in word or thought or deed. Our God is not the god of others, including those who have for all practical purposes lapsed from the Church and Faith, despite their outward label. Our God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

We confess the Father and reject manmade nationalism and idolatrous ritualism, which place themselves above the Father from everlasting. Their victims put their tribal and racist local cultures above God, rejecting His Church.

They say, for example: ‘I cannot join the Orthodox Church because of my Western culture’. How many times we have heard the above myth. Such an attitude comes from the placing of our ethnic conditioning above Christ. They do not understand that Europe itself is an illusion: East and West were joined together in Christ’s Church. At the furthest tip off Eurasia, Europe was invented by cutting itself off from Eurasia 1,000 years ago, in order to justify its aggressive domination and annihilation of all else.

We confess the Incarnation and reject academic theories and disincarnate fantasies, which have no spiritual or moral effect in life. Their victims put their impure imaginations above God, rejecting the universal sacrifice of the God-man.

They say, for example: ‘I cannot live a Church life because of my personal views’. How many times we have heard the above selfishness. Such an attitude comes from the placing of our egoistic conditioning above Christ. They do not understand that the self is an illusion: we are all part of God’s Creation, joined together in Christ’s Church. The Western world invented such individualism, cutting itself off from solidarity with the rest of God’s Creation, man and nature, to justify its aggressive domination and annihilation of all else.

We confess the Holy Spirit and reject pharisaic bureaucracy and unprincipled careerism, which deaden and destroy Church life. Their victims put their worldly interests above the Holy Spirit, rejecting God’s Free Spirit, Who blows where He wills.

They say, for example: ‘Our rules and interests are higher than all else’. How many times we have heard the above artifice. Such an attitude comes from the placing of worldly conditioning above Christ. They do not understand that the world is an illusion: the world was overcome by Christ. Petty bureaucracy and careers will all fade away with time and death, for they were invented only in order to promote passing, manmade customs, with their attempts at the aggressive domination and annihilation of all else.

We Orthodox Christians are chosen by God to fulfil our appointed destinies. In this age it is our destiny to defy all who deny the Holy Trinity, whether in word or thought or deed. Today this destiny calls us to gather together before the end, for ours is the apostolic mission to preach to all and gather the faithful remnant out of all the nations before the Second Coming.

 

 

A Reality Check for Reader-Victims of ‘The Economist’

A spectre haunts the West: He is called Christ.

When I taught at Business School in Paris, I had to read ‘The Economist’ every week. Of course, the magazine was transparent. We could see through it as a magazine that saw human-beings as no more than economic units to exploit and be exploited. It was anti-Christian and therefore with a very twisted view of reality. Rothschild-owned, it reflects above all the views not just of the British Establishment with its State mouthpieces in the BBC, tabloid print media, Oxbridge, MI5 and the rest of the State apparatus, but of the whole Trostkyite (‘globalist’) Western Establishment, with its UN, EU, NATO, G7, bankers, Davos and the groups that stand behind them. Sadly, its many victims (‘readers’ – including even a few who actually claim to be ‘Orthodox’!) are so naïve that they swallow the myths peddled by it without understanding reality.

A recent amusing article (amusing because it was so badly written and misinformed), claiming that the Russian Church is ‘too close to the Kremlin’ (!) was typical. Last July the Russian Foreign Minister,  Sergei Lavrov, speaking at a conference in Germany, explained this absurd Russophobia: ‘The West hates Russia because it is returning to its traditional values’ ( = Christianity). Thus, the anti-Russian conspiracy theories peddled by such magazines are ultimately based on the inherent anti-Christianity that infects and informs the whole Western Establishment. Thus, following the well-known Party line, this article regretted the 1990s, when Harvard adolescents, neocon oligarchs and their gangster hirelings were in charge of an alcoholic Russian President in Moscow and the people were starving and dying from despair by the million.

That was the period of the banksters at the top, when at the grassroots the Russian Church, at last freeing Herself from the Western (‘Soviet’) State, began to baptize 100,000,000 people. Today, as the Church continues to strengthen and fight against Western-inspired secularist nominalism, She is at last beginning to influence the all too strong remains of the State. Although most of the Russian media is still in the control of the Western media, although much of the education and health systems are still in the grip of anti-Christian bureaucrats, the Church is at last beginning to influence the State: in truth, the Russian State is ‘drawing too close to the Church’ for the likes of the Western Establishment and ‘The Economist’. For them faith must be a private affair and have zero influence on politics, economics and society in general.

After the West had organized the 1917 coup in Saint Petersburg and replaced the legitimate Christian government, then on the verge of victory in the German War, a victory which terrified the West, it ignored the greatest persecution in history. Like all the others, ‘The Economist’ did not report on the 600 martyred bishops, the 120,000 martyred Russian priests, monks and nuns and the tens of millions of victims of Marxists. After all, most of them were Non-Russians, like Lenin and Trotsky, and had lived and been trained in the West for years before being sent back to Russia in 1917 to create havoc. Neither did it report on the holocaust of the 27 million victims of the Western invasion of 1941, longed for both in Berlin and London. ‘The Economist’ had no space to report on martyrs for Christ; its interest was in Mammon.

Today, 100 years on from those awful events, the Western elite is worried. What if the Christian Church should revive and challenge their secularist ideology? What if the State became Christian? The thought terrifies them because they would lose power; hence the anti-Russian propaganda.  All of this is published in a country which runs a ‘State Church’, whose every bishop is appointed by Prime Ministers, most of whom are atheists who support every perversion! Let the scribblers rant as the Russian State starts to become Christian again thanks to the Church of God. Let the scribblers hate Christ and His Holy Church and all us Orthodox Christians. For we shall go on ignoring them, in the knowledge that Christ is coming and will sweep away all these fantasies. The Truth will set you, enslaved by Western propaganda, free!