Поучение в понедельник 26-й недели. О царстве Божием

Carnal people, tied with all their souls to earthly life, familiar with the Law of God superficially, in letter, from just studying it at school, alien to the Law of God in spirit, in heart, in life, in their deeds - in a word, the Pharisees asked the Lord: “When will the kingdom of God come?” (Luke 17:20) The question, of course, was not made from the sincerity of the heart, not with a good purpose; it was made frivolously, out of curiosity to find out what the answer would be. The insidious and evil Pharisees hoped that the Lord would provide them with a reason to conveniently accuse the Lord. Having formed the concept of the Messiah as a magnificent king and a loud conqueror, seeing the Messiah in the image of a wretched wanderer who has nowhere to lay his head, the Pharisees proposed a question, covering them with mockery, and expressed in it their carnal wisdom, alien and hostile to the mind of God (Rom. 8:7). The Lord gave an answer that befits all carnal people, without exception, attached to the world, leading a sinful life among continuous everyday worries and material pleasure. The God-man answered the Pharisees: “The Kingdom of God will not come with observance, that is, the Kingdom of God will not come in a noticeable way for sensual eyes, below they say: here or there. Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20–21). This means: one must leave carnal and sinful life, then, through repentance and living according to the Gospel commandments, cleanse and decorate the spiritual church; upon completion of which the Holy Spirit overshadows him, completes the final cleansing and decoration. God descends into such a church and establishes in it His spiritual, invisible, but at the same time completely perceptible and cognizable kingdom. Whoever has accepted the Kingdom of God within himself can have a clear understanding of the second coming of the God-Man, he can recognize and avoid the Antichrist or resist him. Whoever has not accepted the Kingdom of God within himself will not recognize the Antichrist; he will certainly, in a way incomprehensible to himself, become his follower; he will not recognize the approaching end of the world and the approaching terrible second coming of Christ; it will find him unprepared. No human teaching, no teaching in words and words is sufficient for instruction in that which requires instruction in the spiritual cage, instruction from God Himself. He who has acquired within himself the kingdom of God has as his guide the Holy Spirit, who instructs the person led by Him in “all truth” (John 16:13), and does not allow him to be deceived by lies, which clothe themselves in the phantoms of truth for the most convenient deception. A certain blessed monk said very correctly when talking about the Antichrist: “Many will believe in the Antichrist and will glorify him as a mighty God. Those who have God always within themselves and those who are enlightened in their hearts will see the truth with pure faith and know him. To all who have the vision of God and reason, the coming of the tormentor will then be reasonable. But those who always have a mind for the things of this life and those who love earthly things will not understand this: for they are attached to the things of this life. Even if they hear the word, they do not have faith, but rather this saying will disgust them.” 165 They will consider him a madman, worthy only of contempt and regret. Humanity, darkened by its carnal wisdom, will not believe at all in the second coming of the Lord. “In the last days scoffers will come, walking according to their own lusts, saying, Where is the promise of His coming? Wherefore the fathers fell asleep, all things continue from the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 3:3-4). When the Pharisees retreated from the Lord, then He told His disciples that a sign of the end of the world and the proximity of the second coming of the Lord would be an extraordinary material development: people would forget God, forget Heaven, forget eternity and, in their deception, as if they were eternal on earth, they would direct all their attention to the earth, to achieving the most sublime and unchangeable well-being on it. What could be crazier than this trend? Doesn’t death, which has befallen and is constantly befalling all men, testify that we were created for eternity, that on earth we are the shortest wanderers, that for this reason our concerns about eternity should be the main and greatest concerns, and concerns about the earth should be very moderate? Despite all the recklessness of such a direction, it will appear on earth, in the inevitable fulfillment of Divine prophecy. If it appeared, then, being hostile to the word of God, it serves for us as one of the clearest proofs of the truth of the word of God. “As it was in the days of Noah,” the Lord declared, “so it will be in the days of the Son of Man” (Luke 17:26). The days of the Son of Man are the time that will precede His coming, which will conclude with His coming - the beginning of the eternal non-evening day, the end of time and times. Time will end with the end of those phenomena by which it is designated: there will be no time when day, and night, and morning, and evening, and weeks, and months, and years, and centuries will be replaced by a single eternal day. “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man, I ate, I ate, I married, I encroached; before that day Noah went into the ark: and the flood came and destroyed everything. Just as it was in the days of Lot: yadyahu, piyahu, kupovahu, sellahu, soot, zdahu” (Luke 17:26-28). The Holy Scriptures tell us that Noah's contemporaries and Lot's fellow citizens indulged in immeasurable debauchery. Depravity is born from deviation from God, from complete striving for earthly pursuits and material development. When to think about God, when to cultivate his salvation for that person who is constantly and exclusively occupied with earthly affairs and material development? But every person who has neglected the knowledge of God and concern for his salvation, who has become entirely occupied with arranging his temporary position according to the flesh and for the flesh, develops his fallen nature in an incomprehensible and imperceptible way for himself; makes his immaterial soul as if material; darkens, becomes alien to God; becomes all sin, all flesh; is rejected by God as having completely destroyed the purpose with which he was called by the Creator into existence from non-existence. “My Spirit shall not dwell in these men forever, for they are flesh,” the Lord said about Noah’s contemporaries (Gen. 6:3). General depravity, together with the abundant material development that gave rise to it, will be a sign of the end of the age and the approaching Last Judgment of Christ. Not only voluptuousness will then dominate! Corruption, in the broad sense of this word, will become the property of humanity in the last times of humanity’s stay on earth. “For men,” says the holy Apostle Paul, “will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, majestic, proud, blasphemers, opposed to parents, ungrateful, unrighteous, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, intemperate, necrotic, unkind, traitorous, insolent, pompous, lovers of voluptuousness rather than lovers of God, having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” (2 Tim. 3:2-5). Sin will reach its full development, and the more terrible it will be, the stronger its dominion will be, so that the mask of piety will remain. Who will understand that in this outwardly flourishing piety, all its essence, all its power, has been destroyed? So they were destroyed in the religion of the Jews in the time of Christ, which the people could not understand, which neither the scribes, nor the Levites, nor the high priests of the Jews, pompous with their learning and knowledge, could even understand. But this scholarship and this knowledge consisted solely in the study of the Law of God according to the killing letter, during a life contrary to the commandments of God: such a life makes faith dead. Humanity will not see its plight in moral and spiritual terms; it, on the contrary, will trumpet its success, being blinded by success in material development for time and earth, rejecting Christian development for the spirit, for eternity, for God. When the world proclaims and extols its prosperity, the establishment of supreme prosperity, indestructible peace “and affirmation: then all destruction will suddenly attack them” (1 Thessalonians 5:3); then the end of the world will suddenly come, which he, in his darkness, in the rapture of earthly prosperity, will not expect. Because of the blindness of the world, “the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5:2). Pointing to this blindness, the Lord called the time of His coming “night” (Luke 17:34). Why, in the sight of God, should the world exist any longer, when the world, that is, humanity, will completely reject the purpose for which God has provided it with wandering on earth, when it chooses for this wandering a spontaneous goal, a goal devoid of meaning? This goal has already been chosen! With this goal, a short-term earthly life is taken for eternity, all the forces of soul and body are exhausted by a person not to prepare himself for eternity; they are exhausted, sacrificed to an unrealizable, absurd dream; they are exhausted to create the highest carnal well-being and bliss in an earthly inn, in our prison, as if in the most durable eternal dwelling. A false dream cruelly deceives its followers: it treats them like an inhuman tyrant, like a fierce demon. She is a demon! Nothing can be more evil than her, nothing can be more insidious, more deceitful than her. She is the mockery of fallen spirits over people. The disastrous dream flatters people throughout the entire path of earthly life; betrays them at the end of their lives, betrays them to reality, leaves them with nothing. They enter eternity, not at all prepared for it, not at all familiar with it. This is not enough: they enter into it having adopted a mood that is completely hostile to its spiritual benefits, to their own well-being in it. Where is the place beyond the boundaries of time for such chaff? There is and cannot be any other place for them in the universe than in the abyss of hell: there they must be hidden from the eyes of the universe. The monks of the Solovetsky Monastery convey the answer of the Monk Zosima, given by the elder to the disciples who asked him how to recognize the Antichrist when he comes? The monk said: “When you hear that Christ came to earth or appeared on earth, then know that this is the Antichrist.” The answer is the most accurate! The world, or humanity, will not recognize the Antichrist: it will recognize him as Christ, will proclaim him as Christ. Consequently, when the rumor spreads, spreads and intensifies about the coming of Christ, this will serve as a sure sign that the Antichrist has appeared and has begun to perform his predetermined and permitted service. The answer of St. Zosimas is based on the words of the Savior. The Savior of the world, introducing His disciples to the signs heralding His imminent second coming, said: “Then if anyone speaks to you; Behold, here is Christ, or here, do not have faith. If they tell you, “Behold, there is a place in the wilderness, do not come out; behold, in some secret compartment of the house,” do not have faith. Just as lightning comes from the east and appears to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:23–27; Luke 17:23–24). It will not be necessary and impossible for people to convey to each other the news of the coming of the Son of God. He will appear suddenly; He will appear by His omnipotence to all people and the whole earth at one time. The objection of scientists that it is not possible for the Son of God to appear at one time before all humanity due to the natural spherical structure of the earth has no place. If Almighty God brought both the earth and the whole world out of insignificance by His almighty and all-wise command, without being forced into a preliminary consultation with scientists, then will He not be able, for the same reason, by His unlimited power and wisdom, to appear to humanity at one time, even if the method for bringing this to fruition was inaccessible, as it should be, for all the scientists of the earth? “The Lord will come,” said Saint John of Damascus, “from heaven in the same way as the holy apostles saw Him ascending into heaven (Acts. 1:11); a perfect God and a perfect man will come, with glory and power. Let no one wait for Him from earth, but let everyone wait from heaven, as He Himself confirmed.”166 The Lord concluded the teaching about the end of the world and about His Second Coming with the following instruction and testament: “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be burdened with gluttony and drunkenness and the sorrows of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly: for a snare will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth” (Luke 21:34–35). In these words of the Lord, in this testament of the Lord, in this advice, in this commandment of His, carnal life and excess in earthly pursuits are forbidden, which all together transform a person from spiritual to carnal and material, makes him forget eternity and God, and leads to a fall into all sins. In a heart that is not protected and sealed by the remembrance of God and the fear of God, all passions conveniently enter; moral darkness enters into it, ignorance of God enters into it. For people who lead a carnal, sinful life, intoxicated and foggy by it, the coming of the Lord will come like a snare. This network will embrace all of humanity. There is no way for anyone to escape, to escape the net. Knowing this, we will remain in constant sobriety. By resorting to God with frequent, unceasing prayers filled with tenderness and tears, acquiring and supporting the Kingdom of God within ourselves by living according to the will of God, we will be able to get rid of the chains and snares of sin and the ruler of the world by God’s grace and power. We will be able, with good hope and spiritual notification of pardon and salvation, to appear before the impartial Judge, who has to pronounce a sentence on us that will decide our fate for eternity. Amen. Letters of George the Recluse of Zadonsk, book. 1, art. 62, ed. 1850 and St. Ephraim the Syrian. Word 106th. About the Antichrist An accurate exposition of the Orthodox faith, book. 4, ch. 26 You might be interested in: