1.) THE “CHARISMATIC REVIVAL” AS A SIGN OF THE TIMES

To the very end of this age there shall not be lacking Prophets of the Lord God, as also servants of satan. But in the last times those who truly will serve God will succeed in hiding themselves from men and will not perform in their midst signs and wonders as at the present time, but they will travel by a path of activity intermixed with humility, and in the Kingdom of Heaven they will be greater than the Fathers who have been glorified by signs. For at that time no one will perform before the eyes of men miracles which would inflame men and inspire them to strive with zeal for ascetic labors…​. Many, being possessed by ignorance, will fall into the abyss, going astray in the breadth of the broad and spacious path. —Prophecy of St. Niphon of Constantia, Cyprus

A.) A “Pentecost without Christ”

For Orthodox Christians present-day “tongues,” like those described in the New Testament, are also a “sign”; but now they are a sign, not of the beginning of the Gospel of salvation for all people, but of its end. The sober Orthodox Christian will not find it difficult to agree with the apologists of the “charismatic revival” that this new “outpouring of the spirit” may mean indeed that “the consummation of the age is at hand” (Fr. Eusebius Stephanou in Logos, April 1972, p. 3). Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils (I Tim. 4:1). In the last days we shall see the spirits of devils, working miracles (Apoc. 16:14).

The Holy Scriptures and Orthodox Fathers clearly tell us that the character of the last times will not at all be one of a great spiritual “revival,” of an “outpouring of the Holy Spirit,” but rather one of almost universal apostasy, of spiritual deception so subtle that the very elect, if that were possible, will be deceived, of the virtual disappearance of Christianity from the face of the earth. When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8). It is precisely in the last times that satan is to be loosed (Apoc. 20:3) in order to produce the final and greatest outpouring of evil upon the earth.

The “charismatic revival,” the product of a world without sacraments, without grace, a world thirsting for spiritual “signs” without being able to discern the spirits that give the signs, is itself a “sign” of these apostate times. The ecumenical movement itself remains always a movement of “good intentions” and feeble humanitarian “good deeds”; but when it is joined by a movement with “power,” indeed with all power and signs and lying wonders (II Thess. 2:9), then who will be able to stop it? The “charismatic revival” comes to the rescue of a floundering ecumenism, and pushes it on to its goal. And this goal, as we have seen, is not merely “Christian” in nature — the “refounding of the Church of Christ,” to use the blasphemous utterance of Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople — that is only the first step to a larger goal which lies entirely outside of Christianity: the establishment of the “spiritual unity” of all religions, of all mankind.

However, the followers of the “charismatic revival” believe their experience is “Christian”; they will have nothing to do with occultism and Eastern religions; and they doubtless reject outright the whole comparison in the preceding pages of the “charismatic revival” with spiritism. Now it is quite true that religiously the “charismatic revival” is on a higher level than spiritism, which is a product of quite gross credulity and superstition; that its techniques are more refined and its phenomena more plentiful and more easily obtained; and that its whole ideology gives the appearance of being “Christian” — not Orthodox, but something that is not far from Protestant fundamentalism with an added “ecumenical” coloring.

And yet we have seen that “charismatic” experience, and particularly the central experience of the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” is largely if not entirely a pagan experience, much closer to “spirit-possession” than to anything Christian. We know also that Pentecostalism was born on the fringes of sectarian “Christianity,” where very little remains of genuine Christian attitudes and beliefs, and that it was actually “discovered” as the result of a religious experiment, in which Christians do not participate. But it was not until quite recently that it was possible to find a clear testimony of the non-Christian character of “charismatic” experience in the words of a “charismatic” apologist. This apologist informs us that the experience of the “Baptism in the Holy Spirit” can indeed be had without Christ.

This writer tells the story of a person who had received the “Baptism” with speaking in tongues and was encouraging everyone to seek it. Yet he admitted that repentance had not been part of his experience and that not only had he not been delivered from sinful habits, but even had no particular desire to be delivered from them. The writer concludes: “A pentecost without repentance — a pentecost without Christ — that is what some are experiencing today…​. They have heard of tongues, they wish to identify with a status experience, so they seek someone to lay on hands for a quick, cheap, easy impartation which bypasses Christ and His Cross.” Nonetheless, this writer admits that speaking in tongues is undeniably “the initial consequence or confirmation” of the “Baptism in the Holy Spirit” (Harry Lunn, in Logos Journal, Nov.–Dec. 1971, pp. 44, 47).

Those who bring Christian ideas to the experience assume that the “Baptism in the Holy Spirit” is a Christian experience. But if it can be given to those who merely seek a cheap, easy status experience — then there is no necessary connection whatever between this experience and Christ. The very possibility of an experience of a “Pentecost without Christ” means that the experience in itself is not Christian at all; “Christians,” often sincere and well-meaning, are reading into the experience a Christian content which in itself it does not have.

Do we not have here the common denominator of “spiritual experience” which is needed for a new world religion? Is this not perhaps the key to the “spiritual unity” of mankind which the ecumenical movement has sought in vain?

B.) The “New Christianity”

There may be those who will doubt that the “charismatic revival” is a form of mediumism; that is only a secondary question of the means or technique by which the “spirit” of the “charismatic revival” is communicated. But that this “spirit” has nothing to do with Orthodox Christianity is abundantly clear. And in fact this “spirit” follows almost to the letter the “prophecies” of Nicholas Berdyaev concerning a “New Christianity.” It completely leaves behind the “monastic ascetic spirit of historical Orthodoxy,” which most effectively exposes its falsity. It is not satisfied with the “conservative Christianity which directs the spiritual forces of man only towards contrition and salvation,” but rather, apparently believing like Berdyaev that such a Christianity is still “incomplete,” adds a second level of “spiritual” phenomena, not one of which is specifically Christian in character (although one is free to interpret them as “Christian”), which are open to people of every denomination with or without repentance, and which are completely unrelated to salvation. It looks to “a new era in Christianity, a new and deep spirituality, which means a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit” — in complete contradiction of Orthodox tradition and prophecy.

This is truly a “New Christianity” — but the specifically “new” ingredient in this “Christianity” is nothing original or “advanced,” but merely a modern form of the devil’s age-old religion of shamanistic paganism. The Orthodox “charismatic” periodical The Logos recommends Nicholas Berdyaev as a “prophet” precisely because he was “the greatest theologian of spiritual creativeness” (Logos, March 1972, p. 8). And indeed, it is precisely the shamans of every primitive tribe who know how to get in contact with and utilize the primordial “creative” powers of the universe — those “spirits of earth and sky and sea” which the Church of Christ recognizes as demons, and in serving which it is indeed possible to attain to a “creative” ecstasy and joy (the “Nietzschean enthusiasm and ecstasy” to which Berdyaev felt so close) which are unknown to the weary and half-hearted “Christians” who fall for the “charismatic” deception. But there is no Christ here. God has forbidden contact with this “creative,” occult realm into which “Christians” have stumbled through ignorance and self-deception. The “charismatic revival” will have no need to enter a “dialogue with non-Christian religions,” because, under the name of “Christianity,” it is already embracing non-Christian religion and is itself becoming the new religion which Berdyaev foresaw, strangely combining “Christianity” and paganism.

The strange “Christian” spirit of the “charismatic revival” is clearly identified in the Holy Scriptures and the Orthodox Patristic tradition. According to these sources, world history will culminate in an almost superhuman “Christian” figure, the false messiah or antichrist. He will be “Christian” in the sense that his whole function and his very being will center on Christ, Whom he will imitate in every respect possible, and he will be not merely the greatest enemy of Christ, but in order to deceive Christians will appear to be Christ, come to earth for a second time and ruling from the restored Temple in Jerusalem. Let no one deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come except there come a falling away (apostasy) first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God…​even him whose coming is after the working of satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness (II Thess. 2:3–4, 9–12).

The Orthodox teaching concerning antichrist is a large subject in itself and cannot be presented here. But if, as the followers of the “charismatic revival” believe, the last days are indeed at hand, it is of crucial importance for the Orthodox Christian to be informed of this teaching concerning one who, as the Saviour Himself has told us, together with the “false prophets” of that time, shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect (Matt. 24:24). And the “elect” are certainly not those multitudes of people who are coming to accept the gross and most unscriptural delusion that “the world is on the threshold of a great spiritual awakening,” but rather the “little flock” to which alone our Saviour has promised: It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom (Luke 12:32). Even the true “elect” will be sorely tempted by the “great signs and wonders” of antichrist; but most “Christians” will accept him without any question, for his “New Christianity” is precisely what they seek.

C.) “Jesus is Coming Soon”

Just in the past few years, significantly, the figure of “Jesus” has been thrust into strange prominence in America. On stage and in films long-standing prohibitions against portraying the person of Christ have been abrogated. Sensationally popular musicals present blasphemous parodies of His life. The “Jesus Movement,” which is largely “charismatic” in orientation, spreads spectacularly among teenagers and young people. The crudest form of American popular music is “Christianized” at mass “Jesus-Rock Festivals,” and “Christian” tunes for the first time in the century become the most popular in the land. And underlying this whole strange conglomeration of sacrilege and absolutely unenlightened worldliness is the constantly reiterated expression of seemingly everyone’s expectation and hope: “Jesus is coming soon.”

In the midst of this psychic and “religious” devastation of the American land, a symptomatic “mystical” occurrence has been repeating itself in the lives of widely separated Americans. An editor of a “charismatic” magazine relates how he first encountered this occurrence as told by someone at a gathering of like-minded people:

“My friend and his wife were driving up to Boston on Route 3, when they stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. He was young and had a beard, but he wasn’t dressed like a hippie. He got in the back seat without saying much, and they drove on. After a while, he quietly said, ‘The Lord is coming soon.’ My friend and his wife were so startled that they each turned around to look at him. There was no one there. Badly shaken, they pulled into the first gas station they came to. They had to tell someone else, no matter what the reaction. As the attendant listened, he didn’t laugh. Instead, all he said was, ‘You’re the fifth car to come in here with that story.’ “As I listened, in spite of the hazy sunlight, a chill began to creep up my backbone. Yet that was only the beginning. One by one, around the circle, others were led to recount similar incidents, until there were six all told, across the length and breadth of the country, and all had taken place within the past two years” — in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Duluth (thirteen reports to the police in one night), New Orleans; sometimes the hitchhiker is a man, sometimes a woman. Later an Episcopalian priest told the editor of his own identical experience in upstate New York. To the editor, this all indicates that in fact ‘Jesus is coming soon’” (David Manuel, Jr., in Logos Journal, Jan.–Feb. 1972, p. 3).

The careful observer of the contemporary religious scene — especially in America, where the most popular religious currents have originated for over a century — cannot fail to notice a very decided air of chiliastic expectation. And this is not only true of “charismatic” circles, but even of the traditionalist or fundamentalist circles that have rejected the “charismatic revival.” Thus, many traditionalist Roman Catholics believe in the coming of a chiliastic “Age of Mary” before the end of the world, and this is only one variant on the more widespread Latin error of trying to “sanctify the world,” or, as Archbishop Thomas Connolly of Seattle expressed it fifteen years ago, “transforming the modern world into the Kingdom of God in preparation for His return.” Protestant evangelists such as Billy Graham, in their mistaken private interpretation of the Apocalypse, await the “millennium” when “Christ” will reign on earth. Other evangelists in Israel find that their millenarian interpretation of the “Messiah” is just what is needed to “prepare” the Jews for his coming.2 And the arch-fundamentalist Carl McIntire prepares to build a life-size replica of the Temple of Jerusalem in Florida (near Disneyworld!), believing that the time is at hand when the Jews will build the very “Temple to which the Lord Himself will return as He promised” (Christian Beacon, Nov. 11, 1971; Jan. 6, 1972). Thus, even anti-ecumenists find it possible to prepare to join the unrepentant Jews in welcoming the false messiah — antichrist — in contrast to the faithful remnant of Jews who will accept Christ as the Orthodox Church preaches Him, when the Prophet Elijah returns to earth.

It is therefore no great consolation for a sober Orthodox Christian who knows the Scriptural prophecies concerning the last days, when he is told by a “charismatic” Protestant minister that, “It’s glorious what Jesus can do when we open up to Him. No wonder people of all faiths are now able to pray together” (Harold Bredesen, in Logos Journal, Jan.–Feb. 1972, p. 24); or by a Catholic Pentecostal that the members of all the denominations now “begin to peer over those walls of separation only to recognize in each other the image of Jesus Christ” (Kevin Ranaghan in Logos Journal, Nov.–Dec. 1971, p. 21). Which “Christ” is this for whom an accelerated program of psychological and even physical preparation is now being made throughout the world? — Is this our true God and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who founded the Church wherein men may find salvation? Or is it the false Christ who will come in his own name (John 5:43) and unite all who reject or pervert the teaching of the one Church of Christ, the Orthodox Church?

Our Saviour Himself has warned us: Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is the Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Behold I have told you beforehand. If therefore they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the wilderness, go not forth; Behold, he is in the inner chambers, believe it not. For as the lightning cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west, so shall be the coming of the Son of man (Matt. 24:23–27).

The Second Coming of Christ will be unmistakable: it will be sudden, from heaven (Acts 1:11), and it will mark the end of this world. There can be no “preparation” for it — save only the Orthodox Christian preparation of repentance, spiritual life, and watchfulness. Those who are “preparing” for it in any other way, who say that he is anywhere “here” — especially “here” in the Temple of Jerusalem — or who preach that “Jesus is coming soon” without warning of the great deception that is to precede His Coming: are clearly the prophets of antichrist, the false Christ who must come first and deceive the world, including all “Christians” who are not or do not become truly Orthodox. There is to be no future “millennium.” For those who can receive it, the “millennium” of the Apocalypse (Apoc. 20:6) is now; the life of grace in the Orthodox Church for the whole “thousand years” between the First Coming of Christ and the time of antichrist. 3 That Protestants should expect the “millennium” in the future is only their confession that they do not live in it in the present — that is, that they are outside the Church of Christ and have not tasted of Divine grace.

D.) Must Orthodoxy Join the Apostasy?

Today some Orthodox priests, led by Fr. Eusebius Stephanou, would try to persuade us that the “charismatic revival,” even though it began and mostly continues outside the Orthodox Church, is nonetheless “Orthodox,” and we are even warned, “Don’t be left out.” But no one who has studied this movement in the works of its leading representatives, many of whom have been quoted above, can have any doubt that this “revival,” in so far as it is “Christian” at all, is entirely Protestant in its origin, inspiration, intent, practice, “theology,” and end. It is a form of Protestant “revivalism,” which is a phenomenon that preserves only a fragment of anything genuinely Christian, substituting for Christianity an emotional “religious” hysteria whose victim falls into the fatal delusion that he is “saved.” If the “charismatic revival” differs from Protestant revivalism, it is only in adding a new dimension of crypto-spiritistic phenomena which are more spectacular and more objective than mere subjective revivalism.

This evident fact is only strikingly confirmed by an examination of what Fr. Eusebius Stephanou tries to pass off for an “Orthodox awakening” in his periodical The Logos.

This Orthodox priest informs his readers that “the Orthodox Church is not sharing in the modern-day Christian awakening” (Feb. 1972, p. 19). He himself now travels about holding Protestant-like revival meetings, together with the Protestant “altar call,” which is accompanied by the usual revivalistic “sobs and tears” (April 1972, p. 4). Fr. Eusebius himself with typical revivalistic immodesty, informs us that “I thank and praise God for shedding some of the light of His Spirit into my soul in response to the unceasing prayers I have been sending up night and day” (Feb. 1972, p. 19); and later he openly declares himself to be a “prophet” (April 1972, p. 3). He mentions nothing whatever of the Orthodox interpretation of apocalyptic events, and yet he repeats Billy Graham’s fundamentalist Protestant interpretation of the “Rapture” that is to precede the “millennium”: “The Great Tribulation day approaches. If we remain true to Christ we will surely be caught up to be with Him at the sound of the glad rapture-shout, and we will be spared the horrible destruction which is to fall upon the world” 4 (April 1972, p. 22). And yet not even all fundamentalists are agreed on this error,5 which has no foundation in Holy Scripture 6 and removes from those who follow it all necessity for watchfulness against the deceit of antichrist, from which they imagine they will be spared.

All of this is not even pseudo-Orthodoxy; it is just plain Protestantism, and not even the best kind of Protestantism.One looks in vain in the Logos of Fr. Eusebius Stephanou for an indication that his “awakening” is inspired by the sources of the Orthodox ascetic tradition: the Lives of Saints, the Holy Fathers, the Church’s cycle of services, the Orthodox interpretation of Holy Scripture. Some Orthodox “charismatics,” it is true, make use of some of these sources — but alas! they mix them together with “many other books written by devout Christians involved with the Charismatic movement,” (Logos, March 1972, p. 16) and thus read them “charismatically”: like all sectarians, reading into Orthodox writings what they have learned from their new teaching, which comes from outside the Church.

It is true enough, to be sure, that an Orthodox awakening would be much to be desired in our days, when many Orthodox Christians have lost the salt of true Christianity, and the true and fervent Orthodox Christian life is indeed rarely to be seen. Modern life has become too comfortable; worldly life has become too attractive; for too many, Orthodoxy has become simply a matter of membership in a church organization or the “correct” fulfillment of external rites and practices. There would be need enough for a true Orthodox spiritual awakening, but this is not what we see in the Orthodox “charismatics.” Just like the “charismatic” activists among Protestants and Roman Catholics, they are fully in harmony with the spirit of the times; they are not in living contact with the sources of the Orthodox spiritual tradition, preferring the currently fashionable Protestant techniques of revivalism. They are one with the leading current of today’s apostate “Christianity”: the ecumenical movement. Early in 1978 Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Archdiocese of North and South America finally gave his official approval to the activities of Fr. Eusebius Stephanou, including permission for him to preach everywhere specifically on the “gifts of the Holy Spirit”; thus the church organization in its most modernist and ecumenist figure joins hands with the “charismatic revival,” reflecting the deep kinship that unites them. But true Christianity is not there.

There have been true Orthodox “awakenings” in the past: one thinks immediately of St. Cosmas of Aitolia, who walked from village to village in 18th-century Greece and inspired the people to return to the true Christianity of their ancestors; or St. John of Kronstadt in our own century, who brought the age-old message of Orthodox spiritual life to the urban masses of Petersburg. Then there are the Orthodox monastic instructors who were truly “Spirit-filled” and left their teaching to the monastics as well as the laymen of the latter times: one thinks of the Greek St. Symeon the New Theologian in the 10th century, and the Russian St. Seraphim of Sarov in the 19th. St. Symeon is badly misused by the Orthodox “charismatics” (he was speaking of a Spirit different from theirs!); and St. Seraphim is invariably quoted out of context in order to minimize his emphasis on the necessity to belong to the Orthodox Church to have a true spiritual life. In the “Conversation” of St. Seraphim with the layman Motovilov on the “acquisition of the Holy Spirit” (which the Orthodox “charismatics” quote without the parts here italicized), this great Saint tells us: “The grace of the Holy Spirit which was given to us all, the faithful of Christ, in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, is sealed by the Sacrament of Chrismation on the chief parts of the body, as appointed by the Holy Church, the eternal keeper of this grace.” And again: “The Lord listens equally to the monk and the simple Christian layman, provided that both are Orthodox.”

As opposed to the true Orthodox spiritual life, the “charismatic revival” is only the experiential side of the prevailing “ecumenical” fashion — a counterfeit Christianity that betrays Christ and His Church. No Orthodox “charismatic” could possibly object to the coming “Union” with those very Protestants and Roman Catholics with whom, as the interdenominational “charismatic” song goes, they are already “one in the Spirit, one in the Lord,” and who have led them and inspired their “charismatic” experience. The “spirit” that has inspired the “charismatic revival” is the spirit of antichrist, or more precisely, those “spirits of devils” of the last times whose “miracles” prepare the world for the false messiah.

E.) “Little Children, It is the Last Hour”

(I John 2:18)

Unknown to the fevered Orthodox “revivalists,” the Lord God has preserved in the world, even as in the days of Elijah the Prophet, seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal (Rom. 11:4) — an unknown number of true Orthodox Christians who are neither spiritually dead, as the Orthodox “charismatics” complain that their flocks have been, nor pompously “spirit-filled,” as these same flocks become under “charismatic” suggestion. They are not carried away by the movement of apostasy nor by any false “awakening,” but continue rooted in the holy and saving Faith of Holy Orthodoxy in the tradition the Holy Fathers have handed down to them, watching the signs of the times and travelling the narrow path to salvation. Many of them follow the bishops of the few Orthodox churches that have taken strong stands against the apostasy of our times. But there are some left in other Orthodox churches also, grieving over the ever more evident apostasy of their hierarchs and striving somehow to keep their own Orthodoxy intact; and there are still others outside of the Orthodox Church who by God’s grace, their hearts being open to His call, will undoubtedly yet be joined to genuine Holy Orthodoxy. These “seven thousand” are the foundation of the future and only Orthodoxy of the latter times.

And outside of genuine Orthodoxy the darkness only grows.

Judging from the latest “religious” news, the “charismatic revival” may well be only the faint beginning of a whole “age of miracles.” Many Protestants who have discerned the fraud of the “charismatic revival” now accept as “the real thing” the spectacular “revival” in Indonesia where, we are told, there are really occurring “the selfsame things that one finds reported in the Acts of the Apostles.” In the space of three years 200,000 pagans have been converted to Protestantism under constantly miraculous conditions: No one does anything except in absolute obedience to the “voices” and “angels” who are constantly appearing, usually quoting Scripture by number and verse; water is turned into wine every time the Protestant communion service comes around; detached hands appear from nowhere to distribute miraculous food to the hungry; a whole band of demons is seen to abandon a pagan village because a “more powerful” one (“Jesus”) has come to take their place; “Christians” have a “countdown” for an unrepentant sinner, and when they come to “zero” he dies; children are taught new Protestant hymns by voices that come from nowhere (and repeat the song twenty times so the children will remember); “God’s tape-recorder” records the song of a children’s choir and plays it back in the air for the astonished children; fire comes down from the sky to consume Catholic religious images (“the Lord” in Indonesia is very anti-Catholic); 30,000 have been healed; “Christ” appears in the sky and “falls” on people in order to heal them; people are miraculously transported from place to place and walk on water; lights accompany evangelists and guide them at night, and clouds follow them and give them shelter during the day; the dead are raised. Interestingly, in some parts of the Indonesian “revival” the element of “speaking in tongues” is almost totally absent and is even forbidden (although it is present in many places), and the element of mediumism seems sometimes to be replaced by a direct intervention of fallen spirits. It may well be that this new “revival,” more powerful than Pentecostalism, is a more developed stage of the same “spiritual” phenomenon (just as Pentecostalism itself is more advanced than spiritism) and heralds the imminence of the dreadful day when, as the “voices” and “angels” in Indonesia also proclaim, “the Lord” is to come — for we know that antichrist will prove to the world that he is “Christ” by just such “miracles.” In an age of almost universal darkness and deception, when for most “Christians” Christ has become precisely what Orthodox teaching means by antichrist, the Orthodox Church of Christ alone possesses and communicates the grace of God. This is a priceless treasure the very existence of which is not so much as suspected even by the “Christian” world. The “Christian” world, indeed, joins hands with the forces of darkness in order to seduce the faithful of the Church of Christ, blindly trusting that the “name of Jesus” will save them even in their apostasy and blasphemy, mindless of the fearful warning of the Lord: Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity (Matt. 7:22–23).

St. Paul continues his warning about the coming of antichrist with this command: Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle (II Thess. 2:15). There be some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be anathema. As we said before, so say I now again: If any preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be anathema (Gal. 1:8–9).

The Orthodox answer to every new “revival,” and even to the final terrible “revival” of antichrist, is this Gospel of Christ, which the Orthodox Church alone has preserved unchanged in an unbroken line from Christ and His Apostles, and the grace of the Holy Spirit which the Orthodox Church alone communicates, and only to her faithful children, who have received in Chrismation, and kept, the true seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

2.) THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

It is deeply indicative of the spiritual state of contemporary mankind that the “charismatic” and “meditation” experiences are taking root among “Christians.” An Eastern religious influence is undeniably at work in such “Christians,” but it is only as a result of something much more fundamental: the loss of the very feeling and savor of Christianity, due to which something so alien to Christianity as Eastern “meditation” can take hold of “Christian” souls.

The life of self-centeredness and self-satisfaction lived by most of today’s “Christians” is so all-pervading that it effectively seals them off from any understanding at all of spiritual life; and when such people do undertake “spiritual life,” it is only as another form of self-satisfaction. This can be seen quite clearly in the totally false religious ideal both of the “charismatic” movement and the various forms of “Christian meditation”: all of them promise (and give very quickly) an experience of “contentment” and “peace.” But this is not the Christian ideal at all, which if anything may be summed up as a fierce battle and struggle. The “contentment” and “peace” described in these contemporary “spiritual” movements are quite manifestly the product of spiritual deception, of spiritual self-satisfaction — which is the absolute death of the God-oriented spiritual life. All these forms of “Christian meditation” operate solely on the psychic level and have nothing whatever in common with Christian spirituality. Christian spirituality is formed in the arduous struggle to acquire the eternal Kingdom of Heaven, which fully begins only with the dissolution of this temporal world, and the true Christian struggler never finds repose even in the foretastes of eternal blessedness which might be vouchsafed to him in this life; but the Eastern religions, to which the Kingdom of Heaven has not been revealed, strive only to acquire psychic states which begin and end in this life.

In our age of apostasy preceding the manifestation of antichrist, the devil has been loosed for a time (Apoc. 20:7) to work the false miracles which he could not work during the “thousand years” of Grace in the Church of Christ (Apoc. 20:3), and to gather in his hellish harvest of those souls who “received not the love of the truth” (II Thess. 2:10).We can tell that the time of antichrist is truly near by the very fact that this satanic harvest is now being reaped not merely among the pagan peoples, who have not heard of Christ, but even more among “Christians” who have lost the savor of Christianity. It is of the very nature of antichrist to present the kingdom of the devil as if it were of Christ. The present-day “charismatic” movement and “Christian meditation,” and the “new religious consciousness” of which they are part, are forerunners of the religion of the future, the religion of the last humanity, the religion of antichrist, and their chief “spiritual” function is to make available to Christians the demonic initiation hitherto restricted to the pagan world. Let it be that these “religious experiments” are still often of a tentative and groping nature, that there is in them at least as much psychic self-deception as there is a genuinely demonic initiation rite; doubtless not everyone who has successfully “meditated” or thinks he has received the “Baptism of the Spirit” has actually received initiation into the kingdom of satan. But this is the aim of these “experiments,” and doubtless the techniques of initiation will become ever more efficient as mankind becomes prepared for them by the attitudes of passivity and openness to new “religious experiences” which are inculcated by these movements.

What has brought humanity — and indeed “Christendom” — to this desperate state? Certainly it is not any overt worship of the devil, which is limited always to a few people; rather, it is something much more subtle, and something fearful for a conscious Orthodox Christian to reflect on: it is the loss of the grace of God, which follows on the loss of the savor of Christianity.

In the West, to be sure, the grace of God was lost many centuries ago. Roman Catholics and Protestants today have not fully tasted of God’s grace, and so it is not surprising that they should be unable to discern its demonic counterfeit. But alas! The success of counterfeit spirituality even among Orthodox Christians today reveals how much they also have lost the savor of Christianity and so can no longer distinguish between true Christianity and pseudo-Christianity. For too long have Orthodox Christians taken for granted the precious treasure of their Faith and neglected to put into use the pure gold of its teachings. How many Orthodox Christians even know of the existence of the basic texts of Orthodox spiritual life, which teach precisely how to distinguish between genuine and counterfeit spirituality, texts which give the life and teaching of holy men and women who attained an abundant measure of God’s grace in this life? How many have made their own the teaching of the Lausiac History, the Ladder of St. John, the Homilies of St. Macarius, the Lives of the God-bearing Fathers of the desert, Unseen Warfare, St. John of Kronstadt’s My Life in Christ?

In the Life of the great Father of the Egyptian desert, St. Paisius the Great (June 19), we may see a shocking example of how easy it is to lose the grace of God. Once a disciple of his was walking to a city in Egypt to sell his handiwork. On the way he met a Jew who, seeing his simplicity, began to deceive him, saying: “O beloved, why do you believe in a simple, crucified Man, when He was not at all the awaited Messiah? Another is to come, but not He.” The disciple, being weak in mind and simple in heart, began to listen to these words and allowed himself to say: “Perhaps what you say is correct.” When he returned to the desert, St. Paisius turned away from him and would not speak a single word to him. Finally, after the disciple’s long entreaty, the Saint said to him: “Who are you? I do not know you. This disciple of mine was a Christian and had upon him the grace of Baptism, but you are not such a one; if you are actually my disciple, then the grace of Baptism has left you and the image of a Christian has been removed.” The disciple with tears related his conversation with the Jew, to which the Saint replied: “O wretched one! What could be worse and more foul than such words, by which you renounced Christ and His divine Baptism? Now go and weep over yourself as you wish, for you have no place with me; your name is written with those who have renounced Christ, and together with them you will receive judgment and torments.” On hearing this judgment the disciple was filled with repentance, and at his entreaty the Saint shut himself up and prayed to the Lord to forgive his disciple this sin. The Lord heard the Saint’s prayer and granted him to behold a sign of His forgiveness of the disciple. The Saint then warned the disciple: “O child, give glory and thanksgiving to Christ God together with me, for the unclean, blasphemous spirit has departed from you, and in his place the Holy Spirit has descended upon you, restoring to you the grace of Baptism. And so, guard yourself now, lest out of sloth and carelessness the nets of the enemy should fall upon you again and, having sinned, you should inherit the fire of gehenna.”

Significantly, it is among “ecumenical Christians” that the “charismatic” and “meditation” movements have taken root. The characteristic belief of the heresy of ecumenism is this: that the Orthodox Church is not the one true Church of Christ; that the grace of God is present also in other “Christian” denominations, and even in non-Christian religions; that the narrow path of salvation according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church is only “one path among many” to salvation; and that the details of one’s belief in Christ are of little importance, as is one’s membership in any particular church. Not all the Orthodox participants in the ecumenical movement believe this entirely (although Protestants and Roman Catholics most certainly do); but by their very participation in this movement, including invariably common prayer with those who believe wrongly about Christ and His Church, they tell the heretics who behold them: “Perhaps what you say is correct,” even as the wretched disciple of St. Paisius did. No more than this is required for an Orthodox Christian to lose the grace of God; and what labor it will cost for him to gain it back!

How much, then, must Orthodox Christians walk in the fear of God, trembling lest they lose His grace, which by no means is given to everyone, but only to those who hold the true Faith, lead a life of Christian struggle, and treasure the grace of God which leads them heavenward. And how much more cautiously must Orthodox Christians walk today above all, when they are surrounded by a counterfeit Christianity that gives its own experiences of “grace” and the “Holy Spirit” and can abundantly quote the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers to “prove” it! Surely the last times are near, when there will come spiritual deception so persuasive as to deceive, if it were possible, even the very elect (Matt. 24:24).

The false prophets of the modern age, including many who are officially “Orthodox,” ever more loudly announce the approaching advent of the “new age of the Holy Spirit,” the “New Pentecost,” the “Omega Point.” This is precisely what, in genuine Orthodox prophecy, is called the reign of antichrist. It is in our own times, today, that this satanic prophecy is beginning to be fulfilled, with demonic power. The whole contemporary spiritual atmosphere is becoming charged with the power of a demonic initiation experience as the “Mystery of Iniquity” enters its next-to-last stage and begins to take possession of the souls of men — indeed, to take possession of the very Church of Christ, if that were possible.

Against this powerful “religious experience” true Orthodox Christians must now arm themselves in earnest, becoming fully conscious of what Orthodox Christianity is and how its goal is different from that of all other religions, “Christian” or non-Christian. Orthodox Christians! Hold fast to the grace which you have; never let it become a matter of habit; never measure it by merely human standards or expect it to be logical or comprehensible to those who understand nothing higher than what is human or who think to obtain the grace of the Holy Spirit in some other way than that which the one Church of Christ has handed down to us. True Orthodoxy by its very nature must seem totally out of place in these demonic times, a dwindling minority of the despised and “foolish,” in the midst of a religious “revival” inspired by another kind of spirit. But let us take comfort from the certain words of our Lord Jesus Christ: Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom (Luke 12:32).

Let all true Orthodox Christians strengthen themselves for the battle ahead, never forgetting that in Christ the victory is already ours. He has promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church (Matt. 16:18), and that for the sake of the elect He will cut short the days of the last great tribulation (Matt. 24:22). And in truth, If God be for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31). Even in the midst of the cruelest temptations, we are commanded to be of good cheer; I have overcome the world (John 16:33). Let us live, even as true Christians of all times have lived, in expectation of the end of all things and the coming of our dear Saviour; for He that giveth testimony of these things saith: Surely I come quickly. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus (Apoc. 22:20).