Word VI

“«The Lord abides in all, He has prepared His own throne for judgment: and He himself will judge the world in righteousness, He will judge the peoples in uprightness» (Ps 9:8-9).”

On this present Sunday the Church has appointed a solemn remembrance and service concerning the dread future judgment of Christ upon the whole human race, which is to take place at the end of the world. And this judgment will come to pass soon, as the righteous Judge of all Himself testifies. See, I am coming soon, and My reward is with Me, to render to each according to his works (Apok 22:12). And nothing is more certain or more inescapable, nor more unalterable, than this truth: that there will be a universal judgment upon the human race, at which the fate of all men for all eternity will be finally decided. God is the Creator, the Lawgiver, and the King of every created thing, who has given unalterable laws to all creatures. By keeping these laws they exist and abide in well-being, but by transgressing them they suffer, decay, and are destroyed. Laws have been given to heaven and earth, to sun, moon, and stars. I have commanded all the stars (Is 45:12), and through their steadfast keeping of it they have existed in ordered array for so many thousands of years, proclaiming the glory of God. The heavens tell of the glory of God, and the work of His hands proclaims the firmament (Ps 18:2).

To man, the rational creation of God, the king of earthly creatures, the Creator has likewise given firm and unalterable laws, laid deep in the depths of his being, in his conscience and in his heart, and he is bound to keep them as the rule of his life, as a sacred and unalterable duty of the creature toward his Creator. On the keeping of these laws depended, and depends, the good of his life: nearness to the Creator, union with Him, peace, joy, immortality; while their transgression brought every kind of calamity—the breaking of union with the Creator, turmoil in soul and body, darkness, sorrow and distress, a curse, sicknesses, and death. Not long did the first humans remain faithful to God through keeping the commandment given them, and blessed in their union with Him. The union was treacherously broken, man sinned and threw into disorder the wondrous harmony of his God-like nature, corrupting mind, heart, and will, defiling conscience, falling into unpayable debts before his Creator, and subjecting himself to the fearsome judgment of God’s righteousness. The fearsome judgments of God began to be carried out upon the human race: at once Adam and Eve were the first to hear from the Creator Himself the fearsome sentence of curse and death and expulsion from the paradise of delight to till the earth; then the Lord condemned the first world of men to destruction by the flood; the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, to destruction by a rain of fire and brimstone; then there arose civil strife and bloody wars among nations, failed harvests, pestilences, earthquakes, as punishment for sins—and through all the ages, even to our own calamitous time, the Lord manifests His fearsome judgments upon nations, as upon individual persons.

Our present most bloody war with the pagans is also a righteous judgment of God for our sins. The nearness of the final, universal, dread judgment of God is hastened by the fearsome flood of evil upon the earth. At the present time every kind of unrighteousness covers the earth like a sea; human self-will knows no end, and the doors are thrown wide open to every delusion and vice. The laws of God are trampled underfoot; creatures have forgotten their Creator; sinful men, in their pride, have imagined themselves guiltless; defiled with every uncleanness, they have forgotten their own filth. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib (Is 1:3), but Christians have renounced their Christ, their Savior, who redeemed them by His own blood from the curse and from death.

From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no healthy place in society: the whole head is covered with sores, the whole heart has withered away; sores, marks, festering wounds, not cleansed and not bound up and not softened with oil. If the Lord of hosts had not left us a small remnant, we would have been just the same as Sodom, we would have become like Gomorrah… (Is 1:6-9). And these words of the prophet apply directly to our own time: Among the people one will be oppressed by another and each by his neighbor; the young man will insolently exalt himself over the elder, and the commoner over the nobleman (Is 3:5). Our young intelligentsia have perverted every social and educational order: they have taken upon themselves the business of politics and judgment, though called to it by no one; they have undertaken to judge their superiors, their teachers, the government, and all but the very tsars themselves; they have judged and condemned, with their leader Leo Tolstoy, the very universal and dread Judge, Christ God Himself, who is to come with glory to judge the living and the dead; they have boldly condemned the holy Church of Christ, not having defilement or blemish, or anything of such a kind (Eph 5:27), her teaching, her saving Mysteries, and the servants of Christ. Truly, the day of the coming of the fearsome Judge, for judgment upon all men, draws near, because the falling away from God foretold has already come, and the forerunner of the Antichrist, the son of perdition, has already appeared, who sets himself against and exalts himself above everything called God or held sacred; the mystery of lawlessness is already in operation, only it will not be brought to completion until he who now restrains is taken out of the midst—and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the spirit of His mouth, and will bring to nothing by the appearing of His coming, the one whose coming, by the working of Satan, will be with all manner of power and signs and false wonders, and with every unrighteous deception of those who are perishing because they did not receive the love of the truth for their own salvation. And for this God will send them the working of delusion, so that they will believe the lie (and they believe the liar Tolstoy), that all who did not believe the truth but loved unrighteousness may be condemned (2Thes 2:4,7-12).

Hear and read, unbelieving intelligentsia of our time, these words of the Holy Spirit: they concern you.

Behold, I am coming soon, and My reward is with Me, to render to each one according to his works (Apok 22:12). Amen.