– If Jesus appeared among us now, would you be able to recognize Him and recognize Him – not because I know that it is Him, but precisely because it is Him? For it is of this kind of adventurers that Christ said, "Many will come in my name," saying, "It is I," and he warned, "Do not go after them." The second coming of Christ will be evident to all mankind: as lightning flashing from one end of heaven shines to the other end of heaven, so will the Son of Man be in His day. And, besides, there will still be the Antichrist before that. Therefore, if you want to find out whether the time of the Apocalypse has come or not, I give a very simple advice: watch NTV.The fact is that, from the point of view of Judaism, the coming of the Messiah into the world cannot be hidden. It must be a world ruler, the ruler of Israel, who will give the people of Israel power over the whole world. Jesus did not do this. Therefore, the Jews for the most part did not accept Him. Accordingly, the one whom the Jews accept as their Christ will have to meet their expectations. He must be a successful politician who has made his career magnificently. He must be the ruler of the globe, but at the same time of Jewish origin. He should be crowned by the Israelis - but on the site where the Muslim shrine is now located - the Mosque of Omar, because of which all these military conflicts in the Middle East are now taking place. So, first the Mosque of Omar will be blown up, then the Temple of Solomon will be built in its place, then the king of Israel will be crowned there, and, of course, this king will be shown on all TV channels... I assure you, all this will not remain hidden.In the 20s, there was a wonderful story. Russian emigrants rented one of the apartments of a multi-storey building for a church - it was not possible to buy a separate building. At first, everything was calm, the quiet reading of the Psalter, the canon, the akathist... And then came Easter. And this is a night service, everyone shouts: "Christ is risen!" The neighbors, of course, were not allowed to sleep all night. And the indignant neighbors in the morning begin to collect signatures demanding the closure of this church. They collect signatures from all the residents and remember: a rabbi also lives in this entrance, and this is important: the rabbi is a clergyman himself, authoritative in the mayor's office, so it is necessary that he also signs. And these organizers of the protest action come to the rabbi, ask him to sign, and he says: "I will not sign." He is asked: "How? Didn't they disturb you tonight?" He said: "They interfered." – "Didn't you hear how they were shouting and yelling?" – "I heard." – "So what, won't you protest against this?" The wise rabbi replied, "If I were sure that I had found the Messiah, I would shout even louder." This is a characteristic feature of Judaism: if they are sure that they have found the Messiah, they will shout about it to the whole world. And of course, they will show it on television. That is why I say: watch NTV – there you will be shown the whole procedure on-line.Therefore, I do not intend to look for Christ among the listeners in this hall. Moreover, I have the experience of talking with "Christ". I talked with him for three whole hours – this was Comrade Vissarion from Siberia. It was an interesting conversation, I described it in the book "Gifts and Anathemas", in the chapter "Is the New Testament Obsolete". This is the favorite argument of all sects: just as the priests of the Old Testament did not recognize Christ and crucified Him, so you now deny ... then, at will, someone is added: Roerich, Vissarion, Moon, Hubbard, and so on and so forth. As they say, add to taste, cross out the unnecessary ... Lux. 21, 8; cf. Matt. 24, 5; Mk. 13, 6.– Ed. ^Lux. 21, 8.– Ed. ^Lux. 17, 24.– Ed. ^

Answer 37

– The Church affirms its succession from Old Testament Israel. In the Old Testament Israel, God promised the Messiah – Christ. The entire history and religion of Israel and the Jews was (and still is) built on this. But why didn't those who were simply obliged to recognize Him as the promised Messiah two thousand years ago recognize in Jesus of Nazareth?—This is probably the main mystery of the Gospel, and it must be understood precisely as a mystery. By and large, the Jews are not to blame for not recognizing Christ. Do not confuse the guilt of those who cried out to Pilate: crucify Him! [1], and those who simply passed by. These are different states of the soul.The Apostle Paul says that no one can call Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3). You see, here is Yeshua Ha Nozri walking down the street of Jerusalem, and it is impossible to recognize this carpenter and wandering preacher as the Creator of the universe, although you can know the Bible by heart, skillfully "juggle" quotations from it and know by heart all the prophecies about the coming Messiah, as many Jews knew them. Only if God reveals to you by His Spirit that Jesus is Lord, that Jesus is the Christ, only in this case can you know Him.This grace-filled gift of knowing Himself is given only by God Himself, so it depended on God whom He would call to the apostleship and whom He would not. Remember in the Old Testament: the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he ceased to see obvious things and did not want to let the Jews leave Egypt [2]. What was obvious to Moses and the Israelites was not obvious to Pharaoh. It is fashionable for sectarians today to say, "Behold, you churchmen have been pharized, and if Christ came to earth today, you would also crucify Him." You know, I am deeply convinced that this is so, only there is nothing anti-church in this. First of all, it is very important to realize that the events that took place in the Gospel happened to each of us: Christ suffers not for the sins of the Jews, but for my sins. And secondly, if Christ came to earth now with the same purpose as two thousand years ago, that is, to suffer, then if this is His purpose, then this would certainly happen. He would blind the minds of yours, mine, the bishops, and so forth, if His task was to suffer. On the other hand, we know that the second coming of Christ to earth will be glorious, and, accordingly, the above argument will no longer be valid.One priest from the Vyatka diocese told me the following episode from his biography. When he was a first-grader, he often read the Gospel to his grandmother (she was very weak: she could not see well and could hardly walk). And then one day during Passion Week, when he was reading to her the chapters devoted to the trial of Christ and His crucifixion, my grandmother suddenly got up from her chair with the last of her strength, turned to the icons, crossed herself and said: "Lord, glory to Thee that Thou didst not come to us, to the Russians, otherwise what a disgrace it would be for the whole world." the correct experience of the Gospel. We have no right to point fingers and say, "They did it, and we would have done it differently." They had no choice, because the choice comes when the Lord reveals in your heart the knowledge of who Christ is, and then you make a choice between the old and the new. And if you do not see this new thing, if you have not yet been given such grace-filled knowledge, then you continue to roll along the track of the Old Testament. 15, 13, 14; Lux. 23, 21; In. 19, 6, 15.– Ed. ^See: Exod. 10, 27; 11, 10.– Ed. ^

Answer 38

– It turns out that those who justify Judas' betrayal by God's predestination are right?– No, the situation with Judas is completely different. He committed a conscious sin because he had a choice. After all, Judas had already come to the apostleship, a lot had already been revealed to him, so his position was very different from that of an ordinary resident of the Jerusalem suburbs, who had only heard something about Jesus somewhere, or had glimpsed Him in the crowd. But the twelve disciples of Jesus, including Judas, knew who their Master was, they knew that He was Lord and Christ, and they could choose. Another thing is that until the moment of the Resurrection they did not understand His plan for salvation.Professor Tareev of the pre-revolutionary Moscow Theological Academy had an interesting version about Judas. He believed that Judas acted as a provocateur-reagent, that is, he believed that Jesus was the Christ and the true God, but he was confused that for some reason Jesus was hiding and did not publicly declare Himself the Messiah, did not take earthly power into His hands. And then Judas tried to create a situation in which Jesus would have to take power in Israel into His own hands, that is, he tried to put Jesus in a situation in which He would have a choice: either death or a coup. So, in Tareev's opinion, it was a betrayal for the sake of the exaltation of the One Whom Judas betrayed.

Answer 39

– Why did Christ nowhere directly call Himself God? Probably, this would have greatly facilitated His mission to save people, maybe in this case Him would have been immediately accepted and recognized by everyone?– In the Gospel it is said more than once that the Jews asked Christ to show them some sign from heaven: give it to us, and we will believe that You are the Messiah [1]. But to follow this path for Christ would mean to accept what Satan offered Him in the wilderness [2].And without miracles – if Jesus had said directly that He was God, the Jews would have completely stopped listening to Him, because from the point of view of the Jews He was already a blasphemer who stole Divine glory. And pagans would probably agree to accept Jesus as God, but such an agreement would only mean that in their eyes He became one of the thousands of gods in the Greco-Roman pantheon.For example, today's Buddhists or Hindus accept Christ, but this does not affect their religious life in any way. For them, Christ is one of the hundreds of deities in their home "pantheon".And most importantly: Christ did not come to collect a tribute of respect and reverence from people. He came to die for us. And in order to be executed, one does not have to be adored. 12, 38; 16, 1; Mk. 8, 11.– Ed. ^See: Matt. 4, 1–11.– Ed. ^

Answer 40

– When did you first realize that you believe in Christ not just as a moral teacher who lived two thousand years ago, but as a God on Whom your whole life depends? – For me, these were two different moments: first came faith in Christ as God (Creator, Savior, coming Judge), and only then – faith in Christ as the Almighty, on Whom my life depends here and now. it happened when I was eighteen years old. At that time I was "sick" of the work of F.M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov" and there I was very struck by the legend of the Grand Inquisitor. You could say that it was a turning point in my life. The fact is that in the legend of the Grand Inquisitor, all the philosophical problems that I was thinking about at that time miraculously converged. Everything that frightened me in my life at that time was concentrated in the words of the Grand Inquisitor. I suddenly realized that the temptations in the wilderness that Satan had offered to Christ were extremely capacious temptations that encompassed all of Satan's activities in the world and fully characterized him. And so I agreed with the characterization that Dostoevsky gave to this Gospel character: "a superhumanly intelligent and evil spirit." The realization of Christ as the Savior came. The feeling of inner emptiness has passed, the light in the window has shimmered.But, all the same, on my part, it was only a kind of philosophical acceptance of Christ. It was much more difficult to start praying, and this happened a little later, and I was baptized almost a year after these events. And even when I was baptized, I had great difficulty forcing myself to cross myself publicly in church or to bow down with the grandmothers who were standing there. Moreover, a year after the Baptism, at some Marxist lecture, when the lecturer was smashing idealists, I realized with horror that he was actually talking about me. It was very difficult to realize that I had become an idealist, so deep were the roots of the Marxist leaven in my subconscious. You see, the peculiarity of youthful faith lies in the fact that it does not ask for anything, it simply rejoices in the fact that God exists. There are no sores yet, there are no hopeless life situations and, therefore, you can come to God without bargaining, without begging for "humanitarian aid". Therefore, for the first time, I began to relate to Christ not just as the Creator and the coming Judge, but as the Almighty, on Whom my life depends here and now, only when I began to pray that the Lord would help me enter the seminary.

Answer 41

– Why is the Holy Scriptures so little used in the practice of Orthodox missionary work, are we not too carried away by oral Tradition? – I think that the practice of Orthodox missionary work has nothing to do with it. The Apostle Paul spoke of the saints as a cloud of witnesses (cf. Heb. 12:1). But in the minds of some people, this cloud thickens to such an extent that it obscures the sun, that is, Christ Himself.For example, I was sad to see that in our Church, in fact, the two thousand years of the Nativity of Christ have not been celebrated in any way. No, they officially held several concerts, banquets and so on. But there was no missionary surge in this regard. There was no series of Christological publications. Christ did not become the main topic of our sermons in 2000 either. Was at least one book about Christ written and published at that time? Only a few art albums... This means that the theme of Christ is not something that inspires the teachers of our theological schools. Only at St. Tikhon's Theological Institute did the jubilee collection appear. But even there were only translations of the Fathers and Western theologians, plus a couple of works by young people. But the editors appealed to the teachers of the institute in advance: "Fathers, write, cook," but few were inspired. For some reason, I am convinced that if a different theme had been chosen for the collection – for example, the Way of the Cross of the Royal Family – then the collection would have turned out to be four times thicker. During a sermon, a priest can tear himself away from a piece of paper for a while in order to share his personal impressions, for example, from a pilgrimage to some monastery, he can even share his experiences of what happened "yesterday at the service." But just as it is rare in our churches to see a priest, in the same way, at the demand of his heart, suddenly turn to the Gospel text about Christ (regardless of the fact that this passage was not read at the service today) and say: "Here, listen, what interpretation I found in such and such a holy father about such and such an act of Christ, about such and such a word of His." who did not have an icon of Christ in their home iconostasis. Or rather, He was present, but only as a Child in the arms of the Mother of God. In the center of the red corner, either the oldest or most expensive icon, or the largest, or the image of the most revered saint in the given family was placed. If there was still a place for the image of Christ, then somewhere far from the center, and the size of this image was much inferior to the size of many other icons. The main thing is to pray in front of icons, and not to think about their size, but still I believe that such icon corners are an external manifestation of some kind of internal disorder. Sacred painting has its own laws developed over the centuries, and one of them clearly states that the size of the characters on the icon is hierarchical, that is, the larger the character in size, the more significant his status is. Therefore, looking at modern home iconostasis, one can even visibly see an example of how Christ in the minds of people is diminished before the saints, who, in fact, are called saints only because they have laid their entire lives at the feet of Christ. Look at the apocrypha. If in the first millennium of the history of Christianity they revolved around the events of the Old Testament and the Gospel, that is, albeit distorted, but still concentrated around the person of Christ (the Gospel of the childhood of Jesus, and so on), then the modern apocrypha do not even mention Christ. They tell about Seraphim of Sarov, Blessed Matrona, John of Kronstadt. Even folklore has changed the theme for its work... In the final document of the Third All-Church Congress of Orthodox Missionaries (autumn 2002), a sad and true phrase was said: it was recognized as necessary to "restore the Christocentricity of the Church's consciousness" [1]. But if something needs to be restored, it means that this something has already been lost somewhere http://www.russian-orthodox-church.org.ru/nr211121.htm. ^

Answer 42

– Do you think there is a need for a good fiction book about Christ, similar to Father Alexander Men's Son of Man, but more Orthodox?– You know, now people's thirst to hear about the Gospel and Christ is so great that it was a surprise for me to see the reaction of people when I began to give a lecture to the public on the problems of textual criticism of the Gospel (manuscripts, the history of their discovery, discrepancies in the texts, and so on). This is a purely seminary lecture, and I always thought that ordinary people would not be interested in delving into the problems of finding papyri. So, the reaction to these topics was absolutely unexpected for me. From time to time I interrupted the lecture and asked whether it was necessary to delve further into textual criticism or whether we should proceed to the analysis of the Gospel itself. In response, people asked to continue talking about papyri further. I do not perceive works of art on evangelical themes at all. For me, it's too serious to play, and a work of fiction is still a kind of game. But, again, what is not edible for me personally may be edible for someone else. It is one thing to write novels on Gospel themes that appeared in the 19th century (G. Senkevich's Kamo Grideshi, K. Romanov's play The King of the Jews, and so on), and the modern world is another. Modern culture is a culture of an all-encompassing and all-involving game, where everything winks at each other. Everything is conditional, everything is "as if", everything is "virtual". A novel about Christ, which appeared today, will be perceived by people as an offer to play with the Gospel. This can be perceived too well today (in general, there is a great danger for a missionary when he is always well received: there may be an illusion that where I am sitting now, Christianity already exists, so I do not need to go anywhere). They will be compared with Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" and, of course, preference will be given to Bulgakov's version - as the most playful.

Answer 43