The idea and feeling of God's dwelling with people is an old Old Testament idea. God dwells with the people, He, who transcends all earthly things, becomes as it were earthly. He turns into a pillar of fire, His glory, goes and descends into the tabernacle in white clouds, He overshadows the temple. The temple means that people gather around the ark, where God dwells. But God is not only here, He is everywhere, His glory fills heaven and earth, but here is His special abode, here is His tabernacle. "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth," says the Apostle John. "It dwelt," literally translated, "built a tabernacle, built a tent among us." This Church-wide, covenant symbol also extends to the spiritual life. "Come and dwell in us, and cleanse us from all defilement."

With this ends the epistles addressed to the seven churches, to the whole Church, and to each Christian individually.

The question arises: what does "neither hot nor cold" mean? Here two poles are given in man. One pole is with God, the other is against God. If a person is with God, it means that he is on the path to blessing. If a person is ardent against God, he can, like Saul, be converted, which means that his soul is boiling... The most terrible thing is indifference, complete, as people say: "Neither a candle to God, nor ..." Indifference, indifference is a swamp in which the soul sinks. This is the death of the soul. I have known many people who have become true Christians, and before that Christianity had caused some kind of repulsion among them. And those who "in general" had a very favorable attitude towards the faith, did not convert all their lives. There were many such examples, such "humane" people. For them, it was all "at the same time", as one of them said: "I go everywhere – well, to see something interesting..." He is not against it, but no more, he has not fallen away from God and has not come to God, and it is not known what he is.

In Dante there is a place where souls of this kind are found: after Limbus, in front of the river over which Charon ferrys souls, a crowd of pitiful creatures rushes about, whom neither hell nor heaven takes; no one takes them, and they are in some kind of interregnum, and at their head is some "great one" who has made a renunciation. Interpreters are divided, with some believing that this is the abdicated Pope Celestine (although many assume that he was even a saint), while others believe that he is the rich young man mentioned in the Gospel. And all of us, both after the appeal, and always can be threatened by such a danger. There is no process of continuous growth, there cannot be, and it is not given to us. We have a process of constant return to youth, return to first love, constant renewal. Such is the history of the whole Church – it is always a return to the Gospel, a return to the sources; Sometimes Christians abruptly deal with what they have accumulated and return to the depths again. Even the grave crisis of a churchman, although dangerous, is not as dangerous as the state of delusion, when a person lives and does not understand that he is perishing, but imagines that everything is in order. Years and months pass, and then "rest with the saints," and everything was in vain.

When asked whether it is possible to receive salvation outside the church, this question is always asked without taking into account the very meaning of the concept of "salvation." When we speak of salvation as the communion of man with the divine life, we can immediately realize that this communion cannot be homogeneous. Each person partakes of God in his own measure and in his own possibility, just as each nation and each civilization has its own measure for salvation.

True and complete communion with God can only be through His direct manifestation. Of course, the ancient mystics and prophets, the Sufis, the dervishes, the Indian Brahmans, all of them, through their mystical experience, to some extent approach God. But all this comes through human efforts, through human striving upward. And only in one case, in the case of Christ, does God appear directly. This is the only and most direct revelation, so salvation in Christ is unique, one of a kind, that is, the deepest approach to God, and everything else is somewhere nearby, maybe somewhere very close. And when a Muslim performs his namaz, turning towards Mecca, then, of course, he calls out to the same God as we do. And this God answers him in the sun of the desert and in the silence of the night answers him. But no desert, no sun, no mystical experience of man can be compared with what was revealed by God Himself through the incarnate Christ. It is in this sense that we say that outside of Christ there is no salvation that is in Christ. Even an atheist can have some kind of salvation, some kind of communion, a person whose thought is turned in the wrong direction, but whose heart to some extent still receives some grain of God's grace. As for what will happen next, we can say that the further path of the soul is a continuation of what has already begun here. Salvation begins here, on this side of life. This communion is given to us here, in this life, and there it will develop further. Will those who did not believe when they died pass through the knowledge of Christ? "This is a mystery for us, which the Lord God will understand.

4

1 After these things I looked, and behold, the door was opened in heaven, and the former voice, which I had heard as the sound of a trumpet, speaking to me, said, 'Come up hither, and I will show you what must be after this.' 2 And straightway I was in the spirit; and behold, the throne stood in heaven, and on the throne was He who sats; 3 And this one who sits in appearance was like a stone of jasper and sardis; and a rainbow around the throne, similar in appearance to smaragdus. 4 And round about the throne are twenty-four thrones; And on the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, who were clothed in white robes and had golden crowns on their heads. 5 And out of the throne came lightnings, and thunders, and voices, and seven lamps of fire burned before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God; 6 And before the throne was a sea of glass like crystal; and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, are four beasts, full of eyes in front and behind. 7 And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face like a man, and the fourth beast like a flying eagle. 8 And each of the four beasts had six wings round about, and inwardly they were full of eyes; and they have no rest day or night, crying out: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, Who was, is, and is to come. 9 And when the animals give glory and honor and thanksgiving to him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, 10 then the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives forever and ever, and put their crowns before the throne, saying, 11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and all things are and are created according to thy will.

Comment

Open. 4, 1–2. The picture that the Evangelist paints here is a kind of iconographic depiction of the heavenly divine service, where heaven is something like a temple, and the invisible presence of God is manifested in the form of a beam of light. The seated person is like a precious stone, it is the center from which rays of light emanate, and above him is a rainbow, that is, there is no anthropomorphic, human-like image. Bowing elders, monsters with the heads of living beings, with bodies "full of eyes" – all this is a super-worldly, unearthly divine service. First, let's consider its details, and then turn to the general meaning.

The words "After these things I looked..." is a common expression in apocalyptic literature, denoting the transition to the next topic. After that, he looked"... – he raised his eyes – and something happened. "And behold, a door is opened in heaven..." – this means that the Apostle John contemplates this from afar, he does not enter it himself, he remains at the gates, and a kind of picture opens up before him, as it were, a scene that he sees, but does not participate in it himself. When the apostle Paul mentions his state of spiritual ascension, he says that he "was lifted up to the seventh heaven." Here this heaven opens, but the Apostle John only contemplates it.

And then he hears a voice: "You're going to be shown all this now." Everything that is written here resembles some kind of dream, it happens as if in a dream. On the other hand, every word here is dictated by the Bible, the Old Testament, and all images are familiar. In fact, sleep and vision are closely related, because in dreams we come into contact with certain spiritual realities, and they are embodied in those forms that are peculiar to our thinking in general, to our experience in particular, and to the concrete events of our lives in these years, months, and days.

"And immediately I was in the spirit..." (Rev. 4:2) — The opened gates are, of course, a conventional expression, but they originate from the "gates of the temple" and "the gates of the tabernacle." These are the gates that were opened when the ark of the covenant was brought out as a sign of God's presence among the people. But here there is no ark and no temple. Whether the temple had already been destroyed at that time, or whether it was in fatal danger, or whether it was before the destruction of the temple, is a debatable question. We said at the beginning that the Apocalypse dates from the year between the year sixty-four and the year ninety-five. But the main thing is that the Evangelist shows: earthly worship is a reflection of a certain divine service in another world, and therefore, in order to see this service, one must have a special charisma. "And immediately I was in the spirit"... — this inspiration came to him immediately.

"And behold, the throne stood in heaven"... – it means that he sees the throne. The throne is the throne in this context (an image taken from the sixth chapter of the prophet Isaiah, where the Lord sits on a throne; the same image is contained in the Book of Kings, where the prophet saw the Lord seated on a throne). The throne is a symbol of royalty, but there is no king on it, but there is a clot of fire and light, which the writer could only compare with precious stones, and a rainbow that overshadows this throne.