No blind chance! God governs the world, and everything that happens in heaven and under heaven is done according to the judgment of the all-wise and omnipotent God, incomprehensible in His wisdom and omnipotence, incomprehensible in His management.

God governs the world: let His rational creatures submit to Him, and let His servants contemplate reverently, let them praise in wonder and perplexity, which surpasses their understanding, His majestic rule!

God governs the world. Blind sinners do not see this government. They invented an incident alien to reason; they are not aware of the lack of correctness in their gaze, of the dullness of their gaze, of a darkened look, of a perverted look; {p. 73} they attribute to God's government a lack of correctness and meaning; they blaspheme the government of God, and they recognize the all-wise action and call it a foolish action.

The Lord our God, in all the land of His destiny [151], preaches the royal Prophet. The Lord's destinies are true, justified together [152]. There is nothing unfair about them! There is nothing unreasonable about them! they are justified by their consequences, by their spiritual fruits; they are justified by the perfection of their all-perfect Source.

Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem, praise thy God, O Zion. For strengthen the chains of Thy gates, bless Thy sons in Thee[153]. Only the Orthodox Church is capable of praising God with God-pleasing praise; Only its true sons, faithful to its bosom – its dogmatic and moral tradition – are capable of inheriting the blessing. God, declaring His word to Jacob, His justifications and destinies to Israel,[154] reveals the teaching of salvation to all members of the Orthodox Church; but the mystery of the truth of the Gospel and the mystery of His destinies reveals, as far as it can be comprehended, only to the chosen ones, who have been vouchsafed to see God in His providence and management with a pure mind. God did not do this to every tongue, and did not manifest His destiny to them [155].

The vision of God's destinies is a spiritual vision. By Divine grace, in due time, the mind of a Christian who strives correctly is raised to this vision [156]. The heart sympathizes with the spiritual vision of the mind with a spiritual holy sensation, with which it is drunk, as if with a sweet and fragrant drink, pouring into it nourishment, courage, and joy. I behold Thy destinies, O my Lord: Thy destinies are many. Their depth cannot be explored either by the human mind or by the angelic mind, just as our sensual eye cannot discern the vaults of heaven hidden behind its transparent, boundless blue.

The correct and exact fulfillment of the will of God is impossible without knowledge of the fate of God. What are the commandments of God? this is the will of God, declared by God to people for guidance in actions that depend on their arbitrariness. What are the destinies of God? these are actions or allowances of the will of God, on which the arbitrariness of man has no influence. It is obvious that in order for man to fully fulfill the will of God, it is necessary for man to stand in the right attitude both to God's commandments and to God's destinies. Keep the ways of the Lord, says the true servant of God, for all His destinies are before me, and His justification is not departed from me. Teach me Thy destinies, O my Lord. Let us worship Thee in righteousness of heart, when we learn the destinies of Thy righteousness [160].

The sinner who provokes the Lord, the arbitrary servant of demons, has no God before him, his ways are defiled at all times: Thy destinies, O our Lord, shall be taken away from his presence [161]. Disregard for God's commandments is necessarily joined to the rejection of God's rule over the world and God's Providence for the world: disregard for God's commandments follows from this rejection as a natural consequence. The ruler of the universe, the primary cause of everything that happens in human society and with each person in particular, the arbitrary, deliberate sinner recognizes either human reason or blind, senseless chance. This sinner, by the very way of thinking, by the mood of the soul, becomes hostile to the Lord, hostile to His holy Gospel; this sinner fearlessly tramples on all the commandments of God, fearlessly satisfies all his evil desires.

For whom there is no God in God's Providence, there is no God in God's commandments. Whoever has seen God in the government of His world, who has revered this management, who has revered the destinies of God, can only nail his flesh to the fear of God: he can crucify the will and wisdom of sin and the material-loving on the cross of the Gospel commandments. In order to see God in His Providence, purity of mind, heart and body is needed. In order to acquire purity, one must live according to the commandments of the Gospel. From the vision of God's destinies is born in great abundance the mother of this vision – a pious life.

God governs the universe; He also governs the life of each person in all its details. Such management, which enters into the most trivial, apparently insignificant conditions of the existence of creatures, corresponds to the infinite perfection of God's attributes. The law of such government is read in nature, read in the public and private life of people, read in the Holy Scriptures. Are not two birds, said the Saviour, valued by one assarius; and not one of them falls to the ground without your Father. And to you, ever and faithful servants of God, and all the rulers of the head of all are the essence [163]. I believe the all-holy words! I cannot but believe them: they depict with accuracy the perfection of my God. From Thy presence, O my Lord, my destiny shall go forth [164]! I belong to you entirely! My life and death are hourly in Thy hands! In all my affairs, in all my circumstances, Thou hast participated: Thou hast helped me in pleasing Thee; Thou dost suffer me long in the face of my self-willed, sinful, and insane actions. Thy right hand constantly directs me to the path! Without the assistance of this right hand, I would have lost my way long ago, I would have perished irretrievably. You, the only one capable of judging man, judge me and decide my fate forever according to Your righteous judgment, according to Your ineffable mercy. I am Thine before my existence, and in my being, and beyond the boundaries of my earthly existence or my pilgrimage!

The destinies of God are everything that happens in the universe. Everything that happens happens as a result of God's judgment and decree. Secretly from God and independently of Him, nothing is done and cannot be accomplished. One thing is done according to the will of God; the other is done by God's permission; everything that happens is done according to the judgment and decree of God. For this reason, the destinies of God are often called in Scripture the judgment of God. God's judgment is always righteous; righteous art Thou, O Lord, saith the Prophet, and judge Thy righteousness [165].

By the action of God's will, the visible and invisible worlds were created, man was created and redeemed, all events, public and private, have been accomplished and are taking place, from which God's goodness, God's omnipotence, God's wisdom shine like the sun from heaven. By God's permission, by the will of creatures, evil appeared with all its consequences: by God's permission, by God's own will, the angels fell, man fell, men did not accept God and departed from God, redeemed by the incarnate God; by God's permission, by the evil will of the angels, rejected and fallen men, the earth was corrupted by the crimes and impiety of these angels and these people. By God's permission and judgment, various sorrows and calamities, public and private, are and will punish the universe; by God's permission and judgment, eternal torment will befall apostates from God, the enemies of God, in the fiery, gloomy abyss of hell, for which they have prepared themselves arbitrarily. The Apostle beheld with a pure mind, with a mind illumined by the rays of holy Truth, he gazed upon the unattainable height of God's destinies, and in holy horror at the vision of these destinies he exclaimed: Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and understanding of God! For His judgments have not been tried, and His ways have not been searched. For he who understands the mind of the Lord; or who was His counsellor? [166]

The Apostle exclaimed this, speaking of a terrible crime, of the arbitrary rejection of the Redeemer by the Jews, of a frenzied rejection, which culminated in a monstrous crime: the murder of the Redeemer. Speaking of the crime of men, which fully depended on their free will, the Apostle expresses himself as if the crime had been committed by God. God shut up all the Jews in opposition [167]. God gave them the spirit of tenderness [168], their eyes could not see and their ears could not hear [169]. God's allowance {p. 77} is called an act of God. Unlimited in power and authority, as it were, He limited Himself, without changing the will of man, without stopping the actions of men, who entered into stubborn resistance, into fierce opposition to the will and action of God. The will of creatures, all their efforts, would not be able to resist the almighty right hand of the Creator. This has not been done. These are the destinies of God. It is impossible to comprehend them, as it exceeds the reason of rational creatures. The investigation of what cannot be comprehended is a vain work, devoid of meaning. The investigation of God's destinies is forbidden by God as an undertaking inspired by blind arrogance, as an undertaking inspired by a false view of the subject, as an undertaking leading to inevitable error, to blasphemy, to the destruction of the soul. One must, following the example of the Apostle, see and contemplate the destinies of God with the eye of faith, with the eye of spiritual reason, and, not allowing oneself to make fruitless judgments according to human principles, one should reverently plunge into sacred perplexity, into sacred spiritual darkness, which is at the same time the wondrous light with which God is hidden from the eyes of the mind, both human and angelic.

"Evil has no essence," said the Fathers, "it arises from our negligence about virtue and disappears from our zeal for virtue" [171]. Evil, being a lack of good, can only refer to limited rational creatures, in which the good is limited. Lack has no place in the infinite, nor does it take place. God is infinite, and His goodness is infinite. The infinite does not decrease by all possible numerical subtractions from it, nor does it increase by all such appendices to it. Neither evil nor good of creatures has and cannot have any influence either on God or on His actions. The destinies of God stand on a height inaccessible and inviolable; they stand on a height that does not depend on both demonic and human actions. The action of God exists with its own property and meaning, in spite of whatever the action, both human and demonic, may be, united in outward appearance in one action with the action of God.