Deacon Alexander is indignant: the Church is the Body of Christ, and therefore there can be no question of it being "broken." Why, the Lord likened ancient Israel to the apple of His eye. The Lord is not only the Head of the New Testament Church. He was also the Head of the Church of the Old Testament. He was the invisible ruler of Israel. But were there not catastrophes in the history of that Israel? Did not the prophets consider the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, the captivity of their people by pagan empires, to be defeats and failures? Did not the prophets call falls falls, and defeats defeats, and defeats defeats? Well, remember at least "Lamentations of Jeremiah"! "Lord... Look at our reproach. Our heritage has passed to strangers, our houses to foreigners... Mount Zion is desolate, and foxes walk on it" (Lamentations 5:1-2:18).

What do you call what happened to a group of people who for centuries had power and respect in society, controlled school education and the main currents of culture, put troops and human enthusiasm at the service of their ideas, achieved complete unanimity in society and put signs of their ideology at all crossroads... And then we see that these same people have turned out to be an insignificant minority, that the majority hates and despises them with sincere enthusiasm, that the army, the police, the schools that once served them have now turned against them, that there is no place in culture for their ideas, and in cities and even houses for their symbols? Is the word "defeat" inappropriate to describe what happened?

Do we consider it a victory if a priest manages to enter a secular school and tell children about Christ there? And if a priest is expelled from school, is this not a defeat for the Church? In the same way, our entire Church will one day be expelled from "polite society"! And the fact that it will be considered "decent" not to associate oneself "with these Orthodox" will also be our defeat.

The "little herd", of course, will remain. And it will fulfill the words that the "gates of hell" (let me remind you, by the way, that the "gates" in biblical language are the meeting place of the council of elders, i.e., a kind of "brain center" of the city, and not the periphery, as it is today) will not prevail against the Church. But the One Who desires the salvation of all, would like to see His children among the "more than the sand of the sea"... But people will not give the Lord this joy. And this is also our defeat.

This is an undoubted theological perspective. But how the current times relate to it is a completely different question. Perhaps even now, by our behavior, our silence or, on the contrary, by the obsessive intonation of our sermons, multiplied by helplessness in the selection of arguments, we are laying in the public consciousness that reserve of distrust and hostility towards us, which will soon explode the possibility of the normal life of the Church. Or perhaps God's Providence will postpone our final defeat for several generations or even millennia. After all, in the first place, not every disease is a disease that leads to death. And, secondly, it often happens that the patient feels better in the last hours before death.

But the position of Deacon Alexander is astonishing: since Orthodoxy is now being revived in Russia, it means that we are not afraid of the Antichrist (and the apocrypha is given that "the Russian Tsar will be feared by the Antichrist himself"). Well, yes – the "end of the world" will not happen in one, separate country...

Deacon Alexander Lisikov instructs: "I will allow myself to remark to Deacon Kuraev: if before a battle with an enemy who wants to enslave your homeland and kill you... Someone would agitate you not to take up arms—what would you say to him, and what would you call this man? –..! That is it."[884]

In fact, I have an answer that I am ready to put in place of an ellipsis with an exclamation mark. If "someone" suggested by Fr. Alexander had told me not to take up the flamethrower, because it is not the business of a clergyman to burn people alive, but advised me to defend my relatives with prayer and preaching, I would thank him for his advice. If this man, seeing my determination to go to the front, would have advised me not to sit in the cockpit of the MIG-29 in such a case, I would have thanked him for this advice. Well, in fact, if I, who only once entered the cockpit of the pilots of a civilian aircraft, are entrusted with an expensive MIG and immediately sent into battle, then I will ruin myself and rob the Motherland.

So I say: since we, today's people of the Church, do not have experience of political struggle and intrigue, then it is better not to hope that we will outmaneuver everyone in politics. So you should not accuse me of betrayal and exclaim: "So what does the Orthodox (?) Deacon Andrei Kuraev – to non-resistance to evil?" But resistance with the means that the Church really has. In fact, I remember that Someone called for non-resistance to evil by force, before me. Could it be that the deacon of Alma-Ata had forgotten – Who exactly? And in general, it is unwise to resist with a force that does not exist.

Представим себе, что от нас зависит определение военных планов русской армии на весенне-летнюю кампанию 1942 года.41-й год был для нас катастрофичным. Если немцы смогут нанести и в новом году удар такой же силы – нам не устоять. Однако мы знаем, что и силы противника тоже поистощились. Во всяком случае, он уже не сможет наступать одновременно на всех фронтах. И как же важно в этой ситуации знать, где именно он решил нанести главный удар – на Москву, на Ленинград или на юге? Если бы была у нас такая информация весной 1942, – может, за лето и не откатились бы наши армии аж до Сталинграда…

Но что гадать о прошлом! Сегодня мы знаем, что главная цитадель, которую мы должны защитить и на которую направлен удар антихристианских сил, – это наша вера. Деньги, государственная власть, идеология и политика и так уже почти тотально контролируются силами, мягко говоря, нецерковными. Но есть еще православие. И если мы сможем сохранить его, – то поражения на других фронтах будут не окончательны. Так каким же может быть наш ответ на «происки масонов»? Будем учить катехизис! Вот область, в которой все зависит от нашего усердия и нашей любви к истине. Тут нам никто не помешает. И это сделает нас независимыми от мира газет и сект. Вот что я предлагаю. Это что: тоже совет предателя Церкви?

Хотите помочь Сербии – учитесь отвечать американским сектантам! Хотите смыть позор чеченской войны? Держите в памяти столько евангельских и библейских слов, чтобы, подобно святому равноапостольному Кириллу, быть в состоянии словом разъяснить мусульманам превосходство нашей веры. Или диакон Александр знает иной путь к тому, чтобы православные общины выжили в исламском Казахстане?

Особое возмущение у моего оппонента вызвало мое напоминание о словах святителя Игнатия (Брянчанинова): «Не покусись немощною рукою твоею остановить всеобщее отступление».

Диакон Александр Лисиков полагает почему-то, что к этим словам святителя Игнатия нужно будет прислушиваться лишь в последние 42 месяца земной истории – во времена открытого царствования антихриста: «Или диакон Андрей Кураев опять не понял смысла сказанных святителем слов, или он лукавит? Ведь приведенную цитату святителя Игнатия Кураев взял из контекста, где говорится уже о воцарении антихриста на всемирный престол, а не о его преддверии»[885].