Any receiver is also a transmitter at the same time. I have often talked about this with knowledgeable people. This is especially true of television, around this "miracle" of civilization big battles are being waged. I think that the question is not only and not so much in the TV itself, but in its use.

A person of our time, on the one hand, has an overabundance of communication with people, and on the other, as surprising as it may seem, his great drawback. And this is what communication is all about, just as everything that a person of today creates, he creates in a hurry. This communication takes place either at work or on the road, when a person is not in a peaceful mood - he is either excited or tired. There is no proper environment for communication in a state of calm.

Our man has a huge amount of extra time, I do not make a reservation, exactly superfluous, because free time is superfluous. So it is in everything: in food, in clothes, in housing. Everywhere superfluous is extremely dangerous for the soul. But there is a great danger from superfluous time, for the very appearance of superfluous time testifies to the absence of spiritual life, a certain emasculation of the way of life. Look at how extra time appears. At the expense of work? No, of course, there will be no work in the last place. Of course, I don't want to talk about people who have finally fallen - alcoholics, drug addicts. This is a topic, although related to ours, but somewhat different from it.

So, work for a person of modern society is in the first place. Moreover, even believers in the spring are engaged in gardening work, regardless of Sunday, Passion or Bright Weeks, everything is one, a certain boor-likeness is manifested. So there is no extra time. Moreover, everyone groans literally from its shortage. But this free time is there and a huge amount of it, where does it come from?!

And this is the time that should be used for spiritual work, whether it be prayer, reading spiritual literature, and, in particular, for useful communication, spiritually beneficial. This time is spent on entertainment and nothing more. Satan instructed man to organize the entire structure of his life in such a way that there would be no time of calm, no time of comprehension of the past day, week, or month. Everything replaces entertainment. And in this entertainment system, the TV is given an honorable privileged place. The lion's share of free time is "eaten up" by him, this idol of modern civilization. And I would say - a terrible despot and tyrant, who has under his rule most of humanity in such slavery that the world has never seen before. For slaves feel their inferior position, because they are brought to it by force. And here slavery is voluntary, even, at first glance, sweet. And only the bitter fruits of lack of spirituality, cruelty, depravity indicate that, as in any slavery, only the master has benefit. And the horns of the owner are still peeking out from behind the screen. That is why television in this system of preparing people for the coming of the Antichrist is assigned not only the role of an absorber of free time, but its destructive role is much greater. A person watches the news, even an Orthodox one, it seems to him that this is a necessary and useful thing, in any case, not harmful. But the news itself takes up a small fraction of time, and the rest is the analysis of what is happening, that is, the vision of what is happening that should be formed among consumers of television products. The names of those who ordered the views, those who control the information presented, do not need to be named, so everything is clear. From this, from the psychotropic influence of television programs, a person destroys the ability to think about things, to perceive events meaningfully, and, finally, to form their own worldview.

We began with the defectiveness of modern communication between people. So, the roots of this inferiority lie precisely in the lack of individual thinking and comprehension of what is happening in accordance with one's own worldview. And this is by no means a justification for the searches of today's "individual", no.

I once said that my mother always had someone in the kitchen. In the evening, after the meal, a huge samovar was placed and everyone who found shelter for the night sat down to drink tea. A conversation began. How interesting it was! There was so much edifying in these stories of ordinary people. My father laughed at our love of spending the evening in the kitchen, believing that an educated person has nothing to learn from illiterate people. But after spending a couple of evenings with us, he changed his mind. People gathered: all Orthodox Christians and those who knew the world not from the reports of TV presenters. They told about those events, incidents from life, which they themselves witnessed or heard from eyewitnesses. In all this, the edifying side was sought, the consequence of what had happened, both as an action of God's Providence and as a manifestation of the free will of man. It was in these arguments that the diversity of human thought and the difference in worldviews were manifested. At that time, people were able not only to listen, but to hear, and in general they loved to listen more than to speak. Although, I repeat, each of those present had something to tell.

I will digress, but what is interesting is that these ordinary people, with the seeming general well-being and contentment in the empire, already then saw the impending disaster. And this was not so much a consequence of their communication with the Optina or Kiev elders, listening to the sermons of Righteous John of Kronstadt, as a consequence of the ability to observe what was happening and draw conclusions not on the basis of material abundance among others, but on the basis of the preservation of spirituality by society. It was precisely the impoverishment of faith, not just faith in the existence of God, but faith as the fulfillment of Christ's commandments, that led these people to think that the coming trouble was inevitable. I will return to this "kitchen" communication, but now about our life.

Yes, modern communication at that level is simply impossible. And the fact is that even when people have gathered together, at the same table, they are divided, first of all, by their attitude to faith; As the wise David said: "A fool speaks in his heart - there is no God!" The mere denial of the existence of God is both madness and a sure path to madness. And this is not the madness of those pagans who were enlightened by the Apostles and Holy Fathers of the first centuries of Christianity. About the pagans of today, the Apostle said that "they will not receive sound teaching, but according to their own lusts they will choose for themselves teachers who will flatter their ears, and they will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn to fables." What normal communication is possible in such conditions?! People loved to talk but not listen, to teach but not to learn. What unites everyone at the common table? Datura alcohol, and abundant food, i.e. what is on the table, but not those who are at the table. Nothing useful for the soul can arise in such an environment, for God, as the saints taught, is not spoken of for a well-fed belly, and even more so for a drunken head!

And one more terrible evil from TV, but, alas, far from the last. This evil is in undermining the authority of the Church. A planned and devilishly cunning undermining is in everything - in mockery of the clergy, of Orthodox rites, in the opposition of occultism, paganism to Christianity, in everything. Everything is saturated with hatred of the Truth. Not much time will pass, and the TV organizers will begin to openly mock Christ and the saints. Programs about the Mother of God will be permeated with special hatred, everything will flow with the poison of hellish malice. Only covered with a veil of humor and comedy - the "all-laughing hell" will bring the work of ridiculing everything God's and spiritual to the end. And the end will be that there will be someone who will try to replace God with himself. And he will enter every house at once. How, how can a person enter every house at the same time?! We say that this is one of God's attributes - omnipresence, even angels move in space and exist in time. And the Church teaches that the Antichrist will enter every home at once, it seems that there is a contradiction here.

But no, the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is a vessel of truth, of Divine truth. In imitation of omnipresence, the Antichrist will enter every home at the same time with the help of a television. Each person will receive it in his home and accept it voluntarily!

And he will accept it, he will accept it, for he wanted to be prepared for this and prepared properly, for he did not heed the admonition of the Good Shepherd to flee into the wilderness, it is not according to his gut - he is bored with the dry and even in the desert"!

"Father Anthony, where is it now, the desert?!" - I could not stand it.

"And you, my most blessed holy father, are not inert in mind, and the plaster of the church takes more time from you than it should, so I suppose, otherwise you would not have asked this question. Well, I'm sorry, the old one! You hit the outside, but the inner is little sad. One temple not made by hands in the human soul is worth ten churches of stone! Alas, Catholicism was so carried away under the accursed Peter, and even more so with the annexation of the Uniates, that we measure everything externally, according to him both crosses and mitres. Take the writings of the Hieromartyr Archbishop Hilarion of the Trinity, the saint was wise. I have both clippings and extracts from his performances.