We can only pity the Jews and Indians: the former because they cannot open their eyes and see in the Lord Jesus Christ the Savior of the world and the Messiah Whom the Old Testament prophets clearly prophesied, and the latter because they cannot see the difference between their yogis and Christ. "And our yogis perform miracles like Christ," say the Indians. Truly, misunderstanding stemming from despair. Yes, yogis perform miracles, but which ones? Illusory, useless and meaningless, moreover, with the help of demonic forces fighting through people against Christ. They create illusions for people and show them, for example, a tree that supposedly pecks out of the ground and rises to its full height in a few minutes; Or they make the rope rise from the ground by itself and stand in the air straight like a stick. Who benefits from these worthless and illusory miracles? Christ performed real miracles, and only miracles that were useful and salvific for people. Magic is always from demons. The Egyptian magicians managed to imitate the miracle-worker of God Moses, but they performed only three miracles out of ten performed by him. And here we have not Moses, but Christ, the omnipotent Lord of nature. To Him alone all nature joyfully submits. All the righteous rejoice in it, freed from slavery to nature. Heaven and earth praise Him, and will be glorified forever and ever.

The Sons of the Kingdom

Now I want to ask you, Theodoulos. You've been asking me so far. What do you think: if robbers take the household away from home to a dark forest, into impassable abysses, and rob and defile them, starve them, wound and kill them, what will the owner of the house, the father of the family, do?

You say that first of all he will attack the robbers in order to defeat and tie them up. Well said. We have spoken the same way before. The Lord Jesus, the Savior and Messiah, first of all attacked the main enemy of the human race - Satan and his gloomy army. And Satan rushed away from Him, as if carried away by a terrible heavenly whirlwind, and Satan's warriors, foul and stinking demons, came out of people with a cry and a great cry, wherever He, the Expeller of demons, appeared. Thus the Saviour began with the fact that the first.

Tell me, Theodoulos, what will the master of the house do next, when he has defeated the enemy and freed his household? Will he immediately bring into the house these liberated, but dirty, hungry, wounded and mad with fear?

You say no. He will first wash them, feed them, heal them, clothe them, calm them down and shower them with incense. Truly, even heaven and earth cannot give a better answer. After all, such an answer was actually given by Heaven through His Messenger, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The first is the first, and the second is the second. But the first would be meaningless without the second. As a matter of fact, the main goal in the second, in our case, is that the household should be prepared and honored to enter their father's house. I say "honored" because the members of the household themselves are largely to blame for their captivity and enslavement. For they had set aside from the householder, and had reached out, like Eve, for the false and tempting promises of the robbers, until they had led them into gloomy forests and impassable wilds, until they had turned them into hungry laborers and their shackled slaves. And this labor and slavery lasted for thousands of years in all countries and peoples until the Coming of the Savior of the world.

The Lord Jesus spoke very little to demons, and He spoke only for the sake of people, so that people would know who the enemies who tormented them were. Otherwise, I would not have said this either. He is not like the Buddha who makes friends with demons and benevolently offers them his Nirvana science of salvation. Nor is he like the Egyptian magicians, who give themselves over to the demons, if only with their help to perform some miracle. Nor is he like the yogis of India, who do the same things as the magicians of Egypt and the Pythias of Delphia. No, and not at all. He is the King of light, and He will have no friendship with darkness, no companionship, no alliance with liars and murderers. The pine does not need the help of thorns, and the mountain wind does not need the vapors of corpses.

Who is He talking to, then? With whom does Jesus converse for a thousand days and a thousand nights, Theodoulos? Secretly with His Heavenly Father, and openly with people. What does Jesus talk about with people? Basically, about three subjects:

first, about the Kingdom of Heaven, which is still unknown to people;

secondly, about Himself as the only true Friend and all-powerful Savior of people, but an enemy of demons;

thirdly, about the preparation of people for the Kingdom of Heaven, for the sonship of God, to which no one is allowed to be unfaithful, impudent, impure, unclean, earthly, fearful, unrepentant, unbrotherly, and so on.

We have already talked about the first two subjects, but let us dwell on the third and last. What does it mean to prepare for adoption as sons in the kingdom of heaven?

Repentance first of all.