Deacon Alexander Lisikov teaches: "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."882

In fact, I have an answer that I am ready to put in place of an ellipsis with an exclamation mark. If the "someone" suggested by Fr. Alexander had told me not to take up the flamethrower, for it is not the business of a clergyman to burn people alive, but to advise 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.

Let us imagine that it depends on us to determine the military plans of the Russian army for the spring-summer campaign of 1942. The year 1941 was catastrophic for us. If the Germans are able to strike the same blow in the new year, we will not be able to resist. However, we know that the enemy's forces have also been exhausted. In any case, he will no longer be able to attack simultaneously on all fronts. And how important is it in this situation to know where exactly he decided to deliver the main blow - on Moscow, on Leningrad or in the south? If we had had such information in the spring of 1942, maybe our armies would not have rolled back all the way to Stalingrad during the summer...

But what is there to guess about the past! Today we know that the main citadel that we must defend and which is the target of anti-Christian forces is our faith. Money, state power, ideology and politics are already almost completely controlled by forces, to put it mildly, non-ecclesiastical. But there is also Orthodoxy. And if we can keep it, then the defeats on other fronts will not be final. So what can be our response to the "machinations of the Freemasons"? Let's learn the catechism! This is an area in which everything depends on our diligence and our love for the truth. No one will interfere with us here. And this will make us independent of the world of newspapers and sects. Here's what I'm proposing. Is this also the advice of a traitor to the Church?

If you want to help Serbia, learn to respond to American sectarians! Do you want to wash away the shame of the Chechen war? Keep in mind so many words of the Gospel and Biblical that, like St. Cyril, Equal-to-the-Apostles, you will be able to explain to Muslims the superiority of our faith in words. Or does Deacon Alexander know another way for Orthodox communities to survive in Islamic Kazakhstan?

My opponent was particularly indignant at my reminder of the words of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov): "Do not attempt with your feeble hand to stop the general retreat."

Deacon Alexander Lisikov believes for some reason that these words of St. Ignatius should be listened to only in the last 42 months of earthly history – during the open reign of the Antichrist: "Either Deacon Andrei Kuraev again did not understand the meaning of the words spoken by the saint, or is he disingenuous? After all, Kuraev took the quotation of St. Ignatius from the context, which speaks of the enthronement of the Antichrist on the world throne, and not of his threshold."883

Well, let me remind you of the context: "From the spectacle presented by antiquity, let us turn to the spectacle provided by modernity. What should we say about ourselves? Because of the exhaustion of grace-filled leaders, because of the multiplication of false teachers, deceived by demonic delusion, it is necessary to live a life dissolved by humility, it is necessary to be cautious against any infatuation with fervor, which thinks to accomplish the work of God only by human powers, without God. Save yourself! Blessed is it if you find one faithful co-worker in the matter of salvation: this is a great and rare gift of God in our time. Beware, wishing to save your neighbor, lest he drag you into the abyss of perdition. The latter happens hourly. The apostasy is permitted by God: do not attempt to stop it with your feeble hand. Become acquainted with the spirit of the times, study it, in order to avoid its influence as much as possible. Beware of hypocrisy, first in yourself, then in others. Do not condemn your neighbors, and your heart will be cleansed of hypocrisy."884

Well, what kind of mass "Orthodox parties" are there, if you find one co-religionist – "a rare gift of God in our time"! And if this was the case in the time of St. Ignatius, a century and a half ago, then what can we say about the present century?

Putting aside the advice of St. Ignatius (they say, this is not for me, I am not yet living in the last 42 months), Deacon Alexander fell into the confusion from which the ascetic of the last century had warned. Imagining himself to be the savior of Orthodoxy, a diocesan and even an all-Russian censor, he was deprived of the most important thing in the life of a clergyman – the opportunity to peacefully stand before the altar. In February 1999, for constant attacks on the bishop who had ordained him, the deacon was suspended from serving. Well, if I have never heard the sermons of my bishop – and I have never heard a better church preacher than Archbishop Alexy (Kutepov) in my life – he reinterpreted them with the same degree of incompetence, passion and bias as my books – then the ban is undoubtedly justified.

ROERICH'S READING "ON OUR DEFEAT"885