Our attitude to work and creativity is changing. More and more people do not like to work. Work, even creative, does not bring joy. Any effort is unpleasant and seems unnecessary. Life is reduced to a continuous pursuit of entertainment and the search for new sensations, even fleeting and worthless. However, life devoid of inner content turns out to be unnecessary and empty.

Of course, not everything on earth is bad, there is also good. There are many people who have found some kind of support and have maintained peace of mind. They live like human beings, work for the benefit of themselves and others. But there are fewer and fewer of them. A flood of filth, vice, indifference to good or evil is flooding our planet. With the magnificent flourishing of material opportunities, we live in an era of moral degeneration and loss of spirituality. Love, care for others, sincerity in relationships, honesty, and dignity of a person leave the world. Life becomes cold and lonely.

Why? What happened to people? Of course, it can be explained in different ways, but the main reason is obvious – it is the loss of faith in everything spiritual. If there is no immortal soul, no soul at all, but only a body, then what is the meaning of my life on earth?

Indeed, if with death my existence ends, so that there will be nothing more for me, nor for myself, then why plan anything, work, try to create something new and permanent? Why acquire new knowledge, cultivate new qualities in yourself, why think about the future at all? While there is still time, you need to take from life everything that it can give – you need to eat, drink, "love", achieve power and honor, and so on. One must not think about anything difficult and unpleasant, and, of course, do not allow thoughts of death. That's what many do.

The entertainment industry is in its heyday. There are more distractions and distractions of all kinds now than ever before. Maybe during the decline of the Roman Empire there were just as many.

However, this does not bring happiness, joy, peace and balance. Hence alcoholism, drug addiction, sophisticated debauchery, senseless crimes and suicides. And behind this is a deep instinctive fear of death – not to remember it, not to think about it.

It is still impossible not to think about the meaning of life at all. Everyone, at least sometimes, will ask himself the question: "Well, what next? How will it all end? A. my children? What kind of world will our children live in?"

In the history of nations, there have been periods similar to our time. Satiety with life and decay of morality, depravity and lack of spirituality led to the loss of vitality and threatened the people with death, degeneration or conquest by a less civilized, but strong and viable enemy. It is enough to read the Bible or the history of Rome to understand how or why great civilizations perished. The reason was the illness of the people – the loss of spirituality, which was followed by inevitable death. It was not so much vices and depravity per se that ruined, but the tolerance and indifference of the people to any vice.

It happened differently. Already on the edge of the abyss, the people found living strength within themselves and overcame the disease. Something new was entering the world. In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, prophets and saints called on people to come to their senses and abandon a vicious way of life. Their calls were heeded by statesmen, laws were introduced that severely punished those who spread vice and helped those who went out on the right path. There were enough people who responded to the calls, and the people restored their undermined vitality. Night was replaced by day again.

Can we, the people of the late twentieth century, hope that we will find the strength to overcome the crisis that threatens to destroy European Christian culture?

Solzhenitsyn recently published his call "Not to live by lies." Christian and other religions with their eternal, bright commandments are still alive. There are still many honest pastors of the Church, writers, scientists who call us to think, stop and draw conclusions. But grains of truth are drowned in the mass of the most diverse and contradictory opinions and proposals on any issue. TV screens, radios, newspapers, popular lectures – what do all these brainwashing tools talk about and teach? There are many lies, many appeals to pleasure, to all kinds of pleasures, and most importantly, so many more and more new opinions and "discoveries" that there is no way to think and understand all this. The word has been shredded, and it is given any meaning, often the opposite of the true one.

All this leads to the fact that people get used to not believing anything except what they can check with their five senses. Fewer and fewer people believe in "fairy tales" about the immortality of the soul and in the life of the soul after the death of the body. The modern man of the masses believes only in tangible reality, only in facts. He believes in science, or rather in what he considers to be science, but he does not believe in anything immaterial, and the requirements of religion are non-essential and unnecessary for him. For him, the world is matter, and non-spiritual matter at that. What the Apostle Paul foretold comes true: "For the time will come when they will not receive sound doctrine, but according to their own desires they will choose for themselves teachers who will flatter their ears" (2 Tim. 4:3). Humanity is rolling down to a bad end.

It might have seemed that if a miracle did not happen and something new and irrefutable did not appear, which would force people to reconsider their materialistic worldview, then Christianity and the Christian way of life that grew out of it would soon disappear forever from the face of the earth.

And then suddenly such a miracle happened, although many people do not notice it yet. The new that has entered the world will inevitably affect each of us. It is more important than anything else in our lives. Medical science has clearly shown us that after the death of the body, our personality, our "I" will not die, but will continue to exist, albeit in completely new conditions. This existence will not be passive, the personality will develop or at least change as it did during its earthly life.