Below the reader will find a sobering and timely message from Archbishop Averky of blessed memory. He delivered these words in the midst of the 20^th century when Communism held full sway in the then Soviet Union and he himself lived in the United States. Yet, in a manner similar to Solzhenitsyn, he understands that the “freedoms” of the Western world are tumbling to the some end tyranny of godlessness. I’m sure he would have desired that his words would become less applicable over time, and yet the opposite is evidently true. The message he gave in the midst of the 20^th century is starkly more pertinent in our own days, the madness he speaks of has become terribly acute. Although the diagnosis is grave, even terminal, the goal is not despair. No, rather that we would use every means to us in the Lord to find healing and life in Him. Archbp. Averky candidly exposes the fatal disease for on purpose – that we may apply the one cure needed, authentic life in Christ. May the Lord help us!

I have taken this article from the Death to the World, issue XXVIII. A big thanks to the team at Death to the World for permission to do so.

Begin Article –

“The time will come when people will behave like madmen, and to him who does not, they will say: you behave like a madman because you’re not like us.”

So speaks one of the very ancient predictions about what will happen on the earth shortly before the end of the world.

Already many ancient prophecies have come true and are continuing to come true before our eyes. Has not this prophesy already come true as well?

After all, what is currently transpiring in the world may not be explained otherwise than by an indiscriminate mass insanity, of which only very few are free.  This is taking place in all areas of modern life, which has gone far astray from common sense and reason given by God to man – in contrast to the speechless and irrational creatures – and completely tramples them underfoot. 

This is taking place in personal life, in family, in social, in political, in public and even in religious life and church life.

Everything has been turned upside down. Black is called white, white – black, light is called darkness, and the darkness – light; the truth is called a lie, and the lie – the truth, good is called evil, and evil – good … And this is not being done only by the explicit and open atheist and theomachists who call themselves communists, in whom many naive people tend to see the main and almost only evil of modern life.  No! not inferior to them in their true madness are people who are, as if, of the opposite camp and the opposite sentiment and ideology – the people who on both the left and right, tell everyone with pathos that they are “anti-Communists” and even seem to be fighting communism, wanting to save this world from being absorbed by it.

Hypocrisy, falseness, deception and manipulation have become an epidemic, which has now infected great masses of crazed people; and it has become impossible to believe in their honesty and sincerity, in most cases it is impossible, because they say one thing and do quite another, often the exact opposite.

In asserting this, we deliberately avoid referencing the innumerable and concrete facts, because these facts are more or less known to all; yet they often stir up differing and even opposite evaluations, precisely because today most people are in a frenzy, for having lost their minds and common sense they have become incapable of fair assessment of what is happening, and so they judge everything in a biased manner, seeing only from the angle of their own point of view and completely depending on their spiritually unhealthy disposition.

But life, which every day becomes more and more ominously gloomy, itself testifies to the correctness of our statements, as well as the fact that all the ancient prophecies are now, with amazing precision, coming true – in the fullest sense of the word – before our eyes, for those who are still able to see it and who are not yet mad and trying to assert, while foaming at the mouth with some frantic ferocity, that everything in the world is doing fine, everything is going quite normally and naturally, as usual, on the path of undeniable “progress.”

And indeed there are many truly blind madmen who try to convince us that we are the madmen, not them!

Let’s start with the future of humanity – with young people.  After all, what indeed has today’s youth come to – deprived by orders “from above” (i.e. government) of religious or even moral upbringing and education! Shocking and previously unheard of moral promiscuity, lack of manners, impudence, rudeness, boorishness, a total disregard for the authority of elders (seniors in age) and superiors, drug addiction, shameless debauchery, committing crimes in the earliest years of childhood, participation in all kinds of rebelliousness, hooliganism, arson, rape, looting and murders, even against their own relatives.  

At the same time, nothing is done to stop this or to repress it – no curbs, no punishments – as if all this is perfectly lawful, a matter of course in the natural order of things. They even convince themselves that “young people should not be oppressed,” that in the name of “freedom” and “constitution” all this should be tolerated and allowed. Parents are deprived of the right to punish their obstinate, disobedient children, and parents themselves can be punished for exerting their natural parental authority over their children.

Has such a mood of modern youth, and the attitude of “those in power” to it, ever taken place in the past; can it be considered normal?

Aren’t those who so lightly allow this acting insane?

And what is happening now with family life, which has in fact almost ceased to exist, for it has been ousted and replaced by so-called “free love,” which so many now openly praise and promote? Few people now want to have their own children, and especially take care of raising and educating them, unless it is possible to receive regular payment of state benefits for each child. Divorces are now quite easily and quickly granted. Many repeatedly change husbands and wives, feeling burdened by monotony, or else they find their “entertainment” on the side. The God and Church blessed family life is being spontaneously replaced today by temporary and purely bestial cohabitation, and officially legalized abortions facilitate this by eliminating the need to take care of children.

Where or when were things ever on such a frightening scale as they are now?

And all this is clearly patronized “from above” by “those in power!”

And how often and easily it happens now that a husband kills his wife and children or a wife kills her husband and children or children kill their parents!

And very few people find this really embarrassing or shocking, because it has somehow become commonplace.

Social life, and with it the political and state life of people, is almost devoid of idealism, integrity and honesty – traits that were characteristic of these aspects of life until quite recently. Honest and ideologically-minded people are now not allowed into power and leadership positions, because it does not suit those who want to “fish in muddy water.”  The power and leadership positions in our time are the lot of ambitious men and power-seekers and even mercenaries (where there can be a good profit!), who did not disdain any means, even the most dishonest, to achieve their goals by resorting to false slogans and false promises, and bribery, and in certain cases – the elimination of people they do not want standing in their way by killing them. Upright moral principles in the social, political, and public life are now in the overwhelming majority of today’s “leaders” non-existent. Such principles are recognized as “obsolete” and “do not meet the spirit of the time;” therefore they are “unsuitable for business success,” “impractical,” and even “harmful.” Certainly deep consideration reveals clearly that ever so fashionable “democracy” is devoid of ethical foundations, not to mention “socialism” and “communism,” which completely rejecting all morality and view humans as just one of the many species of animals.

“Public charity” is for many just a way to indulge their vanity, to gain popularity, and sometimes simply a means to feed themselves on the “public trough.”

“Politics,” too is just a means to advance oneself, to become famous, and to “make a career” for oneself.  “Service to the Fatherland,” “the ministry for the good of one’s neighbor” and “sacrifice” – all this is now only beautiful words, needed for propaganda, but in actual fact it is completely empty of meaning.  Senior positions and public office are considered by many only as easy ways for material gain.

There are, of course, happy exceptions, but these are becoming fewer and fewer.

Take as example, our Russian (government) policy, it has always been closely connected with the belief in God, with the Church of Christ, with our ancient Orthodox traditions. After all, there is nothing left of traditional Orthodoxy not only in the homeland, where the godless have taken power, but also in exile, where the speeches of Orthodox people, even if they are still being spoken, are just some beautiful words that do not oblige anyone to anything!

Some want to make Russia into an interfaith country with a complete separation of Church and state, while others have convinced themselves of the absurdity that “the Church is to be a servant of the monarchy” and although they sing our old hymn with the words “The Orthodox Tsar,” they imagine the future tsar to be some kind of non-confessional being to whom all confessions are of the same value whether Orthodox, Latinism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, paganism or atheism.

Isn’t this madness? Aren’t our unfortunate “politicians” going crazy who would like to plunge our unhappy Homeland from one trouble into another?

Don’t they understand that if we are Christians and Orthodox at that, then Orthodox Christian morality should be in the first place in our politics, above everything else; for without this politics will be nothing more than simply a dishonest game satisfying someone’s selfish and sinful passions.

And try to read articles in the modern so-called “free Russian press” on political topics, it’s like plunging into the atmosphere of a madhouse for a few moments: sheer madness! All morality is excluded here; lies, insinuations and the most vile slander brazenly impersonate the truth. And so the Russian people stuff themselves with these abominations, thereby poisoning their souls with this spiritual poison and then go even more insane. Someone, apparently, sets himself a special task to produce this poison with which to poison the souls of the unfortunate Russian people and entangled them in the nets of the evil one!

The future becomes scary, because if everything goes on like this, it is, of course, very gloomy. What good can we expect if, instead of the saints of God who have shone in the Russian land, we will be guided by such writings of the obvious and hidden enemies of our holy faith and fatherland – Holy Russia – who cunningly and slyly spit on and vilify our ancient shrines?

But the most terrible thing is, of course, what is taking place in the religious and church life of modern people. First of all, we see widespread apostasy – an elemental retreat from Christ – and at the same time an evil campaign against Christianity, and not only in our Homeland, where the “Union of Militant Atheists” was created and purportedly arose, together with the “anti-Divine Front,” but also everywhere – in the rest of the world. In our homeland (Russia), the first centuries of Christianity seemed to have been resurrected and the blood of martyrs for Christ flowed in copious streams; temples and monasteries were destroyed and desecrated, all kinds of historical shrines were brazenly trampled on, faith in God and in His Christ was eradicated in the souls of people by all means possible. But we see the same thing in the supposedly “free” West, only not in such a terrible appearance, rather it comes in milder forms, without at least the obvious shedding of blood and physical tortures and torments; in essence everything is the same, the same irreconcilability and persecution of all those who keep fearless loyalty to Christ, all those sincerely believing and striving to live by faith. There is no place on earth for such people now. At best, Christians are only tolerated, they are given only the option of an existence of extreme oppression, with all sorts of hardships and restrictions.

For that matter, the obvious and secret worship of Satan has flourished, up to the official recognition by the “powers that be” of the temples of Satan and satanists, who often openly promote the cult of Satan and even propagandize it through the press and all means of modern technology. Intensive preparations are underway for the unification of all religions and all nations and states of the world, of course, with the specific purpose of setting this entire world association (globalism) under the authority of the enemy of Christ – the Antichrist, about which there are many predictions from the ancient Fathers of the Church. All modern world politics is leading precisely to this (the reign of the Antichrist), but it is not noticed by the spiritually blinded and it is denied by those who themselves are involved in this work, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, living from day to day, and turning a blind eye to the consequences of their participation in Satan’s work.

The most terrible thing, of course, is that the church life of modern “Christians” is not far behind this general epidemic of madness – the full rush towards the Antichrist; although, of course, the madness is being hidden behind all sorts of specious pseudo-Christian slogans. Here we often see a terrible picture that has nothing to do with true Christianity, or with the service of God and the Church of Christ. It is one big deceptive appearance – without content. Here, in the primary place stands: personal gain, self-interest, vanity, love of power, and ambition, all of which please not God whatsoever but rather their own sinful passions, passed off under the hypocritical guise of religiosity and church work.

We will not even begin to speak of the phenomenon, unprecedented in history, such as the service of the Church, in the person of its senior hierarchs, to militant atheism; such service is in essence nothing but some kind of insane self-destruction! We will not dwell on all the well-known facts indicating the membership of many hierarchs in secret anti-Christian organizations aiming at the destruction of Christianity and the speedy elevation to power over all humanity of the enemy of Christ – the Antichrist.

Even if all this is not yet manifest in full measure, then it simply makes clear that there is nothing more important, more necessary than this – to stand steadfast in the true Christian faith and confession, which is so important especially in our days of ever-growing apostasy from God. There is no sincerity, no honesty, no strict ideology and principles, there is no one ready for self-sacrifice, but instead of all this there prevails only the search for a career, increase of personal material benefits, cunning, Jesuitism, and hypocrisy – all with the sole purpose of obtaining as much as possible of all worldly goods, wealth and contentment here on earth, with complete disregard of the afterlife, the judgment seat, and eternal life awaiting all of us.

Here is how one of the luminaries of our Russian Church paints a sad picture of the modern spiritual crisis in the Church at the end of the 19th century, observing already at that time the growing impoverishment of genuine spiritual life in the very bosom of our Orthodox Church itself: “In the higher shepherds of the Church there remains a weak, dark, confused, incorrect understanding of the letter that kills spiritual life in Christian society and destroys Christianity – which is a deed, not a letter. It is hard to see in whose hands the sheep of Christ are entrusted and who is providing their guidance and salvation!” (St. Ignatius Brainchaninov)

If this was already the case back then, how many times worse is it right now! Indeed! Almost no one thinks about spiritual life now and very few hardly care at all. Everything is boiled down to only an external decor, more or less decent and proper, and often even this is lacking because of the complete lack of principles and ideals – coupled with the open service to one’s own passions that manifest and become obvious to everyone and are seen by those who have not yet lost a sensitive conscience, which is at times very feeling and even painful.
And it is not surprising that many in our time, having essentially no spiritual guidance and seeing only temptations and bad examples before them, completely fall away from the Church and even lose faith in God.

And is not all this the real madness?

And if you try to talk about it resolutely and frankly, everyone will immediately pounce on you with bitterness and begin saying, in the spirit of the ancient prophecy we have mentioned above, “You are crazy because you are not like us!”

Such are the truly terrible times in which we live!

The world is really insane and doesn’t even notice it or doesn’t want to notice it!

What should we do?

The only thing that remains for us to do in such an environment is to pray with all our hearts to God to guard our own faith unshaken and the faith of people close to us; that He would grant us patience in the midst of this almost universal madness, which sometimes reaches a frenzied madness, while remembering as often as possible the meaningful call that has come down to us from the depths of centuries: “Save, yes save your soul!” “Спасаяй, да спасет свою душу!”