My dear friends, peace to you, peace to your home and your loved ones!
I understand that you are now very anxious as to whether or not the persecutors will close down the legal organisation we have here, the “Church of the Last Testament”.
In this connection I see it favourable to give you certain clarifications.
First of all, you must always be aware that a true Church is capable of being formed as soon as two or three persons come together in the Name of God.
The formation of the true Church can in no way depend upon any legal registration. As long as believers gather together to do righteous work in the Name of God, so long shall there be a Church of God.
Forced to watch from aside your independent manifestations, I have often been unable to hold back the tears of joy for you.
I think I am justified in saying that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church which you have built. But you will have to undergo various trials.
I would like to say that, noting the peculiarities of the society around you, I have more than once felt doubts as to the necessity of the further existence of such a legal organisation and have repeatedly spoken about it with some of your brethren.
But we will not now go into the details of this subject from this point of view.
I mention it only so that you understand – the possibility of disappearance of the legal organisation may well be acceptable.
You can try to stand up for your organisation, but if for some reason it does not succeed, do not be too frightened and upset.
Only those organisations which do not have true values and need an active demonstration of their artificially inflated importance can fear such a thing.
A legal organisation is primarily associated with a certain type of auxiliary convenience that you are already used to.
But these are merely familiar auxiliary conveniences.
The disappearance of this organisation can only create the conditions when a new characteristic reconfiguration of some of your auxiliary manifestations will be required. It cannot change something basic.
Initially, in the activities of the believers, the organisation was registered first in order to have the official right to rent public facilities for meetings and to publish and distribute religious literature.
All this was important many years ago, and in recent times many things have inevitably acquired other characteristics.
To close the legal organisation which, as you must have realised by now, cannot in principle be a Church itself, the use of financial opportunities in community interaction will be considered.
Once you began your efforts to form a common space of mutual assistance and jointly resolve the worldly issues of relevance to you all, you quite naturally became aware of the favourable need to combine not only physical, but also some financial capabilities.
In your communal interaction something began to happen which is unacceptable for the traditionally existing society, where cheating at any place and at any time successfully flourishes.
In your interactions, the movement of funds has been on the basis of trust, which is not common in the society around you, where everything must be well documented.
You have started to learn to be open and trusting.
I think I have enough reasons to be sincerely happy for you since none of those who have been responsible for the use of joint financial means for the whole time of existence of the community has ever given a reason to doubt their honesty.
But if you look at it from the point of view of the state legislation, there is a kind of vulnerability in your characteristic interaction.
Lack of documentary evidence of the legality of the use of the money collected can be a serious stumbling block in court proceedings.
It seems as if it may be sufficient for conviction that there are those who are dissatisfied with the collections that have taken place, in which they are allegedly forced to participate, and the mere fact that someone has taken such funds for further use.
It turns out that even if that use is perfectly reasonable, the person who took the funds collected could still be condemned.
After all, someone was unhappy that he or she had given money away and someone else had taken it.
Although the existing rules of communal interaction suggested that only those who were well aware of the benefits to the common weal could participate in fundraising.
Believers themselves once came to the realisation of such an auspiciousness, but not when someone called them together and announced such a need.
There are some other circumstances which the persecutors want to consider as a reason for closing down the legal organisation.
But in view of their apparent unsoundness I do not see the need to touch upon them.
In a short time you will learn and understand it all for yourselves.
During this time of sorrow I have had to face many things that can only be attributed to the fruit of spiritual deficiency.
The sleep of reason produces monsters.
And the monsters produced multiply the grief.
Blessed be the exam given to all of you, which was intended both to mark the arrival of the significant fateful frontier and to help open up everything hidden, so that you can see the true face of everything and be able to orient yourself in an interesting way.
Recently, looking very carefully into the essence of what is going on, in every possible way I expect to see a manifestation of sanity.
But somehow it reminds me of the time when Diogenes used to walk along city streets with a burning lantern in the daytime.
And to the bewildered questions of the people he met, he’d say,
“I’m looking for a man.”
I continue to wait and hope…
It is vitally important that common sense prevails!
Peace and happiness!