August 28, 2024, Vissarion
“He who conceals hatred has lying lips; and he who spreads slander is a fool.“
(Proverbs of Solomon. Old Testament)
From the lawyers‘ words I learnt about the journalists’ wish to make an interview with me. I was given the questions so that, having familiarised myself with them, I could express some willingness to participate in such an event, but the specific wording of such questions could not elicit the consent expected by the journalists.
But one question from the handed list caught my attention, and I found it necessary to answer it for all those inclined to sound judgement:
‘Your followers call the “Church of the Last Testament” (CLT) a “new religious movement”, but the media have long been speculating that the CLT is a “sect”. You may well disagree with this characterisation. Why?’
Such a question is difficult to answer clearly enough in an interview format, where there were supposed to be many more questions, so I will answer it in the format of a more extensive thematic consideration.
But first of all, I will emphasise the word ‘sect’, because in the noisy and symbolic social processes of the current historically significant time, the term ‘sect’ has been freely interpreted by the efforts of unintelligent and poor-hearted people in a manner characteristic of the obscurantism of the medieval Inquisition.
At present, the term ‘sect’ has two fundamentally different types of interpretation: scientific and politically ideologised.In contrast to the scientific type of interpretation, which is based on an objective and therefore reasonable assessment, the politically ideologised interpretation always tends to be based on an assessment that is convenient for achieving the desired goal, which in principle makes such an interpretation biased and therefore pseudo-reasonable!
In the period of the Soviet Union, the concept of ‘sect’ was perceived through a generally recognised scientific interpretation.
This interpretation, on the one hand, reveals the concept of ‘sect’ in the sense of school, and on the other hand, the word ‘sect’ is associated with the word ‘sector’, which means a certain part of some common whole.
Due to the fact that in the history of the development of human society the term ‘sect’ was used in relation only to religious groups and organisations, it has become generally accepted to define as a sect any group of like-minded people who have separated from the general mass of adherents of the mainstream Church on the basis of a different understanding of some particular postulates of the traditionally existing dogmatic ideas.
The appearance of the so-called schism in any church organisation always implies a sectarian manifestation!
But does the appearance of a new interpretation of something seemingly familiar and understandable always have a negative and destructive character?
Every intelligent person is able to realise correctly enough that any progressive development of the rational activity of man and his society is possible only due to the emergence of a more accurate understanding of the categories and perceptions than those hitherto generally accepted as correct!
And this means that not all existing ideas about the reality of the World of Being and peculiarities of human development, which the whole society may consider correct, are correct in fact!
In the world history of the development of human society of relatively recent times, we know vivid examples of the activities of such astronomers as Copernicus or Giordano Bruno, whose discoveries and assertions in essence became manifestations of the most genuine dissent in the environment of religious and dogmatic ideas that existed at that time.
And how did the representatives of the Inquisition, who ruled society, deal with such heretics?!
Another striking example concerns the manifestation of the Good News associated with the sermons of Jesus Christ.
And how did the ruling representatives of the priesthood in the society deal with Jesus!
And yet all such representatives of the Inquisition and priesthood sincerely believed that they had authority from God and that they had all the completeness and correctness of dogmatic ideas about the Being of the World of Matter and the works of God necessary for Salvation!
Every sensible person can correctly understand that the emergence of new information about the ongoing reality can in no way be something unambiguously destructive and dangerous.
A person with a normal inquisitive mind and a tendency to unbiased and thoughtful understanding of everything new can never be frighteningly confused by any new information of a cognitive nature.
But then, what of the above-mentioned examples has become frightening for the representatives of the ruling clergy?
New knowledge can become embarrassing for such representatives only in one case – when this knowledge will predispose towards changing the ideological foundations that are habitual and convenient for their power and gains!
At the same time, this type of confusing circumstances inevitably implies manifestations of the specific features of competition, since the emergence of new worldview statements is always associated with the activity of some person who can be perceived as a competitor, and therefore hostile.
The specific form of perception of each other as rivals, which is far from true spiritual principles and has steadily and universally established itself throughout humanity, has inevitably led to the emergence of competitive struggle in the interactions of people with each other.
The very specificity of competitive struggle can only harm the spiritual development of a human being, because it always forces to perceive a conditional competitor as a rival over whom it is necessary to exalt, to deprive him of his superiority and, if possible, to harm him in every possible way!
All this is in direct contradiction to the true spiritual principles!
The openly diabolical wording: ‘Nothing personal, business…’ has become universally used as a conditionally justifying clause designed to soothe the conscience for the suffering and harm caused to the rival.
The psychological peculiarities of competitive struggle inevitably lead to an unacceptable distortion of the human psyche, create conditions for the emergence of disunity and alienation of people among themselves, which always leads to spiritual degradation and perdition!In ancient times Jesus told his disciples that a kingdom or a house divided in itself will inevitably be destroyed.
A kingdom can be divided only if there appears one more ruler in it, and a house can be divided when someone else acts as a host in the place where there is already one.
I think it will not be difficult for you to guess that in these conditions the key harmful circumstance will be the competitive struggle, in which cannot help but get involved a spiritually immature person, characterised by an irrepressible need to assert in society in every possible way his egoistic importance and superiority at least in something.
The first communities of those who believed in the Word of Jesus Christ were able to adhere to the correct understanding of their Teacher’s instructions, which included a direct and unambiguous hint about the inadmissibility of calling themselves mentors and teachers, for the Mentor and Teacher is one – the Word of God, and all believers are brothers and equals among themselves!
The formation of the first communities, which only can be rightly called true Christians, had neither mentors nor teachers, nor any other priesthood, and therefore in the life activity of such communities there were no conditions that could contribute to the emergence of competition, which means that in principle there could not appear any sectarian manifestation in the form of schism.But when, somewhat later, some authoritative figures from among these believers succumbed to the insidious promises presented by the state authorities and began to form a structured organisation with a hierarchy of priesthood, the activities of such an organisation, officially defined as Christian, began to rapidly drift away from the basic principles of the manifested New Testament.
The Church of Christians, created in the image and likeness of the state system and embedded in this system, inevitably acquired the characteristic for the state system vicious features of totalitarianism, competitive struggle for the division of power and spheres of influence, with the inherent desire for enrichment and dependence on material values!These vicious features were firmly rooted in the activity of the structure of the priesthood of the officially established Church!
And the naturally occurring fear of losing their power and influence motivated the ruling elite of the clergy to despotically approve a complete ban on any dissent.
On pain of death, any interpretation of the texts of the Holy Scriptures that differed from the officially approved dogmatic interpretations was forbidden!
On pain of death, any attempt to critically examine the numerous statements invented by the clergy, which all laymen were obliged to accept unquestioningly as immutable truths!
The totalitarian assertion of destructive prohibitions acquired a global character!
But in spite of such strict prohibitions, the specificity of the church structure itself could not protect itself from the emergence of all kinds of schisms within it in the form of sectarian manifestations.
Moreover, it was precisely this structural specificity of the established church organisation that became the starting point for the development of the circumstances that were conducive to the formation of sectarian manifestations!
Sectarianism can only be generated by that structured organisation of spiritual orientation, where certain personalities are officially allowed to establish for all followers of the propagated doctrine the legalised norms of interpretation of all elements of this doctrine, and are also allowed to dogmatise any other interpretations that such authoritative personalities find favourable to formulate as spiritual values, allegedly reflecting the Truth!
It is precisely because of this officially formed for the first time specificity of the church structure, which has steadily persisted for a long historical period of time until these days, that we have to observe the sad picture of the monstrous division between all who call themselves Christians, who by the devil’s temptation have divided themselves into different ‘kingdoms’ with different leaders, different statutes and different dogmatic interpretations of the very same Truths!
‘Divide and conquer’ is the well-known motto of perdition!
Dissent is always based on the peculiarities of reason and is intended to favour the progressive development of man’s rational activity, and is therefore foreseen by the Heavenly Father.
The manifestation of dissent cannot be forbidden!
To fanatically obstruct the manifestations of dissent is the lot of foolish and blind opponents of God!
Fanatical and reckless struggle against dissent is a direct return to the medieval obscurantism of the servants of the Church!
Every struggle, be it with the use of physical force or ideological, is always based on the use of violence!Ideological struggle is always based on a person’s clearly manifested categorical intolerance towards the judgements of a dissenter and an irrepressible desire to impose one’s own point of view on him, which can lead a poor-hearted person to resort to extreme measures in the form of punishing the dissenter for his refusal to accept the understanding imposed on him.
This was the basis of the god-awful monstrous reprisals against all those whom the obscurantists among the official clergy accused of heresy!
What was only worth the grandiose split in the united community of Christians in the Russian land, organised by Patriarch Nikon in not so distant times, when one part of breakaway Christians, whose successors now constitute the predominant Orthodox Church in Russia, with the support of the state authorities, brutally began to physically exterminate everywhere the other part of the seemingly co-religionists for not accepting the reforms introduced by Nikon and continuing to adhere to the sacred canons, which had been followed until that split by all Christians in Russia.
What was only worth the grandiose schism in the united community of Christians in the Russian land, organised by Patriarch Nikon in the not so distant past, when one part of breakaway Christians, whose successors now constitute the predominant Orthodox Church in Russia, with the support of the state authorities, brutally began to physically exterminate everywhere the other part of the seemingly co-religionists for not accepting the reforms introduced by Nikon and continuing to adhere to the sacred canons, which had been followed until that schism by all Christians in Russia!
But what was the main temptation that favoured the active manifestation of god-awful aggression and violence in the struggle against dissent?
The main temptation at all times has been the possibility of using the officially existing repressive institutions, which inevitably also created permissiveness and impunity accompanying this circumstance.
Therefore, only the representatives of the organisation that has such an opportunity, due to their own low spiritual and moral qualities, are easily tempted to fanatically wage a fierce struggle against dissent.
The poor-hearted people, unable to intellectually resist manifestations of dissent, in their ideological struggle are characteristically inclined to resort to vile slander, psychological and physical violence!
Where violence should be understood as any type of imposing on another person what he does not want to accept and do!It is only reasonable to peacefully oppose other ideas with more significant and reasonable counterarguments to worldview dissent, which is not connected with the propaganda of violence and calls for it!It is necessary to oppose it in conditions of open publicity, when all sober-minded people interested in the search for the Truth will have a favourable opportunity to make their own assessment of what they have heard and seen!
These are the most reasonable conditions, when everything progressive will be able to develop safely, and what becomes obsolete and irrelevant will disappear.In conditions of low intellectual development and scanty spiritual maturity, all the struggle against dissent has always been and still is reduced to stigmatising and reprisals, what at the present time has been most favoured by the politically ideologised use of the word “sect”, which has been widely imposed on the population of the country.
In the conditions of fateful predestination of the special role of the territory of Russia for all mankind, which implies the predetermined manifestation on this territory of the Will of God as a visible Accomplishment for all, it was in such an epochal period of time that the forces particularly interested in the destruction of everything progressive and innovative, which should have begun to form in Russia since the early nineties, should have manifested themselves.
The ideological atmosphere, which was formed in this period of time, contributed to the abundant emergence of all kinds of public associations, based both on erroneous and unhealthy worldview ideas, and on what is really useful for the normal development of society.
The abundant manifestation of such social formations gaining popularity could not but worry many observers, whose egoistic interests were in one way or another affected by what was happening in those formations.
At the same time, such worries became both far-fetched, caused by unreliable rumours and unhealthy speculations about allegedly real events, and quite justified due to the presence of manifestations that were actually dangerous for human life and development.
The political situation in Russia at that time created very convenient conditions, when some figures hostile to Russia geopolitically managed to significantly affect the stability of the social environment of the whole country.
As a result of deliberately undertaken certain insidious efforts on their part and with the active support of insufficiently intelligent influential persons within the country, a very peculiar self-determined “specialist” in sects began to carry out his destructive activities in Russia, who supposedly understands and knows everything about the essence of all religious teachings and social formations of a worldview nature that have appeared in the world.
The role of the ‘most prominent’ specialist and expert in the fight against sects in all of Russia was played by someone who, as it turned out, one day suddenly realised that an expert is not someone who knows, but someone who answers the questions posed.
The main thing is to confidently express evaluative judgements on a topic in which the questioning members of the public are completely uninformed and clueless anyway.
As a matter of fact, an insufficiently educated person who likes to savour all sorts of unreliable gossip and delusional speculations in his pseudo-scientific assessment opuses has successfully fooled a great number of journalists, officials, representatives of law enforcement agencies and authorities who consider themselves intelligent.
With the help of this ‘leading’ expert, the word ‘sect’, contrary to the scientific approach, in Russia began to be universally interpreted and used exclusively in a political, biased way, when a sect began to denote any manifestation not only of dissent that differs from the canonical statements of the conditionally dominant Church, but also any other public association around innovative ideas of non-religious orientation.
At the same time, what has become significantly characteristic is that the word “sect” began to be used exclusively as a negative stigma, simply allowing a part of the public, not inclined to a thoughtful and objective understanding of the current reality, to immediately perceive negatively and hostilely those who are pointed out by the opponents of God and leading experts in obscurantism by means of such a stigma!
Witches and heretics are burned at the stake… the crowd slanders and ululates…
An alienation is artificially created, which always breeds hatred and leads to many tragedies!
This type of struggle against dissent is contrary to true spiritual principles and cannot have the approval of the Heavenly Father!
This type of struggle is loudly applauded by demons and devils!
How long will you continue to be so unreasonable, continuing to arrogantly consider the people around you to be more stupid than you, just because they have chosen a worldview position that you yourself do not perceive as correct?!
How long will you continue to be so stupid as to think you have the right to impose your own worldview on other people and to determine what is more appropriate for them to believe in and what is not?!
Such extremely unhealthy self-confidence is a basic characteristic feature of all obscurantists and God-opponents!
As to whether or not the Teaching of the Last Testament can be referred to as a new creed, it should first be said that the Accomplishment of the Last Testament is the completion of what was started during the period of the New Testament Accomplishment.
The Accomplishment of the New Testament, where the Testament implies the Union of God with the human race, did not envisage a full-fledged unfolding of the Teaching due to the extremely limited intellectual capabilities of the man of that time.The full-fledged disclosure of the Teaching had to be made somewhat later and only at the time when the fate of the entire human race would be finally and universally decided on the whole Earth!And this Time has come!
The Teaching of the Last Testament can be viewed as both ancient and new, but not as coming out of any traditionally existing creed.
This Teaching can be considered ancient because it is directly related to the New Testament, the manifestation of which was the initial part of the Accomplishment of the Living Word of God.
And new – because the Teaching of the Last Testament has nothing to do with the existing Christianity, which has split into many independent parts on the basis of a huge volume of invented postulates and ideas that have absolutely nothing to do with what Jesus Christ taught and instructed!
The Accomplishment of the Last Testament was bound to greatly disturb the obscurantists and God-opponents, just as it did at the time of the Accomplishment of the New Testament.
Those who experience itching intolerance to dissent and unhealthy preoccupation with imposing their beliefs on dissenters, and even more, who are encouraged by official support from the representatives of state power, which invariably gives rise to feelings of permissiveness and impunity, could not help but be tempted in the current epochal period, crucial for all mankind, to begin to harm the manifestations of the Last Testament Accomplishment in every possible way.
At the present level of humanity’s reasonable activity and especially under the critically low spiritual maturity of the overwhelming part of the Earth’s population, this unfortunate circumstance was inevitable!
As in ancient times, the current ‘procurator’, being under the absolute influence of peculiar tendencies in the political system, confidently confirmed the blatantly falsified accusation just like his ancient colleague…
Just as in those ancient and significant times, the hierarchy of the present time has acted in a similar manner, revealing to the world its true face as opponents of God!
In the period of the Accomplishment of the New Testament, understanding the characteristic features of the ongoing processes in the development of man and his society, the Teacher said to His first disciples and followers: you will be persecuted for my Name.In contrast to the processes of scientific and technological development, the processes of spiritual and moral changes still follow the path of cyclic recurrence.
The vicious circle of historical reality in the development of all human civilisation!
The Accomplishment of the Last Testament is called upon to contribute to the creation of the necessary conditions to break such a vicious fixation and to form the true basis for the beginning of the normal and wholesome development of the true values of Humanity!
Be blessed, who strive to worthily fulfill the Will of God revealed today!
Participation in the liturgical glorifications of God and prayerful invocations to His Name are only auxiliary holy sacraments intended to accompany a true believer on the path of spiritual development!
But the regular and zealous performance of all such sacred ordinances is not in itself an indication that a person who considers himself a believer is truly a believer and is really walking along the path of spiritual development!
All such sacred ordinances and rituals can also be obediently performed by hypocrites who are God-opponents!
Believing in the existence of God cannot make you a believer!
Only those who trust God and seek wisdom in His manifested Will become true believers capable of following the path of spiritual development, and this is primarily always connected with the fact that you can express with all your heart: Lord, let it be not according to my desire, but according to Your Will!
Temper the importance of your desires, for they reflect your qualities, but in no way the Will of God!
In the manifested reality look for the manifested Will of the Heavenly Father for your good!
Do not rush to judge the manifested reality on the basis of your own expectations and desires, because they always have an egoistic distortion!
Beware of falling into obscurantism and becoming opponents of God!