Chapter 15 -- "Descent of the Holy Spirit"
(In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; And without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; And the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; And the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, Whose name was John.)
Such was the liturgical reading on Thursday May 8, 1970 (old style), which was St. John Bogoslov's day. He was the apostle who was cherished by the Old Believers for presenting God the Word (Bogoslov) in his gospel. He was also recognized as the apostle to whom were revealed the "last things" or the "end times," which he had written down in a book called the "Book of Revelation." Nikolai became interested in St. John Bogoslov when his father told him that the visions of Grigory, the disciple of St. Basil, were similar to the visions that were revealed to St. John on the island of Patmos.
After the service 12-year-old Nikolai asked his father to explain the "end times" that both Grigory and St. John had seen. He brought out his book with the pictures of the visions of Grigory.
"Is this what happens when the world ends?" asked Nikolai. He pointed to a picture in which the righteous judge sat on his throne in the sky and judged the people down below.
"Those saintly people you see in bright robes with haloes around their heads are the saints who suffered and died as martyrs for the cause of Hristos," explained Ivan.
"Were they Russian saints?" asked Nikolai, who had always heard that only Russian Old Believers would go to paradise.
"Yes," answered Ivan, who firmly believed that the true faith had been given to the Russian people to preserve for all generations. "They are the ones who had to suffer many years ago when our people first were persecuted in Russia."
"Tell me about it, please," asked Nikolai. "How as it in the beginning?"
"Let me bring you a book and show you how it was when our people were first called Old Believers," said Ivan. He got up from the sofa and walked over to a glass cabinet where he kept all his religious books. Meanwhile, Nikolai took the book of the visions of Grigory back to his room.
"What are you looking for?" asked Masha, who was rocking her seven-month baby to sleep in a reclining chair. Little Luba (short form for Lubov, Russian for "love") was holding on tightly to her mother's nipple with her strong jaws. She had been born just as the lady doctor had predicted--on the last day of September. "I'm looking for the book on the history of the fathers and martyrs of the Solovetsky Monastery," answered Ivan. His eyes scanned across the two rows of books.
"Vasily was looking at it the last time he was here," commented Masha in a soft voice so as not to disturb the baby. "I saw him put it back on the top shelf."
"Oh, yes, here it is," said Ivan as he looked into the far-right corner. He brought the book to Nikolai, laid it between their laps, and opened it up to page one.
"This is a picture of Simeon Deonisovich, one of the brothers who had a large number of Old Believers in their community, which was called Vygovskaya Pustinya (a wilderness near the river Vyg)," pointed Ivan. The scholarly author of the book on the Solovetsky martyrs was shown standing beside his writing table with the manuscript in his left hand. "He wrote years later about the siege of the monastery by the tsar's soldiers and the subsequent persecution."
Ivan leafed through a few pages and stopped at a picture of Russian soldiers on horses at the walls of the mighty fortress which stood like a bastion of the Old Belief on the shores of the White Sea.
"This is a picture of the soldiers trying to scale the walls of the fortress-monastery," pointed out Ivan. He turned a few more pages. "And this is a picture of the soldiers firing cannon balls on the walls. But each cannon ball would keep bouncing back like an arrow in circular movement. They tried to cut off supplies, but the Solovki Believers sent petitions to Tsar Alexei and pleaded with him to return to the Old Belief, which was the belief by which all Russian saints achieved saintliness and were saved. But he wouldn't listen, and he didn't accept their logical argument that if the church honored the saints, then the church should also honor the Old Belief and ritual that the saints observed. They also informed him that the new religious instructors were teaching a new, unheard of faith, as though the Solovetsky believers were some outlandish tribe knowing nothing about God."
Ivan turned a few more pages. "Here is a picture of the traitor Feoktist who showed the secret passageway into the monastery which was used at night to get supplies," said Ivan. He turned some more pages. "Here is a picture of the soldiers hanging some of the Solovki monks when they finally defeated them on August 22, 1676. That's when they started torturing and killing them for the Old Belief."
Nikolai's eyes were wide open and his ears were tuned in to all his father was telling him. He began to feel hatred coursing through his blood for the government that had ordered the killing of the Old Believers.
"Why did they have to torture and kill them?" asked Nikolai. Ivan turned to a page with a picture of Tsar Alexei.
"See this tsar who is near his death here?" asked Ivan, pointing to a picture of a priest blessing the king with a two-fingered sign and saying the last rites for the dying king.
"Yes, I see," said Nikolai.
"This Tsar Alexei Mihailovich was a good Orthodox tsar before the cursed Nikon corrupted him with new Greek mixed with pagan Latin ways," said Ivan. "God punished Tsar Alexei for listening to Nikon; a week after the monastery fell into the hands of the soldiers, the king died. All because of the Ante-Hrist, the accursed Nikon." Ivan's tone of voice changed to show the disgust he felt toward the accursed patriarch. "We don't even permit pictures of him in our books because of the damage, destruction, and desecration he did to our holybooks."
"Why did he do that to our holybooks?" asked Nikolai.
"I'd have to take you back before the great raskol (schism) of 1666, when the Ante-Hrist appeared on Russian soil, as Ioann Bogoslov (John the Revelator) prophesied he would," began Ivan. "There was a great religious movement before all the trouble began. A group of believers called the
'Bogoliubtsy' (Seekers after God), or Zealots of Piety, as some called them, tried to put a stop to the heavy drinking, gambling, skomorokhi (musical entertainers with dancing bears), and all the evil that was spreading throughout the land. Then when Nikon became patriarch and head of the church in 1652, he tried to make everyone submit to his authority, including the tsar, whom he made bow before him as God's representative on earth. By submitting to Nikon's authority, Tsar Alexei was helpless when Nikon started to revise the Russian holybooks to make them conform to the Greek models. Some of the believers put up a fight to stop these changes; because of that, they began to be called 'Starovery' (Old Believers) or 'Staro-obryadtsi' (Old Ritualists) for they continued to follow the belief of the old holybooks and performed the church ritual and liturgy according to the way they had been taught by their forefathers."
"Couldn't they just get rid of this Nikon?" asked Nikolai.
"The ones who tried were deported and sent to Siberia," remarked Ivan. "One of the leaders, Ivan Neronov, was exiled along with the Archpriest Avvakum. Others were forced into jail or tortured and made to confess that the new way was the right way. The ones who submitted and accepted the Nikonian way became Nikonians, as we call them to this day."
"Why did Nikon hate the Old Believers so much?" asked Nikolai.
"Because they wouldn't submit to his authority and obey his ungodly laws," answered Ivan.
"What laws?" asked Nikolai.
"He tried to make all the people cross themselves with the Latin sign of the cross, like this," said Ivan, showing with his left hand the manner in which Nikon tried to force all Russians to cross themselves. He put the three middle fingers in a group and the thumb and small fifth finger together. Then he waved the sign away and showed the right way with his right hand. "This is the way we were taught, with two fingers grouped together to signify the two natures of Hristos, God and man, and two last fingers joined with the thumb to show the hidden nature of the Trinity."
"You mean the Old Believers were persecuted just for that?" asked Nikolai in amazement.
"There was much more that he tried to change," responded Ivan. "The Greeks made him go completely against the laws of our Stoglav (Hundred Chapters) Sobor (Council) of 1551, where all our Old Belief had been confirmed by the holy council of all the elders and priests. Then when the Greeks took over at the Council of 1666 and sang "anathema" to our Stoglav, to our two-fingered cross, to our spelling of Isous without the extra 'e' after the first 'e' (I in Isous is pronounced like an 'e'), and after the Greeks denounced our entire Russian mission in the world as the Third Rome after the fall of the Greek Constantinople to the pagan Turks in 1453--well, after that there was complete opposition by the Old Believers. Can you imagine, the Greeks at the Council forbade 'The Tale of the White Cowl' and began destroying copies of it so that no one would know that Holy Russia was the place where the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit would be established."
Ivan stopped talking for a minute while he leafed through the book to show Nikolai another picture.
"Here is a picture of the monk Epiphany having his tongue cut out," said Ivan. "The priest Lazar is sitting on the ground. They had already cut off his tongue. And here is the Prophet of God Iliya (Elijah) standing beside Lazar, telling him to be a witness to God. Both were condemned by the Council and exiled with Archpriest Avvakum. Avvakum, however, was exiled without harm to Pustozersk (about a hundred miles from the Arctic Ocean in the tundra of northeast European Russia). There he wrote about the persecution of the Old Believers, and he says that when the Prophet Iliya told Lazar to be a witness, then immediately afterwards Lazar spoke again without his tongue."
"Why didn't they hurt Avvakum like they did the others?" asked Nikolai.
"Avvakum was an old friend of Tsar Alexei and the queen, and he had a faithful follower named Theodosia Morozova, who was a lady-in-waiting to the queen," explained Ivan. "They were able to influence the fate of the Old Believers for some time. However, Theodosia and her sister Eudoxia were arrested later for supporting the Old Believer movement, and both died in prison. Avvakum with Lazar and Epiphany were later burned at the stake because they continued to influence the Old Believers, especially Avvakum with his many treatises and epistles which he wrote while in exile."
"You said something earlier about Ioann Bogoslov (John the Revelator)," interrupted Nikolai, "that he prophesied about the Ante-Hrist. What did he say about the Ante-Hrist?"
"Do you remember those pictures of the Ante-Hrist and all those besiki (demons)?" asked Ivan.
"Yes, I looked at them a hundred times," answered Nikolai.
"Go get the book and I'll show you something," said Ivan.
Nikolai ran to his room to get the book which was part of his personal library.
"Why are you going to scare him with those pictures and that talk of Ante-Hrist again?" asked Masha, who had been listening quietly to what Ivan had been teaching Nikolai. The baby was sleeping in her arms. "You remember how he had those nightmares several years ago when you first told him about the Ante-Hrist."
"I remember," said Ivan. "But he's older now. And he wants to know. I think he'll be all right this time."
"Nikolai rushed back with the book. Ivan opened it to the page where a picture of a beastly man with fiery hair and beard was shown in a palace.
"This is the Ante-Hrist," stated Ivan, pointing to the mangy creature with two horns on his head. "The angel is showing him a scroll on which is written:
(The Gospel of the Lord to Satan saying how your kingdom is finished)."
"Is that also Ante-Hrist?" asked Nikolai, pointing to a picture of the beast with wings being manually hurled out of a palace by an angel.
"Yes, it is the devil himself in the flesh," stated Ivan. "He is forced to vomit all the evil, destruction and anger, and all the poisonous uncleanliness, untruthfulness and heresy that he spread during his three year rulership over all the earth."
"What an awful sight," said Nikolai. "It's making me sick just to look at it."
"Ioann Bogoslov prophesied that he would reign three years, and then Hristos would come and put an end to his kingdom," said Ivan, not paying any attention to Nikolai's pale face. "And Ioann prophesied that his mark would be the number 666. So when 1666 came about, every believer understood that the prophecy of the Ante-Hrist was being fulfilled in the Russian land and that there was a falling away of the faithful from the true faith, and the last Christian kingdom, Moscow--the Third Rome, had come to an end."
Nikolai grasped his mouth with both of his hands and quickly ran to the bathroom. He didn't quite make it to the toilet bowl, and he vomited his breakfast all over the linoleum bathroom floor.
"I told you not to talk about those ugly pictures," reprimanded Masha as she heard Nikolai vomit in a loud heaving, guttural sound.
"I didn't think he'd get sick from that," apologized Ivan.
"You should show him just the pictures of paradise," said Masha. "He's happy, and he doesn't get moody or sick, when he looks at those pictures."
"I know," argued Ivan, "but he needs to know about the evil things that he must avoid in his life in order to achieve salvation."
Masha didn't want to argue that point with her husband.
"Go help him clean up," she said in a commanding voice, as if to blame Ivan for the mess he had caused.
Ivan listened until Nikolai had finished heaving and expelling the toxic matter from his stomach a third time, then he went to get a mop and a bucket of hot water.
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Chapter 16
Beginning - Chapter 1
Copyright 1982 by Paul John Wigowsky
