The end of the world will come when no one expects it! Metropolitan Veniamin predicted this in one of his books ...
History remembers many evidences that writers manage to predict the future in their works. So, people of the past happened to learn about cars, cell phones and airplanes. Naturally, the authors write not only about gadgets, transport and cities of the future. They often devote stories to the apocalypse and how people learn to survive in a world without drugs, electricity and the Internet. But is it worth it to trust the words of the first writer who comes across, if he lacks experience or knowledge? It is better to refer to the works of a highly educated person who knew for sure what will be the end of the world.
The future is in the opinion of writers
Metropolitan Veniamin Fedchenkov confidently can be considered one of them. The way from the boy from the usual devout family to the bishop of Sevastopol took him 29 years. High positions in the life of this man succeeded one another: he managed to visit the bishop of the Black Sea diocese, metropolitan of Saratov and Balashov, exarch of the North American Russian church in the USA. At the end of his life he chose to renounce church affairs and devote himself to writing stories - both about the past and the future. Apart from the memories of other priests and life in Russia, there is the book "On the End of the World". Encouraged her to write Benjamin parishioners, throwing him questions about what awaits this planet.
Fedchenkov in his childhood
Metropolitan on the front page of the finished book wrote:
"You ask me about the question of the proximity and the time of the end of the world. I will not answer this directly. But only I will write; How does my heart and religious consciousness react to this? .. Lord, bless! "
Congenital modesty did not allow Veniamin to call his letters predictions. He did not assume the responsibility of being a prophet: he said that one person is powerless against the fate of the whole world. The most sinful in reasoning about the future, he believed the certainty of some false prophets in his ability to establish the exact date of the beginning of the apocalypse:
"And as for the question of the term, I even fear religiously to approach it: have mercy on me from this audacity"
Metropolitan about the predictions of the future
Veniamin Fedchenkov loved people and did not think that they had no right to sin. He was outraged by the speculation of sects and new religions on sins. They deprive a person of the right to make a mistake and promise him a happy life in paradise, demanding in return to strictly observe all established rules. It is beneficial for the same sects to inject a horrific atmosphere around the end of the world, which is getting closer. This gives them power over the parishioners, against which the metropolitan spoke.
"It is noteworthy that the expectation of the end of the world has spread throughout the world, and non-Orthodox. I myself have read about this and the Catholic writers. But especially significant is the emergence of a special sect of Adventists, who are learning about the close second coming of Jesus Christ and appointing terms to that. If a patient who abandoned care for his treatment, would study: when he dies? It's even painful to think now if I rushed into these questions. Now, like Eve, people sweep aside the most necessary, go into excessive and unnecessary: some in spiritualism, others in "Orthodox" about the end of the world ... And certainly with the calculus. Direct sin! Bold disobedience to the Word of the Lord! And how do people not fear to calculate the time frame? ".
End of the world and sects
Benjamin called his own hypotheses about the future "the opinion of the wretched." He was worried that humanity is going through the penultimate stage of its existence - and after all, he talked about it 70 years ago! Maybe the border of the last frontier has been passed and for the rest of the world have remained for a few years? While there is no cause for concern: the metropolitan believed that "50,100, 1000 years for history - the figures are very insignificant."
"Now whether to wait for the end? I think no! May God have mercy on me for this opinion. But I am bound by many things, and above all the Word of God itself. But a completely different question is about the moment of the end. And if the expectation is to bless the Church, then it is necessary to look for exact dates. In the Word of God, this calculus is quite clearly forbidden ... True, it is commanded by the vegetating buds of the fig tree to conclude about the coming spring in general; but its weeks are unknown. But it is understandable, the difference can only be in time: days, weeks ... Spring is inevitable ... So with the question of the end of the world. "
Metropolitan of the end of the world
It is clear that the clergyman did not assume the burden of authority to date the end of the world. Maybe he said something about which countries will become the founders of the world chaos? The old man reasoned thus:
"But even if you think about general data - and then you can not be sure that the expectations are beyond doubt; in particular, about Russia. Even if we assume that it ends, that an "end of world history" has come to it, like the one with Greece, no one can deny that new Christian countries of Asia will catch fire on the ruins of it, just as we Slavs have caught fire when the already dying culture of Greece "
The End of the World in Russia
The most terrible in the end of the world, he believed his suddenness. Nobody will warn people about cataclysms and payment for sins: they will not know about their terrible fate before the apocalypse.
"You know, there are a lot of places where one of the indubitable signs of the approaching end of the world is decisively indicated, this is precisely: a surprise. This term should be understood not only in the sense of the suddenness of the hour, but even more in the sense that there is no waiting for an end. Listen to this. People will eat, drink, build, etc., like before the flood. "
So stressed the spontaneity of future events Fedchenkov.