Беседы на Апокалипсис

Conversations on the Apocalypse Archpriest Oleg Stenyaev

Before you - my friends typed text conversations on the Book of Revelation, which is pronounced in my impromptu Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist in Sokolniki at the end of Sunday's Divine Liturgy in 2006-2007. I never planned to publish them in a book, my task was to conduct morally edifying conversation for parishioners and nothing more.

In these conversations, I did not dare to such a task as subscript exegetical analysis of the text of the Apocalypse. I'm not so much interested in the historical coverage of the Apocalypse as the apocalypse particular human soul. See apocalyptic problems of their own hearts and spiritual means to interpret the text.

The very idea of ​​such conversations arose because there was quite a lot of books about the Apocalypse, written not quite orthodox people. I originally intended to be limited to ten or fifteen conversations, but it turned out what happened. Many believers recorded the conversations on tape and even video cameras, and after a while I found these lectures placed on the Internet in audio format. Then heard a variety of responses - from overly enthusiastic to thoughtful and critical. I thought that all of these and will be limited, but when I put on the table listing these conversations and offered to publish it all in one book, I am very confused, because from the beginning the audience assumed only his parishioners.

But the offer was made, and, after weighing all the "pros" and "cons", I decided to publish these conversations. Here I was faced with a dilemma: if they publish in the "raw" form, can go like this: it is easy to bear a rumor, in printed form may seem awkward and unfinished. Revise the whole text at a book meant to write an entirely new thing, from what I immediately refused. So I decided to leave the text conversations on Revelation unchanged, except for some necessary corrections, reconciliations quotes, rate, and in some cases - the detailed quotations of the Holy Fathers.

And what I would like to add to this text, I decided to add in the form of notes. Advance hope for leniency more thoughtful than I, the reader, and please do not blame me for being too emotional text - it is a genre of public preaching.

On the other hand, one can not speak about any prophetic text without regard to the special spiritual rhythm of presentation of the material in which it is revealed in the writings of the prophets. The Prophet as it seeks dokrichatsya our contemporary man stunned and "shell-shocked" pace and sounds steeped in the rhythm of this hellish existence, to break through the alternation of the same themes and images, and words. Here the chronology of events and the sequence of presentation is not important, the main thing - this is a breakthrough, hysterical, like a voice crying, like the roar of the last trumpet, awakening and setting in motion even dried bone. To this I paid attention first of all.

Since every conversation could be only for a random person who came to the temple, I tried each of them to offer the listener the necessary minimum of spiritual knowledge, which should have prompted soul to repentance. Therefore it was not possible to avoid repetition of case. I hope they will serve in the book memorization and learning above. That the reader can find in the pages of this book quite minor reasons - it is not a coincidence. When I said those conversations, then my motto were the words of the General Epistle of St. Jude: "And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, rather reprove them with fear ..." (Iud.1,23).

Archpriest Oleg Stenyaev.