Divine prophecy and geopolitics coalesce as Zelensky hammers Orthodox Church [Video]

A very interesting report is below for you to watch and listen to. The Military Summary Channel on YouTube is a daily (and lately, multiple times per day) report on the progress of the war in Ukraine. One might say it has a pro-Russian leaning, but the aggregate of reports seems to show a fair amount of objectivity through its detailed analysis of reports coming to Dima, the host of the channel, from people on both sides of the war.

The particularly interesting feature of this report is the report on Zelensky’s efforts to eject the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the country and replace it with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Now, wait a minute. What is the difference? Aren’t these the same thing?

Western listeners and readers may not realize there is a difference unless they read The Duran, but there is quite a difference.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church used to be a highly self-governing Church, but on paper it was considered an exarchy of the Moscow Patriarchate. In other words, this was the Russian Orthodox Church’s jurisdiction in Ukraine. However, it operated more like a completely self-governing Church (autocephaly) than a subject or diocese (exarchate), and it was even more self-governing than what we call a “self-governing” or autonomous Church.

For the non-religious person this will almost certainly look like word salad, but for the Orthodox Christian believer these terms are very meaningful. The upshot is that the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate” (UOC-MP) was considered in the Orthodox Christian world to be a legitimate Church, in communion with all other canonically accepted Orthodox Christian jurisdictions worldwide. During the special military operation that started last year, the UOC’s leading hierarch, Metropolitan Onuphry, took steps to formally sever the UOC from the Moscow Patriarchate, as a sign of confirming the already extremely independent status of the UOC and to show its support for Ukraine (NOT Russia!!) and President Zelensky (NOT Putin!!) in the war effort.

One of the biggest contentions in Ukraine is that many devout Ukrainian Orthodox Christians do NOT see the Russian operation as helpful; they see their homes and towns getting bombed and for them it is both an invasion AND the horrific notion of Orthodox Christians attacking and killing other Orthodox Christians, something that is exceedingly rare in the history of the Orthodox Church. The severing of ties was greeted tacitly by the Moscow Church and its Patriarch, Kirill. Some criticism of Kirill’s responses exists in that Met. Onuphry has asked for Kirill specifically not to make public statements in support of the UOC because this is like waving a red cape in front of the Ukronazi bulls, who go crazy at any hint of “Russia” being mentioned. Patriarch Kirill seems to be ignoring these requests, but communion between Moscow and the UOC is unbroken.

The OCU, or “Orthodox Church in / of Ukraine” is a schismatic group, basically brought into existence by the decision of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, and comprised of two formerly schismatic Orthodox jurisdictions operating in Ukraine, the “Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC)” and the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP)”.

There are other pieces I have in the Duran (linked above and beyond this point) that describe this complicated situation in more detail. They are worth a read because if one wants to understand this situation fully, one must go beyond the “name dispute.”

The upshot of this is that these two jurisdictions, the UAOC and UOC-KP were in schism (a break in communion caused by some ecclesiastical or dogmatic disagreement) and not in communion with any local canonical Orthodox Church anywhere. The reasons centered around the status of their leaders, the self-styled “Patriarch” Filaret Denisenko and the leader of the UAOC. Filaret was actually worse than schismatic, he was anathematized (totally cut off) by the Moscow Church, and every other canonical Orthodox Christian jurisdiction was in solid agreement with Moscow’s decision.

Patriarch Bartholomew stepped into this mess in 2018, unilaterally “lifting” the anathemas (the statements forbidding intercommunion with these church organizations” even though historically, the decision for doing this lay with Moscow. He did this without getting any acknowledgement of wrongdoing from Filaret, which would at least be the minimum requirement for lifting such a status. Instead, Filaret was simply pronounced “legitimate.” Why did Bartholomew do this? Two reasons are apparent:

1. Patriarch Bartholomew is beset with the idea that the role of Ecumenical Patriarch is similar to that of the Pope of Rome, that the Patriarch of Constantinople has jurisdiction across the other Patriarchates and indeed, over all the Orthodox world. This is a power trip and utterly foreign to the ecclesiology of the Orthodox Church. But Bartholomew received much of his theological education in Rome, and he is running a tiny church of some 5300 people in his home territory of Constantinople (Modern day Istanbul). Even the extended Church has but 5.3 million adherents. Being unable to proselytize in Muslim Turkey means he cannot grow his church at home, and this also leads to the second issue:
2. Money: The Ecumenical Patriarchate is heavily dependent on funding from the West, most particularly from the United States. Imposter Joe Biden has long been very chummy with the EP, eager to use the present Patriarch’s very liberal policies to advance his own. In 2022, for example, the supervising Archbishop of the American archdiocese presided over a baptism of two children with a same sex “married” couple as parents. This was too much even for many Greek Orthodox Americans, most of whom seem to be very liberal, and it resulted in quite a scandal for the supervising bishop. Yet in 2018, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, an American vassal leader, appealed to this self same Ecumenical Patriarch to legitimize the schismatic Ukrainian churches and help to force the Russian Orthodox Church out of the country of Ukraine. With a reported $25 million “donation” from the United States to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, this happened.

At first, the creation of the new church structure was disruptive and unpleasant, as the government tacitly or directly supported a very slow process of the OCU(“Ukrainian”) seizing UOC (“Russian”) parishes right out from under their parishioners. But with the SMO this process increased its pace, and now it has open endorsement, nay, a mandate from President Zelensky to eradicate the UOC parishes and monasteries from the country.

March 30th, yesterday, defined a focal point, as this was the day by which the UOC monastics resident at the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, one of Ukraine’s most prominent monasteries, were ordered to clear out of the property. The monks have refused, and many thousands of UOC believers (the UOC remains by far the largest single Orthodox juridiction – canonical or non- operating in Ukraine) have rallied to support the monastics and to appeal to their own president NOT to persecute this church.

Mr. Zelensky has, so far, ignored his own people’s pleas, and seems determined to purge Ukraine of “anything Russian”, so a showdown looks like it is upon us.

That is where this video from the Military Summary Channel becomes even more interesting. In listening to Dima, the host of the channel, as he talks about this situation, it is clear that he is either not an Orthodox Christian at all, or that he is extremely uninformed about the situation with the Church. He describes the situation as a secular person would see it, and it does not appear that he is just trying to play a secular message.

However, he brings up a story that began circulating in earnest about three days ago, that there was a prophecy – even a set of prophecies – in as recent as the year 2014, that says that a time will come where the Orthodox Church in Ukraine will fall under persecution by its own government. When this happens, so the prophecy goes, the Russians will win the war in six months.

Now, to be sure, this particular “revelation” is a bit dubious for me – it popped up three days ago in the middle of a protracted war in Ukraine, and it is being broadcast across pro-Russian sites, and it is exacerbated by a rather significant statement from a monk this week that the Ukrainian government needs to be afraid of what God is going to do it.

I agree with the monk, but the timing of all this seems a bit too convenient. Why did this prophecy not have prominence a year ago, for example?

As an Orthodox Christian believer, I am taught that one of the functions of prophecy is warning – that if people heed a prophecy and change, the prophecy will not come to pass. This happened with Jonah regarding the city of Nineveh, as recounted in the Bible. Jonah gave a prophecy that Nineveh was going to be destroyed, and the king heeded it and called a fast for all his people and himself, and God did not destroy the city, causing great relief to everyone except Jonah. (This story is both instructive AND comedic and well worth reading), and this short interpretation of the problem is brilliant. Watch, if you dare…

However, the significance of this reporting that Dima has offered – that a prophecy about the imminent defeat of Ukraine in this war in six months’ time – is that it is being taken seriously.

I am not saying it should not be; I am only cautious because the timing is curiously convenient, and reporting geopolitical news for years shows multiple examples of THE PLAN in various aspects, this appearing suspiciously like those other examples. How this is different, for example from the “Six men and a boat” story floated recently about the “real” culprits behind the Nord Stream sabotage, just after Seymour Hersh blew the lid off the US’ participation and execution of that attack, and after a “meeting between US state authorities and Germans…” Right?

John Varoli recently wrote a piece about this as well – When it comes to the Orthodox Christian world, we understand that God does intervene and work his will out in our earthly affairs, here and now. The fact that this kind of reporting has found its way into a news reporting structure that has usually prided itself on its distance from anything that looks like there is a God that is involved with us is remarkable. We actually see the warnings in photos, like this one, of myrrh streaming from a likeness of Jesus Christ on the Cross at the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.

The final thing that seems necessary to say about prophecy is this: Prophecy is not fortune telling, nor is it exclusively about the future. Prophecy is actually when someone tells the world reality and what that reality promises if we continue in a certain way. When prophecy is of a divine nature, it expresses God’s view of reality as it is and is intended to get us to pay attention and change things about ourselves.

In that sense, this prophecy and the statements said along with it are certainly true. President Zelensky is involved in actively and brutally persecuting the Christian faith. He will not succeed, simply because God cares for the church and its believers and no one can beat him. The Christian church is built on the bones of its martyrs, and persecuting it only makes it stronger. This has been the case throughout history. In our connected secular age, this is about to show its truth once again. It may not happen immediately – in the Soviet period it took seventy years to show, in other places it took longer. But the gates of Hades shall not prevail against the Lord Jesus Christ’s Church.

Maybe that is truly at the center of the problems in Ukraine, just as at the center of the problems in Europe and the United States. I have always seen these issues as the result of weakened dedication to Christ, and the subsequent persecution as that darkness which seeks to eradicate all reminders that God is God (and I am not!) kicks into high gear. Certainly the shooting in Nashville – a “transgender” shooter attacking a Christian school – is one of the most blatantly visible pieces of evidence supporting this. So is Imposter Biden’s staffing the inner circle of Washington with perverts, cross-dressers and sexually aberrant weirdos, a supposed “Roman Catholic” exalting same-sex “marriage” (just as Poland’s Catholic Church appears to be doing, while Francis says nothing…)

There is a LOT going on, and a lot of it is about attacking and trying to destroy Christendom.

One prophecy is true for certain. They will never succeed.