Letters of Abbot Nikon

Please forgive me for my belated reply to your letter which is dear to me. I am not feeling well, and the thoughts about death do not leave me alone. I feel that if I live up to see 1963, I will not pass it through. For me personally, death is desirable. I know that there is future life, that there is God’s mercy for us and there is hope for us believing in the Lord Jesus Christ to enter into the blissful eternity, rather than an everlasting torturous future.

Religious perceptions, though different from the psychological meaning of the word, are also as real as the perceptions of the physical world. The earthly life is not for pleasures but for getting knowledge of oneself and of God. During their earthly life people must make a resolute and irrevocable choice – to strive for good or for evil; for God or for devil. Those seeking God and His truth will find God and the rudiments of a new life here, on earth, and in its fullness – after death. An egoist looking exclusively for earthly pleasures will find the devil and after death, as of one in spirit with the devil will go to the Devil’s kingdom, Hell, to join the community of downright egoists and evil-doers. Our future destiny is in our hands… Forgive me, if I am writing not quite what I should. I am sorry not to have come to see you this summer.

I wish to be farther from this life and from the spirit of this world. This spirit has taken possession of the whole mankind. Only from the outside it is possible to see and to feel the loathsome vileness and ugliness of this spirit. There are very few people in the world today, who are capable of escaping the influence of this evil spirit on them. This is horrible! They say, that a frog meeting with the eyes of a snake cannot cast its glance away, it starts to cry, but is unable to run away and instead is moving closer and closer to the snake until it finally gets into its mouth.

There are words in one of the evening prayers, pleading: “Lord, take me away from the mouth of the abhorrent serpent, desiring to devour me alive and to throw into the hell.” These words come from human experience. Those possessed by this spirit do not understand them and do not believe those who have freed themselves from it.

May the Lord bless you and protect you from evil and lead you to eternal blissfulness after death. God willing, we might see each other in the outer world.

Choose God; keep away from the devil in spirit and in deed, so that the Lord’s words: “Who is coming to Me I will not cast out” may be also said about you.

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