As soon as we started talking about slavery, about slavish obedience, about the fact that the proclaimed one is an absolute slave of Christ, and anyone who wants to resurrect, become free, must become a slave (there is no other way)… – you (free, liberal, autocephalous democrats) wrinkled your nose, and condescendingly suggested we look out the window (around us) – look: around, in the civilized world, there is democracy, freedom, and you are talking to us about slavery!? We will listen to you about this another time (see Acts 17: 32)! You are afraid of words (verbal forms) and love words (verbal forms) – you are not interested in Truth, meaning, content, spirit. The devil and antichrist, and the servants of Satan (heretics, criminals…) speak thousands of sweet, beautiful words, leading the world into delusion, into hell (being slaves of sin and corruption, hell and hades, promise freedom and prosperity, paradise and salvation!?). In the Church, we test not words, but spirit, we are interested not in verbal forms, but in content – what is being said, where do they call the listener-reader with those or other (beautiful or terrifying verbal forms) words, what do they offer to know, what to partake of! But the sons of this age not only do not want to be obedient, slaves of the Truth, but do not even want to hear about slavery, obedience, selfless service, self-denial… Therefore, we will now talk long, very long about slavery, which is the essence of proclamation – the proclaimed must become a SLAVE (of Christ, Truth-Freedom)! The more severe the disease, the more pills-thoughts are needed for its treatment; we have stocked up on them in our pharmacy in abundance – although now, unfortunately, no one needs them (“When the Son of Man comes (appears, becomes visible to all and everywhere), will he find faith on the earth!?”). So why such non-commercial, unprofitable waste of ink and paper, why talk about what no one wants to listen to, and so much (a hundred thoughts-paragraphs about the same thing)? Maybe someone, someday, seeing this pile of monotonous pills-thoughts and stirring up the spirit, will ask: why such a waste of myrrh (paper and ink)?! The spiritual business (buying the Pearl-Treasure) is completely different from the successful business of this world! And in it – the Heavenly Business, the Kingdom of God – we understand a little! For the Kingdom of God, we are wasteful – we sell everything, and many things for nothing, just to acquire at least one soul for Christ, for Happiness, Freedom, Truth!
The word “slavery” by itself (like all other words, which are used only in pairs-contexts) is neutral and implies the question: to whom or what? Slavery is to belong to someone: God, oneself, or the devil! We are slaves by fact, we belong-serve someone in one way or another (perform someone’s will): God (by performing the will of God, the will of God – doing Good) or the devil (by performing the lusts of Satan or the lusts of our being, which are in hell-evil, – doing evil)! Whose slaves will we be: God’s, to be Free, Happy, True, or our own (egoism-self-hell) and Satan’s, to suffer-torment in the hell of emptiness-despair-darkness?! In the Old Testament, there was no choice for a person: all were slaves of sin, corruption, and death, all were under the tyranny of the prince of this world – the devil (see the epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans). But it has been over 2000 years since the prince of this world, Satan, was abolished, his kingdom was destroyed, death was overcome – the Kingdom of God has come!
Now each person has a free choice – to whom to be a slave – either to remain under the power of Satan and sin, to remain in hell-hell (the doors of the prison-hell are open from the outside (Christ destroyed all external locks and bars – and not just opened the doors of the prison of hell, but destroyed the posts on which they hung, destroyed the walls: there is no more prison itself!!! Hell is emptied!!!) – every prisoner of the hell of egoism-self can freely come out into the freedom of personal life in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, or remain further in hell, the doors of which are closed from the inside by the prisoner-egoist himself), or here and now (in the 2nd phase) become a slave of God, become a citizen of the Kingdom of God, become an heir of the Kingdom of God, a god by Grace, Freedom, Truth, Love by Grace! So, two masters who are at enmity with each other cannot serve, so choose whom you will serve: either Christ or Belial-antichrist; either Light-Truth-Freedom, or darkness-lie-delusion?!
The only voluntary slavery is slavery to Jesus Christ. It alone is based on freedom: I voluntarily, freely, consciously become a slave of Personal Freedom, Truth, Love – a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. And all other slaveries are slaveries out of necessity, against our will-wanting – we cannot help but be slaves of sin, death, corruption, space and time, etc. We just, to comfort ourselves and deceive ourselves that we are supposedly “free,” say that it is we who want sin: to fornicate, steal, kill, get angry, envy, hate, condemn… that is, to maim, wound, torment ourselves (is it good for you when you envy, hate, get angry?! No! Then why do you do it?! This is masochism, madness!). The free one is the one who can do, but can also not do, and no one from outside can force him, he from within wills what to do! And people (pagans, not being slaves of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit) cannot help but sin, even if they want to not sin if they fight sin-egoism-pride with all created means: religions, philosophies, various methods and practices of self-improvement, self-salvation – nothing will work for them (see Rom. 7)! An egoist, whatever he does, will always act selfishly; an egoist cannot, relying on himself or another egoist, overcome his egoism! People need an operation, not vitamins, antidepressants or sedatives (or fairy tales of a psychologist: “everything will be fine, you are fine…”. For some reason, I have never seen a psychologist at funerals, they have nothing to console a person who has lost the dearest one (speaking carnally), – they are helpless before death!); and that is a transplant operation, because my being (old clothes) no longer makes sense to patch-up-treat – replacement (transformation) of all organs, of all being is needed. We can do only one thing: with the help of the Holy Spirit, give ourselves to Christ the Savior – humbly, trustingly, wholly (the spiritual law states: what is not given is not healed; what we do not fight to give to Christ is not healed)!