Monday, February 2, 2026

Metropolitan Agafangel: What is unique about our Church?

February 2, 2026

 

 

Today, there are many religious movements, confessions, and jurisdictions in the world, often transforming into globalist, political, ethnic, and other such structures. All of them hold one position or another and occupy a certain place on the world map of religious organizations. There are organizations that are numerous, with vast property and influence, and there are very small groups about which practically nothing is known.

Our Church, obviously, belongs to the latter. It would be fitting to assess our position, following the instruction of the Apostle: "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves" (2 Cor. 13:5).

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Of course, there is no point in speaking about non-Christian religions, and we shall not do so.

Among the vast number of Christians, we cannot be part of the so-called “Catholic Church,” since they cultivate a whole series of heresies, the chief of which is probably this: that they consider the “Pope of Rome” to occupy the highest place in the Christian world — the place of Jesus Christ — one of the pope’s titles directly attests to this: “Vicar of Christ” — Vicarius Christi (!). But the papists go even further in their falsehood. In a five-volume papist seminary textbook, which at one time went through five editions, it is stated that in the pope Jesus Christ Himself is truly present “in the living”: “if Jesus Christ is really present in the Holy Eucharist, is He fully present there?.. Obviously not… He is present in it really, but He is mute… I bless God that He has left us not a dead, so to speak, presence, but a living, active one… This part of Him, which I seek in vain in the mute tabernacle… is present elsewhere; it is in the Vatican, it is in the pope… Remove the pope, and Jesus Christ in the Eucharist will be incomplete.” * That is, according to this Latin false teaching, Christ is present on earth in two forms — in the Holy Gifts — a “dead and mute Christ,” and in the pope — a “living and speaking one” (forgive us, O Lord, for having to articulate this heresy). From this comes the invented “infallibility” of the pope, who alone is supposedly “above” the entire Church of Christ (whereas the Church, according to the Latins, is fallible), hence the papists’ striving to subjugate the whole world and their unrestrained attempt to absorb not only all Christians but, now in our days, all religions whatsoever.

But neither did Christ Himself appoint a vicar in His place, nor did the Apostles elect a “Vicar of Christ” after His Ascension into Heaven, and the Apostle Peter himself, in his two epistles, calls himself an Apostle and servant of Christ, but nowhere His substitute or vicar. Accordingly, we also cannot regard the Roman pope as such. The Latins deliberately misinterpret Christ’s threefold forgiveness of Peter who thrice denied Him (see John 21), and they present the absolution of Peter’s denial as his appointment as Vicar of the Savior Himself (!).

The papists, according to their custom, may today deny what they said yesterday, but this in no way changes the ideology of papism, since the essence of their false teaching remains unchanged — only the external details trade places. The doctrine of papism is, in essence, idolatry, and the pope among the Latins is an idol. For this reason, the Orthodox often called the Roman pope the antichrist, since he claims to be in the place of Christ. With this, I trust, all is clear.

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Among the multitude of Protestant churches, it is impossible to identify even one that possesses all the marks of the Church of Christ, even though, as indeed everywhere, there can be found sound judgments, a correct assessment of the state of our society, and self-sacrifice for Christ. Because they do not assign primary importance to remaining within the continuous Apostolic Church founded by Christ, in many cases they reject Holy Tradition, cast doubt upon the Holy Mysteries, and other things by which the Church of Christ lives, they cannot in any way be the object of our present consideration. Not to mention other movements within Christianity that formed on their own and came into being at some historical stage (centuries after the Descent of the Holy Spirit), and usually have a specific founder and a date of origin.

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Now concerning Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Church is that Church which preserves in full the same faith and the same essence that were in the Apostolic Church. Naturally, with the layering of centuries-old traditions, which made the Church more accessible for perception and practice by one or another people in one or another historical period, without thereby touching the very essence of the original Apostolic Church. It is the Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils and of those Local Churches, united among themselves, which trace their origin back to these Councils.

The Russian Orthodox Church

We trace our succession from the Local Russian Orthodox Church and its last Local Council of 1917–18.

Unfortunately, those who call themselves Orthodox today are not merely divided, but even disunited, fragmented, and opposed to one another. From the Local Russian Orthodox Church, various communities fell away — for example, the ritualist Old Believers, and in the early 20th century, many different groups that inclined toward cooperation with the Satanist Bolsheviks in the work of destroying the Church of Christ on our land — various Renovationist groups, the Grigorievites — but they did not gain authority or trust within the Church environment and, over time, ceased to exist as organized bodies. Then the God-fighters made the existence of a free Church Center impossible, and anyone from the Church milieu who was put forward to positions of Church leadership was subjected to immense pressure and real physical isolation with threats to their life if they refused to carry out the will of the God-fighters. This continued until the appearance of Sergius Stragorodsky, who fully accepted all the conditions of the God-fighters, and from him began the formation of today’s Moscow Patriarchate — an organization absolutely subordinated to Kremlin power, being an inseparable part of it, serving it alone, and unquestioningly carrying out all its directives. All other candidates who refused cooperation with the devil accepted a martyr’s death or died in isolation (Metropolitan Agafangel of Yaroslavl).

In the USSR, the spiritually free Church of Christ, independent of external forces, was compelled to go underground, while abroad it was preserved in the form of the free and independent Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Other Russian church organizations — the OCA and the Evlogians — were under external Kremlin or Masonic influence, control, and dependence.

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia

Thus, we trace our succession specifically from the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

The Catacomb Church in the USSR had no central administration, but existed — or more accurately, survived — in the form of separate, scattered communities. After the fall of the Iron Curtain in the USSR, its parishes and individual representatives who had preserved Orthodox consciousness joined the ROCOR.

The Kremlin authorities, who had dreamed since as early as 1920 of the destruction of the ROCOR (a task undertaken, according to archival data, by Tuchkov himself), and which by the end of the last century and the beginning of the current one remained (even by the mere fact of its independence) practically the only organized and authoritative opponent of the Moscow Patriarchate (and, moreover, with the opening of parishes on the territory of the former USSR, had become its internal enemy), directed considerable forces and resources toward the realization of this goal. This massive, planned operation to destroy the ROCOR, which began in the 1990s (due to the fall of the "Iron Curtain" — prior to that, a routine systemic effort had been underway), was carried out by divisions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (ambassadors and embassy staff were instructed to attend services and embed themselves in communities) and the FSB, in cooperation with the Moscow Patriarchate, under the oversight and control of the President of the Russian Federation, the God-fighter V. V. Putin. As part of this special operation, on Putin’s directive, the Soviet-era program “Russkiy Mir” (“Russian World”) was revived. Budgetary funds of the Russian Federation were allocated to this large-scale special operation, and a significant number of professionals — officers and agents — were mobilized, who, for salaries, bonuses, and rewards, carried out the order given to them to liquidate the Church. This was in addition, of course, to the naïve and deceived individuals within the ROCOR itself.

Having united part of ROCOR with the Moscow Patriarchate and thus liquidated a portion of ROCOR, the FSB was concerned that the part of ROCOR which did not join the MP (and this amounted, in total, to approximately half of the former ROCOR) would not reconstitute itself and thereby revive the threat of serious opposition to the Soviet regime. To prevent this, “partisans” — KGB agents — were embedded within the non-joined factions with the aim of sowing discord and hindering their unification. So far, we reliably know of only one such agent — M. V. Nazarov-Pakhomov, with the KGB codename “Walter” (about which, thanks to him, he himself gave testimony). In New York, there was an attempt to take control of our Synod by the entrepreneur Yuri Lukin, who offered to house the Synod on his estate in Mountain View (equipped with surveillance cameras), with the condition that we would pay rent and utilities. I agreed, on one condition — that the money collected by our Church and invested into the personal estate of Yuri Lukin be accounted for separately, so that, in the event of a deterioration in our relations and the Synod’s departure from Mountain View, we could reclaim the amount we had contributed. This was stipulated so that, should we find ourselves out on the street, we would be able to either purchase or rent premises to continue the work of the Synod. Lukin initially agreed immediately. But a few days later, evidently after consulting someone, he stated that this did not suit him, and that all funds collected by the Synod must belong to him personally — that is, what he wanted was total control over us. Naturally, such conditions were unacceptable for us. To this day, Yuri Lukin continues to keep under his control the former Bishop Andronik, who resides on his Mountain View estate, along with the clergy and faithful who support him.

Today it is already perfectly clear that the main goal of the leaders of the group that found itself near Metropolitan Vitaly was to keep him in complete isolation so as to prevent the reconstitution of the former ROCOR around him. Unfortunately, they succeeded in this through “successful” fragmentations and schisms, removing from the Metropolitan all the “unnecessary” and “superfluous” people — who quite possibly were striving to act in that situation with full sincerity.

This conscious or subconscious opposition to the restoration of ROCOR may also be attributed to all the other schismatic “splinters,” whose purpose and essence of existence is to retreat into isolation and die alone. In the most innocent case, this is banal sectarian thinking; in the worst — the execution of a direct assignment from the God-fighters. In any case, as of today, what exists is a collection of sects, closed-in and dying out. The only question is to which category they belong — whether they formed independently, by virtue of their hopeless sectarian mentality, or whether they were organized by the God-fighters. Here lies an entire field for reflection and conclusions — who is who among them. But this, of course, does not change the essence of the matter.

The main sign of unorthodoxy nowadays among the “true Christians” is the heresy of opposition to the Dogma of the Church, and, as a result, the complete absence of any desire for the unity of the Church. And this, unfortunately, is now seen even at the level of ordinary parishioners.

Just as special individuals were assigned to Metropolitan Vitaly, so too were such people attached to me, as the only bishop of ROCOR who did not go into union with the MP on the day of the signing of the Act of Unification in the presence of Putin (the other former hierarch who was against it, Bishop Daniel, was, like Metropolitan Vitaly, isolated and ultimately “treated”). At that time, several individuals appeared on social media who deliberately engaged in discrediting me (which, incidentally, to some extent continues to this day). Among other things, there even appeared a LiveJournal account with a distorted version of my name (agafa-aggel) and my own photograph as the “userpic.” In the open information space, on such platforms as Wikipedia, outright lies are written about our Church and about me, and when attempts are made to correct the information, the administrators there issue threats of complete blocking. And then there is the absolute obstruction, at the suggestion of the Moscow Patriarchate, from the administrative resources everywhere. Altogether, in the matter of the Church of Christ, we see a systematic, professionally executed approach. The system of the invisible spread of globalism in our days is operative, and it is not of God, and it works against God.

At present, we see that there are virtually no Orthodox who are free and independent from external forces, and establishing communion with dependent — and therefore unorthodox — groups carries the risk of also finding oneself, even if indirectly, in dependence on external political or Masonic forces. Therefore, it is impossible to unite with religious organizations that are not free and have one form or another of external dependence. We desire to be only Orthodox.

I am, without doubt, an opponent of all artificially created organizations, especially religious ones. The Church of Christ was founded by Christ once and for all time. All the efforts of Stalin and of global Freemasonry to organize the Church under their influence and control are doomed to collapse before the Face of God, the Gospel, and the coming Kingdom. The farther the Church is from political events, the closer it is to Christ. But both in communist states and in post-communist ones, the ideology of enslavement has always been at the forefront. In the Russian Federation even today there are people who monitor the state of alternative religious organizations — on the one hand, for the sake of liquidating them through absorption into the MP, and on the other — to prevent them from uniting into any real force. The God-fighting Soviet system is still working systematically to this day.

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At present, we remain alone within the Local Russian Orthodox Church — or rather, we continue to remain so, as this isolation of ROCOR was at one time testified to by St. Metropolitan Philaret. We do not declare ourselves to be the one and only true [Russian] Church of Christ — we cannot know that — but neither do we see anyone around us who possesses the full set of necessary marks of the true Church of Christ. We are open to dialogue with all who are independent and who sincerely consider themselves believing Orthodox Christians and strive for the unity of the Orthodox Church.

We believe that we belong to the true Russian Orthodox Church, and through it — to the Church founded by Christ. We should not be excessively concerned with the question of our numbers or the overall number of those being saved — that lies within the domain of God. The main thing is that we are free from external influences, and over us is only God. We believe that our Church will be saved, as one that has not departed from the original Apostolic Church of Christ, and, if Christ has so ordained, then we too shall be saved in it: “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom” (Luke 12:32). So may it be!

 

* BOUGAUD (Emile, abbé). Le christianisme et les temps présents, Tome IV “L’Eglise”, Paris, Poussielgue frères. 1882, pp. 506–516. — Bougaud (Emile, abbé), Christianity and the Present Times, Vol. IV “The Church.” — Cited in: Herman Ivanov-Treenadzaty. The Russian Church Facing the West, Moscow, Grad Kitezh Publishers, 1994, p. 238.

 

Russian source:

http://internetsobor.org/index.php/stati/avtorskaya-kolonka/mitropolit-agafangel-v-chjom-osobennost-nashej-tserkvi

 

 

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Metropolitan Agafangel: What is unique about our Church?

February 2, 2026     Today, there are many religious movements, confessions, and jurisdictions in the world, often transforming into...