Main news for 1 January 2021

The Savior's words about those who cannot at the same time work miracles in His name and immediately revile Him seem quite reasonable and understandable in human terms. Sometimes a newly appearing religious movement needs not even support, but only more or less benevolent neutrality. Yet Jesus also said something else: whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with Me scatters. It would seem that these are two mutually exclusive statements. And if Christianity were simply one more religious movement, even a messianic one, that is how it would be. But the point is that Christianity is not a religious movement, but the way into the Kingdom and life in the Kingdom.

Here everything is not as it is with ordinary religious movements. The Kingdom is an objective reality. It came into the world through Jesus, and however we relate to this fact, our attitude does not change the fact itself in the least. And in order to enter the Kingdom, trust in the Savior matters, the very trust that in the traditional language of most Christian religions is called faith in Jesus Christ.

But even for those who remain outside the Kingdom, it is not completely closed. For now that it is in the world, its breath is sensed everywhere. And anyone can sense this breath. Of course, such breath, sensed by outsiders, is not the same as the fullness of life in the Kingdom opened by Christ. But it is still better than nothing. To sense it, one need not even be a disciple of Christ in the proper sense of the word.

The only thing that protects one completely reliably from the breath of the Kingdom is an unambiguously negative attitude toward it and toward the One who brought it into the world. This means that anyone who has not said an unambiguous "no" to Christ or to one of His disciples doing His work is not lost for the Kingdom. Of course, this is not enough for a Christian. For a disciple of Christ another principle is valid: if you are not doing Christ's work, if you are not gathering with Him, then time has been wasted, then something has been missed. But here there is already another path and another measure, the measure of one seeking the Kingdom and striving to live its life.