Sunday, October 30, 2005
ARCHBISHOP JOHN'S BOOKS
There is a bio. of him here which says that he wrote more than 350 books and that he was born in 1946 in Moscow. It also lists the institute from which he graduated and his courses in music.
He has formed his own church and is the president of the International Association of Russian Religious Authors of Philosophy. Somehow he has managed to make contact with an Episcopal priest in Montreal who works as a medium, and with an American college professor. These activities take time.
Figure it out. If he was born in 1946, he is 59. If he wrote a book a month, or 12 books a year, it would take 29+ years to write 350 books. Most writers do well to write 2 books a year, which is a far cry from a book a month. But let's say that he began writing when he was 10. He would have had to write over 7 books a year to author 350 books in 49 years. I suspect the explanation is some sort of channeling or automatic writing. We already know that he is a visionary and that some of the theology I've quoted is odd; and it has been stated in some of his webpages that at least some of these books consist of messages given to him in visionary events.
Rudolf Steiner was prolific in this manner, authoring a large number of books. He got them through clairvoyance. Alice Bailey, likewise, wrote a large number of books, and they were dictated by the spirit Djwhal Khul.
Then there is that odd description of Mary Magdalene's pregnancy given in the news service that seems to be part of Archbishop John's empire. This is a good example why the visionary experience must be firmly grounded in doctrine or it can go seriously wrong. Also, we invite trouble when we set ourselves up as judge of our own visionary experience, which Archbishop John has done by forming his own church, presumably after the Orthodox Church excommunicated him.
This is also a good example of what is wrong with the Marian Movement that caught fire in the Roman Catholic Church since Vatican II. Their association with this visionary is telling.
