AS SOME READERS WILL KNOW, I recently visited the Isle of Patmos on a kind of spiritual pilgrimage. I was, in a sense, returning to ‘the source’ of the Book of Revelation — the climactic book of the Bible. It was written in a cave there more than 1900 years ago, and has been a powerful influence in my life as I’ve studied it for more than three decades. So I went there with a feeling of great trepidation with the full expectation of some revelations of my own. I have been seeking guidance on the next phase of my life and this trip was all part of that process. But my resulting epiphanies have been very different from that which I expected or hoped for. This has subsequently led me to wade into some waters of soul-searching that go deeper than I have done for some time.

The day after I arrived on Patmos, I met an enthusiastic jeweller of some talent who invited me to a special communion service to be held at 8am the following day in the Cave of the Apocalypse where the Book of Revelation was written. I was intrigued about what would take place, so I rose early and went there. A priest dressed in special robes was ‘ministering’, chanting long prayers, accompanied by the shaking of bells and much incense being wafted around. This was all strange to me as I do not go in for this sort of thing and generally revel in simplicity and unadorned wonder. However, I was willing to witness the spectacle as it was quite novel and also because of the particular setting. I tried to remain non-judgemental, acknowledging after all that this is a very different culture. I was also interested in the actions and reactions of the other folk there. I noticed during the communion rite that the priest in charge kept looking at me in a rather intense manner. I looked away to avoid his gaze as there was something which I found very disturbing about this.

After the performance was over, he continued to eye me up with long gazes from which I turned away. I thought at first that he may have wanted to offer counsel or reach out to me in some meaningful way. In hindsight, I now realise that he was looking at me in the way that someone in a nightclub might view their intended quarry for the purposes of seduction. Afterwards, I was invited for coffee along with the rest of the assembly in an upstairs room. There I found myself in polite conversation with a couple of people who could speak some English. Meanwhile, I noticed that the priest kept secretly motioning to me with his hand in a manner which communicated that he wanted me to stay behind after everyone else had gone. I understandably assumed this was because he wanted to speak with me.

One of the reasons I came to the island was to make contact with the monks, who I know from certain writings are very clued up on what is going down in the world and are also making direct links with the prophecies in the Book of Revelation. What better place could there be than the Cave of the Apokalypsos and with the priest in charge to engage in such conversation! After having motioned to me several times to stay behind, I found myself alone with the priest after everyone else had left. It was quickly evident that the priest didn’t speak a word of English (or this is how it appeared), which surprised me. Anyway, without introducing himself, he beckoned to me to follow him down some stairs in an outside passageway until we came to a door in the wall. I still had not been given the opportunity to introduce myself, so I held out my hand to shake his. He immediately grabbed my hand and pulled me towards him as he also lunged forward. I recoiled somewhat but he held onto my hand with a strange idiotic grin on his face, as if he couldn’t contain himself in some way. He then started stroking the palm of my hand and then my wrist with his fingers in a very peculiar manner. He still had the idiotic grin on his face which I later interpreted as lasciviousness (Greek: ασέλγεια). I was so blindsided by his behaviour that it took me some time to work out what was really going on. I tried to be polite just in case I was misinterpreting him, but it gradually became clear that his actions were sexually-motivated advances. At first, I couldn’t be sure if I was dealing with an imbecile or a very slick operator, but the thing that convinced me entirely of the latter was when he persuasively ushered me through the door, as we were standing on the staircase. I had previously wondered if he was going to show me some related artefacts or relics. Maybe there was a museum there. After I had entered the room, he quickly followed me and immediately stood right before me, again with that idiotic lascivious expression, but now he was heavy-breathing rather like a weirdo on a kinky telephone call. He was also leering at me expectantly. I quickly glanced around the room, which was in a state of semi-darkness, and realised it was an empty room! Then the penny dropped… I actually uttered the words to him, “What the fuck are we doing in here?” He just shrugged and carried on with his heavy breathing routine. I suddenly began to feel somewhat threatened and discerned a sense of malevolence. So I said forcefully into his face, “I’m going to the cave!” and pushed past him to open the door. As I went down the steps towards the cave, he went in the opposite direction. I glanced up to see where he was and he motioned to me that he was going to take off his robes in another room. Whereupon I took off sharply down the stairs. On reaching the cave, one flight of stairs down, I saw his right-hand man at the entrance who immediately looked down almost as if he was feeling guilty or embarrassed. I wondered if he was in on the priest’s little caper too, and was acting as his ‘wingman’. It could have been that he just turned a blind-eye to his master’s peccadilloes, or that he was aware of his pervert nature. By then, I knew that I was dealing with a complete reprobate masquerading as a priest. What a cover that is! Not just a priest, but the actual Abbot of what was meant to be one of the most sacred monasteries on earth, conducting rituals there and impressing the world. What a deception! Or as they say in French “Quelle déception!”, which means “What a disappointment!”, for that is certainly what it was too.

Now, bear in mind that this did not involve some priest working in a backwater of no significance. This is a priest appointed to act as the custodian of what is reputed to be one of the most sacred sites in the world. In fact, during the coffee session, one woman told me that Patmos is “the second Jerusalem”, the first being in Israel. This makes the behaviour of that priest all the more heinous as this site in particular is a place unique on the earth. It is the place in which the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of his very last sacred book of prophecy. In a great irony, this ‘Book of Revelation’ written in the cave over which this priest has oversight, makes it very clear that as the time of the end of this age draws close, people will revel without conscience in such things as murder, idolatry, sorcery, sexual immorality, and thievery (see The Book of Revelation, chapter 9, verse 21). Understand especially that those who are morally degenerate will flourish. The two opposing sides of darkness and light, evil and good, will be accentuated, with the greater mass of people following the former of the two, having their consciences cauterized by their lawlessness. The book also says in another place:

“And the angel said to me, ‘Do not keep the prophecies in this book a secret, for the time is coming soon. Those who are unjust will continue practising injustice; those who are defiled [a translation of the Koine Greek word, ῥυπαρός, “ruparos”, which signifies those who are morally filthy] will continue in their defilement; those who are righteous will continue in their righteousness; those who are holy will continue in their holiness.’” (see The Book of Revelation, chapter 22, verses 10-11).

So a guy can dress up in fancy robes, praying continually to Ο Κύριος and waving incense about and still, at the very same time, be planning how he is going to seduce a guy in the congregation that he has spotted with his evil little eyes, into a sexual liaison. That indeed is ῥυπαρός (sordid)! And all this right inside the very cave where powerful prophecies were written about the way the world will descend into moral chaos. You couldn’t make it up!

I wonder how many other people this ‘father’ has tried it on with in that darkened side-room? There is plainly a culture of predation in that place. Who knows who has experienced it with a far more harmful outcome than I did, as a result of their capitulation? Maybe even young boys! That would not surprise me at all. I can imagine that vulnerable, sexually-confused, spiritually-perplexed guys who were expecting to be edified with wise counsel rather than being sodomized by some bearded pervert would find themselves in a very pernicious situation. Well, let me say right now that this so-called ‘Orthodox’ priest did what he did to the wrong guy when he landed on me. I am not some vulnerable spiritually-baffled little bloke who wandered into his pathway to be preyed on (instead of prayed for) by a pervert priest. I have been exposing darkness, corruption, and abuse in the church for more than twenty years and exposing it in the secular scene for far longer. This is merely one more brick in the wall of corruption and abuse which represents so much of what passes itself off as ‘the church’ today but is really a satanic counterfeit. As far as I am concerned, this experience is also the final nail in the coffin of the established institutions which are referred to as ‘church’ today. With comparatively few exceptions, these so-called ‘churches’ do not really represent Christ at all. They are hotbeds of false representation and superstition, where a craving for social cohesion, phoney piety, and outright abuse, provide an opportunity for those who love to control others but cannot even control themselves. The visible ‘church’ today has largely become a cult, bringing the few who are genuine into disrepute. This is why I cannot refer to myself as ‘Christian’ anymore, though I am certainly a disciple of the Christ. In truth, Christ’s real church is invisible and always has been. This is the real ‘ecclesia’ that Christ said he would build and about which he said “the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, verse 18).

Of course, none of this is new. Christ himself had to continually expose the corruption and abuses of the false church of his own day. But at that time, they appeared in the form of the Sadducees, Pharisees, Scribes, Sanhedrin, lawyers, et al. The Gospels are full of such religious misrepresenters! With very few exceptions, they were just a bunch of pseudo-pious pompous hypocrites who connived and schemed, lied and blasphemed, and even engaged in assassination when they could not get their own way. True to type, they eventually murdered the Christ himself, foolishly and ignorantly imagining that would be the end of him.

Nothing much has changed. Such religious people regularly perform character assassination against those by whom they feel threatened or of whom they are envious — those who dare to expose them. Sadly, however, there have also been cases where whistle-blowing priests have been found dead under mysterious circumstances. For one of many examples which could be given, please see http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2004_01_06/2004_02_27_cruxnews_PriestsMysterious.htm ; and that is no isolated circumstance. You can research all this for yourself. To try to expose the evils in ‘the church’ can be extremely risky in terms of your reputation, and — if you go for the jugular — it can be as life-threatening as taking on a corrupt political leader, a huge pharmaceutical company or even the CIA!

This is all part of ‘The Slide’ which I wrote about in the song in my latest Living-Room Video. It is, essentially, apostasy (Greek: αποστασία), which means defection, a betrayal by slipping from one side to the other — in this case, slipping over from any last vestiges of light into darkness. I keep saying in my writings that there is a straight choice between darkness and light, the demonic or the sacred, Satan or Christ. There can be no neutrality. That Cave of the Apocalypse in Patmos is no longer a sacred site at all, if one considers the fact that Ιωάννης wrote the book there as a sacred act. It has been defiled and is now a monument to a satanic counterfeit hiding behind the robes of a predatory priest. One day an earthquake will strike it all into dust.

It is a sad fact that most of the leaders in the visible ‘church’ today are impostors. But worse, even though the people under their fake authority are many, most are either blind to what is really happening, or they ‘turn a blind eye’ or just simply play along with the game, having as much moral conviction and courage as a lump of stone. ‘The Slide’ (or apostasy, for that is what it is) is much deeper than even I realised. I understand that there are exceptions to the things I am saying; however, those exceptions are the ones which prove the rule — and the rule is that ‘the church’ in general has gone to the dogs, bloated largely with outright atheism, pseudo-liberalism, and weak beta males who wouldn’t stand up for the truth even if they were paid to do so. That is not even to mention the mean gossiping women, the propagators of political and religious correctness, the false bonhomie, the predatory paedophiles, the professional judgementalists, the nutty televangelists, the crazy ‘charismatics’, the nit-picking theologians, the frenzied fundamentalists, the crippling legalists, the Jerusalem-junkie judaisers (so-called ‘Christian Zionists’), the rapture-ravers, the ‘Jesus’ idolaters, the Bible idolaters, the pedlars of mendacity and the ubiquitous authoritarian control freaks. ‘The church’ — or what passes for it these days — is now virtually a cult and has become a caricature of itself, a monument to the human ego dressed up in fancy clothes and pious clichés as a deceptive disguise. If you dare to expose it or stand up to it, you will have your character assassinated. Only last week, a friend of mine (a minister in the UK) bumped into another ‘minister’ at a conference who proceeded to condemn him vehemently because he publicly endorsed a book I have written and then trotted out a whole pile of lies about me. This is typical behaviour of so many so-called ‘Christian brothers’. I can tell you categorically that if you stand up for truth in the world in general, it will bring you less disapproval than if you try to stand up for it in ‘the church’ of today — the very body in which truth above all else should prevail! If Christ was in his grave, he would be turning in it. He spent his entire three years of rabbinic work being opposed by the religious impostors who made up most of the ‘church’ of his day. Fortunately for many, he is no longer in that grave, which is the only reason for any hope at all in this vale of illusion, this Earth!

Maybe the more trendy, politically-correct types who are reading this might say to me, “You’re being homophobic. What’s wrong with a gay guy making a pass at you? You should be flattered! Stop making such a fuss.” Okay, let’s pursue that notion and see where it goes. Firstly, the priest has taken vows! In the Greek Orthodox Church, a married man can become a priest, whereas an unmarried man, when he becomes a priest, must remain unmarried and celibate. So this guy was either being unfaithful to his wife or he has taken a vow of celibacy. Either way, it is an abuse of trust and an infringement of vows. And here’s the BIG question: Would you be saying to me, “You should be flattered. Stop making such a fuss!”, if I was a woman and the priest I had just met started stroking my hands and palms and ushered me into a darkened room while leering at me maniacally while doing heavy-breathing? Of course not! You would be identifying me as a #metoo victim and mobilizing ‘the sisters’ on my behalf! Double-standards, much? Moreover, what kind of a spiritual man — especially one with the oversight, supposedly, of one of the most sacred sites on the planet — derives his perverse pleasure from hitting on a guy he has only ever seen one time in the sacred ritual of communion over which he was presiding and then immediately ushering him into a darkened side-room while standing there grinning like an idiot and engaging in heavy breathing? There is nothing ‘gay’ about that behaviour whatsoever. The original meaning of ‘gay’ is happy and light. But this experience outside the cave was heavy and dark — the behaviour of a creep and a pervert. If someone is attracted to another person, the healthy way to pursue that is to ask politely to meet that person again, behaving honourably, and hoping that something may come of it. During my lifetime, I have experienced unknown homosexuals ‘hitting on me’ from time to time in public places. I merely brushed off their unwanted advances politely, in the same way that I would brush off the unwanted advances of a woman. But none of them, whether a man or a woman, ever stepped over the line and touched my hands and wrists in a creepy manner or ushered me into a darkened side-room under false pretences. Above all, none of them was a married or celibate priest in charge of one of the most supposedly sacred spaces on the planet!

Someone warned me that I am taking a risk in writing all this, which is true. There will be many who will not take kindly to what I am exposing here. To this I reply: “So what? I have nothing to lose. I am nobody. I am just a fleeting incident on the face of this earth. I do not exist to gain the approval of men or women. I am simply speaking the truth. To suffer for truth is an honour, even unto death”. You may ask, “Why don’t you report it to the appropriate authorities?”, to which I would reply: “Please don’t be naïve!” There is no point whatsoever in reporting it to any authorities. It would be made out to be a case of “He said — He said”. As in other professions, they would close ranks to protect one of their own. The false ‘church’ is just another self-protecting organisation which puts defending reputations and careers way above the truth. (see the movie ‘Spotlight’ about the uncovering of the worldwide pandemic of priest paedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church). I also know how this all works from painful experience. A predatory religious narcissist like this has, over many years, carefully built up a defensive wall of acolytes who will rebuke any such accusations against their ‘Father’ as spurious. His superiors will pay people to dig dirt on an accuser in order to deflect away from their man. Nothing will happen to the priest. It will be made to look as if it is me who is at fault. A character assassination will take place, and everyone will breathe a sigh of relief that the ‘Father’ has been exonerated. And the majority of people will believe it. Remember this: there is no justice in this world as it is presently constituted. The ‘goodies’ do not win. This is the age of the ascendency of the ‘baddie’. But it will not always be like this. For at the end of this age there will be a jaw-dropping denouement, with a final reckoning to be made. One must certainly stand up for justice, truth and righteousness but at the same time be realistic about what can be achieved. Making a complaint about the cave-dwelling ‘Father’ would be about as effective as going to Al Capone to complain that his stooges are running a protection racket! In short, nothing would be achieved. I don’t mind if the church authorities find out about my words here. But I am not going to go to them, cap in hand, expecting them to take measures. The need to preserve the false integrity of such a ‘sacred’ site inevitably entails having to make a flat denial and after that some desperate measures would be taken. So be it. Have at it! Do I care? I merely smile at the ludicrousness and the bathos of it all.

When this event happened last Saturday morning, I felt dirty and could hardly wait to wash (both physically and metaphorically) the hand that this priest shook and stroked. Fortunately, I had some disinfectant hand-wash with me; but it took a while for the disgust and disappointment to subside. I doubt that this will be the first time he has behaved in this way. He was far too confident in his actions — virtually gaslighting me with his deft movements — for it to have been his first time. And I suspect that he already operates within a culture of priestly hypocrisy and a kind of self-delusional ‘piety of innocence’. This is all very common in religious and pseudo-spiritual circles. Apart from the ‘pervo priests’ in the mainstream denominations of ‘Christianity’, there are a huge number of Eastern gurus and yoga teachers who have been engaging in sexual exploitation and skulduggery. You can easily research that for yourself. The sad reality is that most people who are ‘leaders’ in this world have not the faintest idea how to lead, whether that is in the workplace, in the field of politics or in the realm of religion. Most ‘leadership’ is actually either disguised authoritarianism or the complete abandonment of fruitful oversight. True leadership scarcely exists at all in this world.

The false church is a festering sore disguised by fancy robes or pious-sounding clichés. It no more represents Christ than does Las Vegas. In fact, Las Vegas is the more honest and honourable because at least it doesn’t pretend to take the moral high ground! Frankly, I couldn’t get out of Patmos fast enough as I hotfooted it to the island of Leros the next day — two days early — on the fastest ferry I could find. However, did I waste time and money going there? No! Not at all! I believe that nothing happens without a reason, and I realised that I was taken there for many reasons. There are always lessons to be learned from everything, even those things (especially those things) which we may regard as ‘negative’ or ‘bad’. This will especially be the case when one is embarking on some kind of personal pilgrimage.

Before I went to Patmos, I had prayerfully asked to have truth revealed to me in any way that it would come. I had no preconceived idea what that would involve. I was open to anything. However, this was certainly not the truth that I could have expected. In fact, I was completely blindsided by it. But I have a permanent built-in rule which lies behind all my prayers for illumination: That an ugly truth is infinitely preferable to a beautiful lie, no matter how difficult that is to process. This was something that I had to experience. The lessons are tremendous:

The first lesson is that there is no comfort to be taken in any earthly element. I no longer believe that there are such things as truly ‘sacred spaces’ in the realm of the physical. Even if there were, they would soon be corrupted and trampled on by ghastly humans. Thus, sacred spaces in the realm of the physical are generally a superstitious delusion. In fact, the very last genuinely ‘sacred space’ on this earth that mere mortals could occupy, was destroyed when the curtain in the temple was torn at the exact time of Christ’s death. And, strangely enough, that was torn from top to bottom by no human hand!

During the ritual in the cave, I observed the most stifling forms of superstition which lie in stark opposition to ‘taking no comfort in any earthly element’: The continual crossing of oneself with a hand across the chest. The continual kissing of images of so-called ‘saints’ which lined the walls of the cave (when the truth is that ALL disciples of Christ are saints, not just a few appointed by the false ‘church’). The abject veneration of the priest (who had women kissing his hand). The bells, and smells of incense being wafted around. The cave was filled with idolatrous images and extravagantly baroque artefacts and, of course, an endless supply of candles. I can understand why someone who is spiritually-immature might feel the need for ‘props’. But there is a point where either a) the props have to go and one has to exercise true faith and not a partial one or b) the props tip over into idolatry, superstition and dependency, which is exactly what has happened in so many churches. The simplicity in which John will have lived in that cave (as in the illustration at the top of this article) was entirely absent. As per usual, corrupt humanity had stamped its vain madness there. In short, the cave had been turned into the religious equivalent of a gaudy palace! (Although, to be fair, they didn’t charge any money to enter!).

A second lesson to learn is that however far one may think the apostasy has deepened, it is even deeper than one may actually imagine. A combination of wishful thinking and an ostrich mentality prevent us from seeing the full panoply of ponerological manifestations on this earth. If even the cave in which the Book of Revelation was written can be corrupted so wholly (while the corruptors project it as a paragon of spiritual virtue and onlookers are completely deceived by that), then really nothing is sacred and the apostasy is considerably more advanced than I ever realised.

A third lesson is the confirmation that outward appearances are revered far more than inner integrity. The concupiscence of the eyes is a most powerful point of seduction. We are so easily fooled by what we see on the outside. The visual image has taken precedence over the sixth sense — that intuitive discernment which enables us to detect aberrations from the good and the right. So when we see a grey-bearded priest looking like a wise old man or a guru in saffron robes with an apparently kindly smile uttering some oh-so clever and ostensibly spiritual aphorisms, we must beware of ourselves overruling any uneasy hints we may feel pricking us about the true state of his heart. Is it any wonder that in the letter written by James, the brother of Christ, he warns that not many should desire to become teachers, “because you know that we will be judged more strictly”? Those words should raise the hairs on the necks of anyone who influences others with their teachings.

A fourth lesson is further confirmation that no one can hide from non-physical eyesight. When people want to conceal their indoor lives from their neighbours, they often put up lace-net curtains. Well this world contains a whole mass of ‘lace-net curtains’ in the form of priest’s robes, guru’s beards, monk’s habits, super-spiritual poses, politicians’ smiles, sociopathic lies, virtual-signalling on social media, etc., behind which people hide their true activities from human eyes. But they cannot hide them from those whose ‘eyesight’ operates outside the physical, using a spiritual insight without which one will be blind and gullible — easy prey for dark predators.

A fifth lesson is that I should have acted more assertively to make a valuable point before leaving that cave area. I regret that I didn’t get hold of that priest by his robe and shake him up a bit, while saying, “What on earth do you think you are doing abusing your office like this?” If you are thinking, “That’s not very Christian. What would Jesus do?”, I reply that when some selfish, greedy people defiled the temple courts by selling their wares there, Christ actually made a whip which he took to them to drive them out of that sacred space! (See the Gospel of John, chapter 2, verses 14-17). Of course, he also advocated “turning the other cheek” and he did that many times when it was appropriate. But there are occasions when one has a moral obligation to prevent bullies and other types of predator from getting away with it, or one has to protect others, and that will sometimes involve being more forceful and less passive. So I do feel that I should have dealt more sharply with this guy who was defiling that shrine on Patmos. Instead of me hotfooting it away from there, it should have been him hotfooting it! But I was a bit too shell-shocked to think of that at the time.

As I close, let me say here that I am no paragon of virtue myself. Far from it. I have made many mistakes and done some really stupid things in my life. But I would never abuse the trust which others may put in me so as to become a predatory pervert. That, to me, is an anathema and it definitely crosses the line from negligent foolishness over to sheer darkness. Surely to have a sexual liaison with a previously unknown man right after giving communion to him in this place of all places, where the Holy Spirit inspired a book of prophecy to be written about apostasy, is the closest one could come to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which, according to Christ himself, is the unforgivable sin.

So this is the report of my visit to Patmos and on the soul of Patmos — one which will no doubt be vigorously denied by those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Now I feel it is time for me once more to go completely into ‘hermit mode’. I have seen too much. I know too much. And I know I’ve barely seen anything yet. Sometimes, I feel so world-weary and alone in this wilderness, knowing what I know, seeing what I see. But I also know that behind it all there is another unseen reality which is not subject to the world of decaying matter, corruption, and death. To that reality, I have already given my heart and made my own vows to the Christ who is its author.

I give you my blessings and best wishes,

Alan

© 2019, Alan Morrison / The Diakrisis Project. All Rights Reserved. 
 
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]