Signs Of The End Of The World - Fr Seraphim Rose
Channel: Yanni McQueen
Date: 2020-06-02

The following is a tape-recorded talk given by Fr. Seraphim at the "University Religious Center" of the Uni­versity of California, Santa Cruz, on the evening of May 14, 1981. Fr. Seraphim had been invited to give lectures on the campus by the St. Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox Fellowship: a student group at the uni­versity, consisting mostly of young converts to Orthodoxy.

     On the day after he gave this talk, Fr. Seraphim gave another lec­ture, this time to the "World Religions in the U.S." class at the univer­sity. That talk was published after Fr. Seraphim's repose as a small book, God's Revelation to the Human Heart (St. Herman Brotherhood, 1987).

     The talk presented here, "Contemporary Signs of the End of the World," was based on an outline Fr. Seraphim had written three years previously, for a talk with the same title which he had given at the 1978 St. Herman Summer Pilgrimage [On the Feast of the Canonization of St. Herman of Alaska, July 27/August 9, 1978, at the St. Herman of Alaska Monastery, Platina, California. Fr. Seraphim later published a synopsis of this talk in his article "St. Herman Summer Pilgrimage, 1978," The Orthodox Word, no. 84 (1979), pp. 6-9]. As he gave his lecture at the Santa Cruz university in 1981, Fr. Seraphim generally followed this outline, paraphrasing or reading from it. In some places, however, he added material, speaking impromptu; and in other places he skipped material in the outline. Of the latter material, there is much that we found worthy of being preserved in published form. Therefore, in sev­eral places we have included this outline material in footnotes.  Except where Fr. Seraphim's outline is indicated, the material in the footnotes has been written by the editors. The section titles have been taken from Fr. Seraphim's outline.  An account of Fr. Seraphim's trip to Santa Cruz in 1981, and of the context in which he gave this talk, can be found in the book Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, chapter 95.