BY MICHAEL HURLEY
One of the unexpected gifts of ageing is time. Just when I have so much less of it, I seem to have so much more of it. Time to think. Time to relax. Time to pray.
One of the best uses of my leisure, since I jilted that jealous mistress known as the practice of law, has been reading. I revel in the great books I always meant to read and would have read in all those years of work and worry if only there had been the time.
I have until recently refrained from reading Russian authors. For one thing, I had always heard they were so insufferably dark. Apparently, everyone knows this, which is why Ira Gershwin didn’t feel the need to explain further when he wrote the lyric that love brings “more clouds of gray than any Russian play could guarantee.”
But when President Vladimir Putin, in his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, referred so matter-of-factly to famed Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, I felt caught-out. Like almost everyone, I knew the name, but unlike almost everyone, I had never read the first word written by the man. One or more of Dostoevsky’s works is on every “100 Best” list, but I hadn’t read any of them. So, I began reading Crime and Punishment.
Yes, it was dark. Yes, it was depressing. Moreover, because every character has three names, and because the author is fond of using only one or two of them at a time, I had to create a cheat-sheet to remember which Romanovich, Prokofitch, Zaharovitch, Ivanovitch, Petrovitch, Grigorievitch, Fomitch, and Semyonovitch was which. Yet however grudgingly, I came to appreciate Dostoevsky’s greatness as a novelist. What I did not expect to discover, and what has set my mind adrift in seas from which I am only now starting to row home, is Dostoevsky’s mysticism as a prophet.
Crime and Punishment (spoiler alert)is the story of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, an indifferent law student who, in a fit of melancholy and nihilism, resolves to murder an old woman with an axe. He carries out his plan in cold blood, hides the evidence, then is tortured for the remainder of the novel with guilt for his crime and dread of his punishment. It’s a ripping yarn, well-told.
Finally convicted and banished to Siberia, Raskolnikov often dreams as he sleeps. One dream, in particular, stopped me so abruptly that I scarcely finished the few pages of the book that remained afterward. As you read it, keep in mind that this is a work of fiction written in 1866—not by John the Elder on the Isle of Patmos, but by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who by all accounts was a mere mortal rather overfond of vodka and gambling:
He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible.
Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung his hands.
They did not know how to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They gathered together in armies against one another, but even on the march the armies would begin attacking each other, the ranks would be broken and the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring each other.
The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was summoning them no one knew.
The most ordinary trades were abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on something quite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another, fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations and famine. All men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and moved further and further. Only a few men could be saved in the whole world. They were a pure chosen people, destined to found a new race and a new life, to renew and purify the earth, but no one had seen these men, no one had heard their words and their voices.
I won’t bore you by listing the numerous and uncanny similarities between Dostoevsky’s dream and the surreal dystopia that emerged during the Covid panic (and which continues to this day). I am certain you can see them for yourself. The larger point that stuck in my mind—forgive me, like an axe—is this: Dostoevsky perceived and rendered in great detail something we now know to be real, but which he could not have seen. This tells us that there is a reality which exists beyond our senses, which is spiritual, and outside of time, which is eternal.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:12)
When we look at the present reality, what do we see? The mass delusion of transgenderism? State-sponsored child sexual grooming and genital mutilation? Worldwide involuntary medical experimentation in the form of forcible gene therapy? Utterly ineffectual and harmful, forcible masking? Transhumanism? Nationwide lockdowns? Abortion? Infanticide? Euthanasia? The normalisation of paedophilia? The wholesale destruction of modern economies in the name of imaginary climate science? Prosecutions of public reading of the Bible as hate speech?
We struggle to reconcile the present reality with our materialist, rationalist mindset because our present reality cannot be adequately explained by causes and effects we can see. No one in his right mind, which is to say anyone guided by logic, reason and the tools of the Enlightenment would ever advocate for such a world as the one in which we now live. Our world is instead shaped by forces which are invisible, irrational, chaotic by design, eternal, malevolent and immaterial. How do I know this? Because the Bible tells me so, yes, but also because someone like Fyodor Dostoevsky managed to perceive and write about a grave evil with astonishing clarity and detail two centuries before the very thing appeared in front of our eyes.
In short, Dostoevsky’s dream reinforced my conviction that we are in the midst of an epic spiritual battle—albeit one that many of us still cannot see. It is not the battle you might believe we’re in. It is not a battle for the “soul of America” or “the soul of Britain,” or for the re-election of Donald Trump or the defeat of Joe Biden, or against voter fraud or censorship, or for the Tories or the Reform Party, or against Labour or the WEF or the WHO or Russia or Iran or the CCP. Nation states and political parties and Twitter posts are not headed to heaven or hell. We are. Temporal things shall pass. What will not pass away is your soul, which is why “your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8) It is a battle waged in hand-to-hand spiritual combat between armies of The Truth and armies of The Lie.
What is The Lie?
It is that mortal life is our greatest treasure and that death is our greatest fear.
I read a weekly bulletin from my home parish in Dallas, recently, in which the pastor, while reminding parishioners to be dutiful in performing various corporal works of mercy, cautioned them “above all else” to “avoid infection.”
Above all else? Really? Whatever happened to “whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 16:25) Since when does the Church elevate the temporal above the eternal? But of course, avoiding infection “above all else” is exactly the order of priorities modelled for us by the Church during the pandemic.
Could the Father of Lies have hoped for any greater victory than to convince the princes of a Church founded to conquer our fear of death to close its doors over . . . wait for it . . . the fear of death? It was the greatest betrayal since Judas Iscariot, which is perhaps why Dostoevsky foresaw the elements of it, so long ago.
It should hardly deter us that Dostoevsky himself made no pretensions to priesthood or prophecy. The three wise men who followed the star to Bethlehem were not Jews, but God still gave them a sign, and they were wise enough to heed it. We too are led, as it were, by our prescient friend Mr. Dostoevsky to the 24th chapter of Matthew, where we read these lines:
And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. (Matthew 24:3-14)
To listen to our best writers and influencers these days, you would think that the future of the world depends chiefly on what happens in America next November 5. Despite arduous searching, I find nothing in the 24th chapter of Matthew that says the things Christ describes will not come to pass if Donald Trump or anyone else, for that matter, is elected to the White House. Vote for the man who best lives and governs by The Truth, whoever he is, but do not despair of the outcome. Rather, remember the psalms, and “put not your trust in princes.” (Psalm 146:3)
The great nations of the West were never great because they had the right politicians or economic policies or political ideologies on their side. The West succeeded because we had God on our side and the fear of God, not the fear of death, in our hearts. We triumphed because we knew what was truly worth living and dying for. May those days be renewed.
Michael Hurley is a retired American trial-attorney, author, and long-distance sailor. He has crossed the Atlantic twice, once solo, aboard the 1967 Camper Nicholson 32, Nevermore, and sailed extensively in the West Indies. He has written seven books and numerous articles. Currently he and his wife Aimée are in Morocco on a motorcycle adventure of indefinite duration that began in London in March 2023. They publish a video blog of their travels at www.youtube.com/mchurleysr.