Concerns About Prophecies and the Coronavirus

By Father Andreas Agathokleous

It is good to sometimes put ourselves in the shoes of people who do not attend Catechetical and Religious discourses, nor go frequently to ecclesiastical Services, without, however, being considered atheists. They simply stay a little away from "ecclesiastical events", with a bit of skepticism and substantial concern.

These people, listening and reading, through social media, about prophecies, about the relationship between the coronavirus and God's grace, about the demonization of the forthcoming vaccine, and a lot of other "abouts", what do they have to say?

Concerning the Alleged End-Time Prophecy of Abba Moses the Ethiopian

As with many alleged end-time prophecies distributed in Orthodox Christian literature, what is known of the origins of the "Prophecy of Abba Moses the Ethiopian" is almost impossible to determine. You can come across its title in a catalogue of Athonite manuscripts from 1895, where a manuscript is found at Philotheou Monastery in a translation into simpler Greek. The first time this prophecy is published, it appears in the Athonite periodical Αγιορειτική Βιβλιοθήκη (ετ. Ε΄, 1940-41, αρ. 50-51, Νοέμβριος-Δεκέμβριος 1940, σ. 108) in the November-December 1940 issue (pictured below). There it says that it came from a manuscript of a cell of the Great Lavra Monastery, specifically the Cell of Symeon the God-Receiver of Elder Benjamin the Monk. As far as I can tell, this manuscript is never mentioned anywhere before this time.