I think we tend to look too much to politics, wars, and rumors of wars when talking about the end time, and fail to stay with the warnings of inspiration as to what the real issue will be.
The issue isn't about Nazism. That's just a smoke screen. Why would you think that the USA should join Russia to fight Nazism??? The USA made the mistake 80 years ago of supporting Russia against Nazism -- and Russia was every bit as BAD as Nazism. Yet the US allowed them to take control of vast areas of land and USSR held their reign of terror over all of eastern Europe for several decades. The only difference is that Hitler's violent regime is highly discussed and constantly publicized, while the communist's reign of terror is not. Censorship and propaganda, lack of personal freedom, lack of religious freedom, concentration camps, torture, and nightly arrests, were all at extreme high levels in Russian controlled lands for decades. Putin is NOT good news at all. Linking up with one evil under the pretense of defeating a similar evil, just establishes the evil.
Matt. 24:6 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. The end will come with a RELIGIOUS CRISES, just as it has been foretold.
The politics will come into the play when they legislate and enforce worship.
Is Russia Christian as you say?
Russia was Greek Orthodox before Communism (very much like the Catholic religion, but they rejected the pope as their head in 1054 AD, so they were antagonistic to each other for many centuries.
Russia is still largely Greek Orthodox
Putin is trying to make Greek Orthodox the State religion again.
NO, THAT IS NOT GOOD!
Of course now the Papacy is being good friends with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch. There's the program of "reconciliation" started by Pope John Paul II and continuing with present pope. Territories of countries which have been Orthodox for centuries, now raised to the Russian state preferred religion, are being encouraged by papal policies to be brought back to the papal church and absorbed into Catholic ecclesial structures, a policy often called "unionism.
How much of the war in Ukraine is religious based?
The Ukraine Orthodox church is divided into two -- Those under the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, the other under the Roman Catholic Pope.
About 12,000 of 38,000 parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church are in Ukraine, that's a large percentage! One third!
Due to the war, Ukraine Orthodox Bishops are loosing their trust in the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Kirill, because he isn't urging Putin to make peace.
Both the Catholic Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Ukrainian churches are against Putin and the war.
So is the war helping the Russian Orthodox Church to unite with the Roman Catholic Papacy, especially in Ukraine?
What would the union of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Roman Catholic papacy mean?
Why is Kirill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church praising the invasion?
The ?open wounds? in Orthodoxy?a split within the Church in Ukraine?are among the pretexts cited for the invasion, even as the war has led to unprecedented unity among Ukraine?s Christians....
Kirill?s support for the invasion was no surprise. The Russian Orthodox Church is an arm of the state, and Kirill is one of Putin?s trusted advisers. The surprise was the way that he expressed it. Earlier this month, in a homily at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, in Moscow, he made the bizarre and alarming claim that the invasion was about stemming the spread of ?gay parades? from the West, and celebrated it as ?a struggle that has not a physical but a metaphysical significance,? explaining that ?we are talking about something different and much more important than politics. We are talking about human salvation.? In his telling, the invasion is not about territory, or national identity, or wounded post-Soviet pride, or religious identity in any strict sense. Rather, it is a culture war?a holy war?between religious traditionalism and liberalism. (The New Yorker)
There you have it!
A holy war to bring back legislated morality!
Don't be deceived by Putin's talk of fighting immorality -- He's just riding the same swing wave as the religious right in America.
Interestingly -- Pope Francis deplores the war, but he says NOTHING against Russia or Putin nor does he call it an invasion.
He just talks against a war that causes misery and death, and rivers of blood, and offers services to help the refugees and promote peace.
What is the aim?
Religion is the crises.
The world is being gathered under one head.
The world is filled with storm and war and variance. Yet under one head--the papal power--the people will unite to oppose God in the person of His witnesses. This union is cemented by the great apostate.--7T 182 .
he religion of the papacy will be accepted by the rulers, and the law of God will be made void.--7MR 192
