ABSTRACT
In November 1984, the Soviet citizen and Moscow resident Veniamin Iakovlevich Bereslavskii (b. 1946) began to receive revelations from Mary, the Mother of God, who warned him of an impending divine judgement. Communicating mystically through the Hodegetria icon (a traditional Orthodox portrayal of Mary pointing to the Christ child in her arms) in Smolensk, Russia, Mary began to reveal a third testament to her chosen prophet. Seeking out underground Orthodox hierarchs, Bereslavskii first received the tonsure and then an episcopal consecration as Archbishop John (Ioann in Russian). In 1991, as the Soviet Union allowed greater religious freedom, Archbishop John gained legal recognition for his own official organisation, the Mother-of-God Centre, which later took the name the Orthodox Church of the Sovereign Mother of God (OCSMG) in 1997. In his spiritual quest, he has sought out a wide variety of ecumenical allies, from the underground True Orthodox Church to the Protestant International Council of Community Churches to the Catholic Marian apparition movement. Obedient to the Virgin’s command, he also actively disseminated his revelations and his teachings, authoring scores of books and pamphlets that offered his religious vision to the world.
