End of Days by Sylvia Browne

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 9th, 2022 in Stories

Grigori Rasputin

I said at the beginning of this chapter that there’s no such thing as a typical prophet and that God endows the gift of prophecy to a wide variety of people. Grigori Rasputin is a perfect example of that wide variety.

He was born in 1872 in the small Siberian village of Pokrovskoye. His parents, both peasants, were devoutly religious, and Grigori’s father, Efim, read the Bible to his family every night, a practice that influenced Rasputin throughout his life.

He was prone to depression as a child, particularly when, at the age of eight, he lost his older brother to pneumonia. By his mid-teens he’d already gained a reputation as what we’d now call a juvenile delinquent—he drank heavily, he was wildly reckless, and he found the young girls of Pokrovskoye as irresistible as they found him.

He also gained a childhood reputation as a psychic. The story goes that one night he was lying in bed when he overheard his father and a group of houseguests talking about the theft of a horse and theorizing about possible suspects. Grigori walked into the room, identified one of the men as the horse thief, and went back to bed. The group chuckled at the little boy’s accusation and went on with their evening. But later, two of the guests followed the accused man home and were shocked to find the stolen horse hidden in an outbuilding.

Rasputin’s marriage at nineteen did nothing to calm him down or put an end to his drinking, and there’s a certain irony in the fact that he was accused, but not convicted, of stealing horses. He was sentenced to banishment from Pokrovskoye, but he convinced the court to allow him an alternative to banishment—he suggested he take his father’s place on a pilgrimage to the Verkhoturye Monastery more than two hundred miles away. The court agreed, and Rasputin gladly accepted what he thought was a comparative slap on the wrist.

He was preparing to leave for the monastery when his wife lost their first son. He had no choice but to proceed with his journey, but it was a long sad lonely trek. Shortly after he arrived at Verkhoturye, Rasputin had the honor of meeting a devout, widely respected recluse named Makary, who told him that the tragic death of his son was a divine message to return to Pokrovskoye and devote his life to God.

Rasputin did exactly that, almost shocking the village with his newfound piety. He stopped drinking, and he spent hours and hours of every day in prayer. As luck would have it, though, his pilgrimage to the Verkhoturye Monastery had also exposed him to a relatively obscure Russian Orthodox sect, called Skoptsy, with an approach to their faith that was more compatible with Rasputin’s nature: they believed that sin was an essential element in the connection between humankind and God. Without sin there could be no confession. Without confession there could be no forgiveness. And without forgiveness there could be no God-given cleansing of the soul. It made perfect, convenient sense to Rasputin, and he became a Skoptsy monk, sinning his way through widespread travels as an impressive, well-educated, well-spoken, and intensely charismatic religious teacher.

Rasputin was so impressive, in fact, that in 1903, when he made his first visit to St. Petersburg, he quickly began attracting the upper-class residents. His exhaustive knowledge of the scriptures, his facile talent as a storyteller, and his darkly mysterious charisma combined with rumors of his supernatural powers—which by now were said to include both psychic abilities and the gift of healing— made him irresistible to St. Petersburg society. It was on his return trip to the city in 1905 that he was invited to the home of Grand Duke Peter Nikolaievich and Grand Duchess Militsa, who regarded him as a devout man whom God had blessed with great unearthly powers. Rasputin was given the perfect opportunity to confirm their belief in him when they led him to their beloved dog, who was very ill and had been given only a few months to live. He knelt beside the dog and began to pray, and by all accounts the dog slowly but surely regained its health. The dog lived for years after Rasputin’s healing, and Rasputin’s reputation as a truly gifted man of God was etched in stone.