Sergei Anatolyevich Torop
Vissarion better known as, Vissarion ( Russian Сергей Анатольевич Тороп or Виссарион , scientific transliteration Sergei Anatol'evič Torop ) (* 14. January 1961 in Krasnodar ) is a skilled Russian craftsmen and police officer, who has been an awakening experience in 1991 by his Is viewed by followers as the return of Jesus of Nazareth . He founded the " Church of the Last Testament " in the Siberian taiga . Meanwhile more than 4000 followers settle in an ecologically and spiritually oriented community.
In western countries he is mainly known for film documentaries and newspaper reports. Due to his external appearance - he wears long white (formerly red) robes and long, dark, straight hair that reminds many people of the appearance of Jesus - Torop is also referred to by the media as "Jesus of Siberia" or "Messiah of the Taiga" .
Life
Sergei Anatoljewitsch Torop was born in 1961 as the son of Nadezhda Torop and the construction technician Anatoly Torop, who, according to his own statements, were not religious. Through the close family contact with his uncle Wiktor, who was very fond of painting, Torop developed an unusual talent for drawing even in kindergarten. In 1968 his parents separated, and while his father stayed in Krasnodar, the mother moved with Sergei and his sister to the Siberian settlement Shushenskoye , where several relatives lived. There she entered into a relationship with a man named Nikolai and the four - Sergei, his sister, his mother and her boyfriend - moved to the neighboring village of Ilyichovo that same year.
Sergei's sister Irina was born in Ilyichovo before the family returned to Krasnodar in the summer of 1972. She did not settle there either, and several other moves back to Siberia followed, including in the summer of 1973 to the small town of Ushur and finally in the summer of 1975 to Minusinsk . In that town in the south of the Krasnoyarsk region on the upper reaches of the Yenisei , Torop finished ten-year school. He then did his military service , during which he served with a construction team in Mongolia . After finishing his service, he returned to Krasnodar in the summer of 1981, but moved again to Minusinsk in January 1982. There he completed an apprenticeship as a metal worker and traffic policeman in the months that followed, and met Ljuba (* 1960), who was twenty-four at the time. The couple married on November 24, 1984.
In addition to his professional activity, Torop earned money for a living as a painter and draftsman: in his spare time he made numerous pastel drawings of saints , still lifes , people and abstract human characteristics. In the spring of 1990 he was commissioned by the church mayor of the parish in Nikolo-Petrowka to decorate the church there with paintings, after which he made two larger-than-life paintings of Maria and Nikolaus von Myra , which were to be attached to the entrance gate. Lyuba had meanwhile expressed the wish to travel to Krasnodar to meet her husband's family. However, Torop was unable to set aside enough money for such a trip until late 1990, when he received a large sum for some of his works. In May 1991, he was again awarded a high reward for creating images of saints in an Abakan church. A few days later, however, he received the message from the church leader from Nikolo-Petrowka that several parishioners did not agree with his works. Torop refused to alter his paintings and was forced to take them back and repay the wages they had already received, again leaving the family with little financial means.
Vissarion is now married to Sofia (* 1988) after the mutual separation from his first wife Lyubow, with whom he has five children.
Church of the Last Testament
As early as the 1980s, Torop said he had several “bright moments” when he became aware that he was destined for higher things. In May 1991, one day after the wages were paid back to the church of Nikolo-Petrowka, he saw a documentary on television about cemeteries in Russia where shrines were desecrated and destroyed in the course of the turmoil during the dissolution of the Soviet Union , and says that afterwards To have experienced the revival in his painting workshop. Torop later had them described as follows:
“And, while He remained in deep meditation and sorrow, He felt something great develop in Him, awakened, and rose. In the next moment, bells began to fill the space of His room. And the smell of incense gently touched His senses, but a glorious song of heavenly voices rang out in the ears. And from within him the mighty rushed and threw away the shell that had held back this fire up to now. "
Torop subsequently called himself Wissarion and has since seen himself as the reincarnation of Jesus Christ . A few months later, on August 18, 1991, the day of the August coup in Moscow , he gave his first speech to 33 listeners in the village of Gorodok not far from Minusinsk .
Within a few weeks he managed to gather several dozen disciples or followers around him, although it is not clear whether they followed him because they actually believed him to be the Messiah or only because they liked his ideas, attitudes and traits. Together with his "disciples", Torop settled in a wide taiga plain on the edge of the Sayan Mountains in the southern tip of the Krasnoyarsk region . The next larger town is the Kuragino settlement 70 kilometers to the west . The settlement area of the community is almost 1000 kilometers west of Lake Baikal and is traversed by the Kasyr , the right source river of the Yenisei tributary Tuba . In the years that followed, members of the community bought up land in surrounding villages to expand, and the original residents moved to other areas. The four villages Petropavlowka, Cheremshanka, Sharovsk and Guljajewka, all of which are located on the Kasyr, established themselves as the main towns.
Inner organization
In the "zone", as the colloquial self-name is, simple wooden houses were built and subsistence farming began. For this purpose, each plot of land has around 2500 square meters of arable land on which vegetables and herbs are grown. Goats and cows serve as milk suppliers and horses as work animals. On community fields outside the settlements you grow potatoes and grain and bring in hay. The vast majority of the members of the community live vegan , or at least vegetarian . Drugs , including alcohol and tobacco , are not used. In 1995, Wissarion gave the community the name "Ökopolis Tiberkul" (after the lake of the same name) in order to emphasize the ecological-spiritual principle. The members of the community, who come from all strata of society, are mostly looking for a new attitude towards life connected with nature, simple and detached from industrial society. There is no social security within the community, but it is hardly necessary because there is no money in circulation and so there are no social differences. At the beginning of 2006, a cell phone mast was built in the region to facilitate communication by cell phone in the sparsely populated taiga.
Today, the Tiberkul Ecopolis, which now extends over 35 villages and settlements up to 100 kilometers apart and to which a good 4,000 people belong, is one of the largest self-catering projects in the world. Furthermore, a new calendar was introduced by Wissarion, which describes the "era of the dawn" and begins with his birth in 1961.
Three large festivals are celebrated throughout the year, for which the inhabitants of all the villages of the Ecopolis gather. The New Year is celebrated on January 14th, Vissarion's birthday. The spring festival on April 14th is preceded by a week of fasting and the summer festival falls on August 18th, in memory of Vissarion's first sermon, ie the speech mentioned above.
Naturopathic procedures are preferred for medical care . In Petropawlowka, however, there is a medical center that, like all dental practices in the settlements, is equipped with modern electrical equipment. In the beginning, the buildings were still simple wooden structures, but efforts are now being made to convert and decorate them more imaginatively, with the aim of creating fairytale idyllic villages. In the future, wood will no longer be used for construction in order to protect the forests, but instead clay and straw.
The community tolerates polygamy to a certain extent . The reason for this is, according to the statements of the members, that there are more women than men in the settlements and that the women without a partner can “do poorly”. This form of coexistence is called the "triangular family" within the Ecopolis.
It is officially announced that absolute freedom of belief and religion prevails in the Ecopolis and it is stated:
"The most important endeavor of the community is the spiritual development, in particular to learn never to have negative feelings or thoughts towards others, but to give everyone immeasurable warmth, whatever may happen."
At the same time, however, Christian masses and liturgies are held, the focus of which is Vissarion as the “new son of man”. He also takes the view:
"The disciples will never create better conditions for themselves if they are unable to give their Shepherd the best life."
Vissarion initially referred to the community he founded as the “Church of the Unified Faith” and today as the “Church of the Last Testament”, with the Last Testament representing the entirety of the scriptures since 1995. So far (January 2019) there are 27 volumes in Russian . Vissarion himself is referred to by his followers as The Truth , The Word, or The Teacher . Vissarion's confidante Wadim Redkin (* 1958) acts as chronicler of the community, who documents all events within the Ecopolis and summarizes them in annual books. The "Church of the Last Testament" also has its own symbol. It is a Christian cross set in a circle composed of flowers.
Model settlement
As early as September 1994, after several days of walking through the taiga in the mountains south of Lake Tiberkul, Torop decided on the location where the community's model settlement was to be built. Sergei Tschewalkow, a former colonel in the Soviet missile troops and teacher at one of the military academies in Moscow , was responsible for the construction, which took several years . Dozens of conifers had to be felled in order to begin construction. For this purpose, only simple saws were used at Vissarion's promise so as not to destroy the balance of nature. The building material was brought in with horse-drawn carts and special wooden sleds.
Since Wissarion first stayed there in May 1997, the model settlement has been referred to by community members as the City of the Sun , Home of the Dawn , City of Master Craftsmen or New Jerusalem . It is located in a high valley on the southern edge of the Tiberkulse and thus about 20 kilometers east of Guljajewka and a four-hour walk from Petropawlowka ( Lage ). The model settlement represents the unofficial capital of the community, as it is the residence of Wissarion. The center of the settlement is a tall, carved wooden angel, from which 14 paths branch off radially, which gives the village the appearance of a stylized sun from the air . Every Sunday the angel is the starting point of a procession that leads to the top of the nearby mountain Suchja, on which the altar of the earth was erected. This is a small, about nine meters high, open pavilion made of wood with four gables and an onion dome . Also located on the mountain is the House of Blessings, a round building with a flat dome, which is used for meetings with Wissarion, as well as a carillon that calls the believers to worship every three hours, a few houses and a garden center. A total of around 60 families with 250 people, mostly close confidants of Wissarion, live in the model settlement. Sergei Anatoljewitsch Torop spends most of the time in the city of the sun and receives his students or followers. Only about every two months does he go to one of the other settlements for almost eight days, mostly to Petropavlovka, to give the community members the opportunity to meet individually and together.
Teaching
Torop himself describes his teaching as the Last Testament . Torop claims that human beings have two origins. The body, like the earth and all other living beings , was created by the Creator, God the Father , whereas the soul was developed by God's Son. According to the belief of the community, man is subject to the laws of the material and spiritual world at the same time. The basic building blocks of the latter are altruistic work and action for the benefit of others as well as free personal choice, which must be continuously ensured. Vissarion's disciples or followers have the goal of conveying and spreading these values of the spiritual world, which in their eyes is preserved by the Holy Spirit . According to Vissarion's words, the Earth Mother is holy and alive. With this declaration he legitimizes pagan customs and the preoccupation with natural forces, which are usually viewed as blasphemy by Christian believers. Vissarion, however, thinks that they are elementary in order to enter into dialogue with the earth. According to Torop, the material world is sustained by the spirit or the universal life energy, the prana , and it is important to respect and obey the principles of harmony, reason, karma , expediency and mutually beneficial cooperation. The law for the development of the soul, according to which the "path of the masters" must be followed, which obliges to bring love, warmth and light to the world with honest handwork, has the highest priority in the belief system of the community. This would maintain the natural balance and heal ancient human-made injuries to the Earth Mother.
Torop's teachings and worldviews are very broad and often overlap with other religious beliefs. There is agreement with Taoism , Islam , Christianity and Buddhism, among others . In the 1990s Torop often criticized the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church , but claimed in the early 2000s that the Ecopolis was recognized and legitimized by it, something that church leaders denied.
Vissarion strives with his students or followers, as the former name of the "Church of the Last Testament" already suggests, a unified world religion , which is why theosophy is seen as the basis of his teachings . With reference to the content of Indian religiosity and spirituality, this also claims to show a common, true core in all religions and to establish an "all-embracing brotherhood of humanity". Although he advises his followers against reading the books of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society , at the same time his statements often contain ideas that are close to theosophical. Even the idea of ascended masters can be found in his teaching:
“The most impressive missions of this kind were fulfilled by some Eastern Masters who came from the Absolute. They had no spiritual fabric. Completing her mission, her body disappeared in certain strange phenomena, leaving a finer covering of material life force behind. After which the Masters went into a world called the Heavenly Shambala. This world has nothing in common with the world of Heavenly Father. "
Hansjörg Hemminger and Joachim Keden believe they recognize neo-Hindu traits and teachings in Wissarion's theses and statements . In his speeches and sermons, Torop speaks of wanderings of souls, which are to be equated with reincarnations . Furthermore, Torop has very good knowledge of the neo-Hindu guru scene around the controversial gurus Haidakhan Babaji and Sathya Sai Baba , whereby he knew the latter personally. This could have influenced Torop's ideas, since he, like Wissarion, propagates a uniform world religion, the so-called Sai religion. Furthermore, the two authors suspect that there are also aspects of the New Age esotericism that emerged in the 1970s in the belief system of the Last Testament . This foresees an early end of the Piscean Age, which has determined our time with wars, hatred, suffering and narrow-minded ways of thinking. It is to be replaced by the Aquarian Age, an epoch of happiness, unity, peace and holistic awareness. In these approaches there are parallels to the speeches of Wissarion, especially since within the New Age movement the mysticism and worship of nature as well as the upholding of nature-loving, simple life play an important role.
Awareness and external impact
In the turmoil of the collapse of the Soviet Union , Torop and the community gathering around him were initially hardly noticed, especially since he had chosen an extremely sparsely populated settlement area. For this reason, his fame at the beginning of his work was limited to his community and the immediate geographic area. It is true that some regional television stations had noticed him before his alleged awakening experience; However, this interest stemmed from his talent as a painter. In 1988, for example, a documentary program was shot about him that made him known locally as an artist.
After the founding of the community, Torop came more and more into the focus of the public. He used this to convince people who lived further away of his ideas and to win them as new followers or students. For this purpose, in the early 1990s in particular, he undertook numerous trips through the former Eastern Bloc states , but also to Western Europe. He used these trips to hold talks with private individuals, groups and groups, and to hold interviews with media representatives and to give speeches. Below are some of his travels:
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| July 1992 |
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| 1992 |
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| August 1992 |
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| October 1992 |
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| Late October 1992 |
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| April 27, 1994 - May 10, 1994 |
 
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Bethlehem , Nazareth ( Mount Tabor ), Jordan , Sea of Galilee , Jerusalem , Eilat , Mount Sinai , Tel Aviv-Jaffa
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| May 18, 1994 - early June 1994 |
   
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| Late September 1994 - early October 1994 |
 
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| November 15, 1994 - late November 1994 |
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Ekaterinburg , Chelyabinsk , Perm , Izhevsk , Kazan , Nizhny Novgorod , Ivanovo , Vladimir , Saint Petersburg
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| 1995 |
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| 1998 |
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| 2000 |
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| 2002 |
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| June 20, 1997 - July 14, 1997 |
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| 2004 |
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In October 1992 he spoke in the Kazakh capital Almaty at the International Congress of Spiritual Unanimity and in the spring of 1994 he met with representatives of the Russian President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin in his native Krasnodar . A few weeks later, on his journey through Western Europe, he met the Russian Consul General in Barcelona . During his trip to India in 1995 visited Torop in New Delhi , the house of worship of the Bahai and near Puttaparthi Bengaluru the Ashram of the popular but controversial guru Sathya Sai Baba . In May 1997, Torop was invited to the Conference of World Religions in San Francisco . However, he refused to attend for formal reasons as he insisted on traveling with two companions. The organizers of the conference gave him to understand, however, that each of the 200 religious associations invited could only be represented by one representative, otherwise the ability to work and the financing of the meeting could not be guaranteed. A few weeks later, Torop and some of his followers made their own trip to the United States . On July 15, 1997, immediately after his return from the USA, he was interviewed by Cable News Network and in 2004 in Bulgaria by Darik Radio , the country's largest private radio station.
In addition to his function as head of the Tiberkul Ecopolis, he continues to work as a painter and draftsman. His works are particularly popular in the Commonwealth of Independent States , while they are almost unknown in Europe, for example. In 2006 Torop opened an exhibition in Kiev in the presence of the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma with exhibits created by him.
As early as 1993, the German director, actor and author Werner Herzog accompanied the members of the “Church of the Last Testament” with a camera team in his film documentary Bells from the Deep: Faith and Superstition in Russia . Despite this film and the visits of Wissarion to Germany in 1998, 2000 and 2002, which he undertook mostly in connection with trips to other Western European countries, Torop and his community were only few known in this country until the 2000s. A broader public only became aware of his work through articles in the news magazines Stern and Der Spiegel .
criticism
Immediately after the Russian authorities of the constitution and consolidation of the new religious group had become aware in Siberia, they tried their activities to stop, fearing a shift in the political and social power structure in the region. There was fear in the Tiberkul ecopolis of a similar fanaticism fixated on a strong leader as, for example, in the sects of the People's Temple under Jim Jones and the Davidians . In 1997 a law was passed in Russia to dissolve all new religious associations. However, Wissarion succeeded in presenting his community as an ecologically and spiritually oriented community that was free from religious ideas. The fact that he sees himself as Jesus contradicts this statement, but he succeeded in averting the breakup of the community, as he had several times before in the 1990s.
Critical statements on the part of the Evangelical Church can be found above all from the commissioners for sect and ideological issues Hansjörg Hemminger and Pastor Joachim Keden. The Russian Orthodox Church is also critical of Vissarion and its teaching.
Film reports about Torop and its Siberian community
- "Bells from the Deep" / Original title " Bells from the Deep - Faith an Superstition in Russia", documentary by Werner Herzog , 1993.
- "The Second Coming," National Geographic documentary, 2010
- "I Am Jesus" is a 75-minute documentary from Fabricia Production (Italy / USA) from 2010
- "Christmas with Christ", documentary by Norwegian photographer Jonas Beniksen, broadcast on NRK TV (Norway) in 2017
- "Searching for meaning in Siberia: the born again Jesus Christ", report by arte, 2019
literature
Church perspectives
- Sergei Filatov: Sects and new religious movements in post-Soviet Russia . In: John Witte, Michael Bourdeaux (Eds.): Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia , Orbis Books, Maryknoll NY 1999, ISBN 1-57075-262-1 , pages 163-184.
- Alexander Dvorkin: Vissarion and his "Church of the Last Testament" (formerly: "Unity Faith Church") . Published in: Berliner Dialog, Volume 6, No. 4, 2000, Pages 9 - 11, translated from Russian by A. Geibel, ( online ).
- Rudi Blümcke and Mark G. Denissow: Dream and Reality of a Promise: Vissarion and his “Church of the Last Testament” in Siberia . Published in Materialdienst, Volume 64, No. 10, 2001, pages 330–338.
- Joachim Keden, Hansjörg Hemminger: Vissarion - a Russian Messiah: The Church of the Last Testament / Community of the Unified Faith . Published in Materialdienst, Volume 64, No. 1, 2001, pages 14–19, ( online ).
The material service is a magazine published by the Evangelical Central Office for Weltanschauungsfragen (EZW).
Writings of the "Church of the Last Testament"
- Wissarion: A little grain of the word of Vissarion presenting the last testament of the heavenly father who sent him . 1992.
- Vissarion : A small crumb from the word of Vissarion, which is the Last Testament of the Heavenly Father who sent him . Cologne, 2000, second edition.
- Stanislaw Kasakov: Eco-settlement in the taiga. Report of the General Director of the Tabrat Autonomous Department of the Tiberkul Social-Ecological Association . Published in: Berliner Dialog, Volume 6, No. 4, 2000, Pages 12–13, ( online ).
Individual evidence
- ^ Church of the Last Testament: Gallery of the Works of Vissarion. In: The Community of Vissarion. Retrieved February 23, 2019 (Russian).
- ↑ http://www.wissarion.info/wadim106.htm
- ↑ http://www.vissarion.info/oekopolis/geistige.htm
- ↑ The Messiah from the Taiga. In: Spiegel Online . 2004, accessed September 23, 2018 .
- ↑ http://www.religio.de/sekten/vissarion.html
- ↑ Werner Herzog: Bells From The Deep ,. Werner Herzog, 2003, accessed February 6, 2019 .
- ^ The Second Coming ,. National Geographic , 2010, accessed February 6, 2019 .
- ↑ I Am Jesus. Fabricia Production, 2010, accessed February 6, 2019 .
- ↑ Jonas Beniksen: Christmas with Christ. NRK TV, 2017, accessed February 6, 2019 .
- ↑ Re: Searching for meaning in Siberia - Jesus from the taiga and his disciples. Retrieved December 28, 2019 .
Web links
- Official German-language website of the "Ökopolis Tiberkul"
- Official Russian-language website of the "Church of the Last Testament"
- The Messiah from the Taiga - Article on Spiegel Online , July 7, 2004
- "The pious freaks" - article on stern.de
- "Jesus of Siberia" article on guardian.co.uk
- "Novel Faiths Find Followers Among Russia's Disillusioned" article on washingtonpost.com
- “Horseback 'Jesus' gathers his flock” - article on smh.com.au
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Torop, Sergei Anatolyevich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wissarion (pseudonym); Тороп, Сергей Анатольевич (Russian); Torop, Sergej Anatol'evič (scientific transliteration); Виссарион (pseudonym, Russian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian founder of the Church of the Last Testament |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 14, 1961 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Krasnodar |