These are a few short excepts from the writings of Father Seraphim Rose + written 40 years ago. They demonstrate for me the terrible & pervasive nature of the battle we fight against in our present world, and in our own hearts as we are in constant danger of becoming veggies in Satan's stew.

"The Nihilism (the idea that there is no absolute truth) of our age exists in all, and those who do not, with the aid of God, choose to combat it in the name of the fullness of the Being of the living God, are swallowed up in it already. We have been brought to the edge of the abyss of nothingness and, whether we recognize its nature or not, we will, through affinity for the ever-present nothingness within us, be engulfed in it beyond all hope of redemption--unless we cling in full and certain faith (which, doubting, does not doubt) to Christ, without Whom we are truly nothing."

"Nihilism has become, in our time, so widespread and pervasive, has entered so thoroughly and so deeply into the minds and hearts of all men living today, that there is no longer any "front" on which it may be fought; and those who think they are fighting it are most often using its own weapons, which they in effect turn against themselves."

"It is all too easy, in the atmosphere of intellectual fog that pervades Liberal and Humanist circles today, to allow sympathy for an unfortunate person (who) passes over into receptivity to these ideas.
.....but sickness is not cured, nor even properly diagnosed by sympathy. In any case there is no such thing as an entirely "innocent victim."

"In fact no one lives, but by the light of some revelation, be it a true or a false one, whether it serve to enlighten or obscure. He who will not live by the Christian Revelation must live by a false revelation; and all false revelations lead to the Abyss."

"No one, in the last analysis, serves Satan against his will."