Peter Deunov – Prophet of the New Age of Christ. A commentary on “A Call to My People” by Harrie Salman. The prophetic message of the angel Elohi

[Ani]

Peter Deunov – Prophet of the New Age of Christ

A Call to My People

 

Commentary by Harrie Salman

 

THE PROPHETIC MESSAGE OF THE ANGEL ELOHIL

 

On 8 October 1898 the angel Elohil communicated an important message to Peter Deunov. The angel made himself known as the protector and guardian of the Bulgarian nation, and as the angel of God’s Covenant. In the same month Peter Deunov delivered this message as A call to my people – Bulgarian sons of the Slavic family to the Spiritistic Society Miloserdie in Varna. According to Peter Deunov, God had given to his angel Elohil the task to lead the Bulgarian nation and the Slavic nations in general. The name of the angel probably means: ‘Eloah is God’ (an Eloah is an angel from the rank of the Elohim or Powers, to which also Jahweh belongs).

 

Peter Deunov had the intention of sending the message of the angel to the National Assemblee of Bulgaria to be read to its members, but he changed his mind. His friends asked him to publish the text, but when the proof-sheets were ready for correction he decided to withdraw it from printing in December 1898. He asked his pupils Penyu Kirov and Todor Stoimenov to keep the proofs and to be silent about them. In 1915 Mincho Sotirov received the text from Kirov to copy it. Also Stoimenov gave his text to someone to be copied. This last copy was found accidentally by Ivan Andonov, who made his own copy and gave it to other pupils. Andonov confessed to this to Peter Deunov, who then allowed the message to be read by others as well.^[13]

 

The angel Elohil revealed through Peter Deunov that he had come for the first time to the Bulgarian nation when czar Boris I adopted Christianity as the new state religion in 865. At that moment the mission of the Bulgarians, as well as the mission of Elohil, began. Elohil guided them through their sufferings, caused by their sins as a nation, to purify their souls along a path of patience and humility, towards a ‘good and holy life’. In the second half of the 19th century he initiated the process of liberation from Ottoman domination. Now he came to his nation for the second time, to confront it with the misuse of the gifts of the new freedom and to remind it of its mission.

 

According to the angel, the Bulgarians shared their mission with other members of the Slavic family. We may suppose that Elohil led all the Slavic nations that received Christianity through the Old Bulgarian language, which was used in Eastern Europe from the time of the missionaries Cyril and Methodius. His inspiration may have continued when these nations received their own folk spirits. A number of Slavic nations (the Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Slovenes and the Croatians) came under the influence of Rome and may not have been inspired directly by Elohil anymore.

 

Elohil revealed that God had chosen the Slavic house as a dwelling for Himself. Similar to the way the prophets of the Old Testament called the Israelite people the ‘bride’ of Jahweh, he calls the Lord (Christ) the ‘bridegroom’ of the Bulgarian people, and in a wider sense also of the other Slavic nations. They are the ‘chosen children of truth’ and the ‘seed of the new humanity’ of which the Slavic family, as a new Israel, will be the hearth. This is a very significant image.

 

The opening words of the Call are: “Heaven has assigned you a sacred office in the coming Kingdom of Peace, which is coming and approaching in its power.” Elohil will lead his nation to the Kingdom of God. Christ will return, the New Age is coming. Heaven has given ‘a sacred pledge of great mercy and love’ to the Bulgarians, but they must act in accordance with their calling. The angel described them as a ‘tribe of discord’ and as a ‘self-willed nation’, sharing in the ‘general lack of unity and discordance’ of the Slavic family.

 

The angel had come to warn them. The Bulgarian people should awake and turn away from the evil path, repent and develop pure virtues. They needed spiritual guidance and education by their angel. When they would respond to his call, their redemption and spiritual renewal would begin. By responding to the call they would avoid the ‘total destruction’ which was already hanging over their heads, as the angel Elohil said. Such words of warning and threats of punishment are reminiscent of the words of the prophets of the Old Testament. A nation that does not heed the Divine instructions, as expressed by the prophets, must face the consequences.

 

Peter Deunov followed the call of the angel. A year earlier, on 19 March 1897, he had been inspired by the spiritual world. As he told later: “Then I received a mission from Heaven, then it was told to me that I am a teacher for the whole humanity. The mission assigned to me is connected with the new path of the Slavs and with the coming of the sixth race (a concept from Theosophy, indicating a new cycle of cultures – remark by the author).”^[14] In the same year he founded the Society for the Uplifting of the Religious Spirit of the Bulgarian People, which developed in 1906 into the Chain and in 1920 into the School of the White Brotherhood.

 

Already in his youth, during a long illness in early 1884 which brought him to the brink of death, Peter Deunov had devoted his life to Christ and decided to become a preacher. Later he said that when he was 19 years old, Peter Deunov died and that the Spirit of Truth began to live in him.^[15] This was during his illness. ‘Spirit of Truth’ is one of the titles of the Holy Spirit.

 

After returning from Boston in 1895, Peter Deunov declined positions as a Methodist pastor. He turned away from the Protestant mission in Bulgaria that had been motivated by the idea of reforming the Orthodox Church. Devoting also time and energy to social and educational activity, most of his time however he dedicated to spiritual work – prayer and meditation. The preparation of his own mission began. His spiritual diaries, letters and a few published texts show that God and different angels spoke to him.^[16] These spiritual conversations, of which the meeting with the angel Elohil is one, were extraordinary spiritual events that are only known from the lives of prophets and saints.

 

The content of the mission of the Bulgarians becomes clear in the teaching that Peter Deunov spread in his lectures and sermons. They do not contain his own teaching, but the teaching of Christ, ‘the Great Teaching of Life’, as he said.^[17] Humanity is on a path of involution – separation from God, from other human beings and from nature. Man develops his ego and loses the connection with his higher Self. Christ re-established this connection and through His sacrifice human evolution could begin. Man can now become a conscious part of humanity and nature, and develop his own divine essence. In accordance with the spiritual traditions of (Eastern) Christianity, Peter Deunov spoke of the pride of man, of the suffering caused by man’s mistakes and of the path of meekness and humility that leads to Christ.

 

A renewed humanity no longer needs a Church. It will practice love and brotherhood and through them, society will transform itself into a spiritual community. Peter Deunov saw the School of the White Brotherhood as a school in which this new humanity can develop itself. It will prepare a new culture (the sixth culture in the present fifth cycle of cultures, a cycle which began after the destruction of Atlantis) which will be centred in the Slavic countries. Out of this Slavic culture a new, sixth cycle of cultures will be born that will embrace awakened people from all nations. Theosophy speaks of the ‘sixth race’, Peter Deunov called it the ‘Race of Love’. In anthroposophical terminology the five cycles are called the Polarian epoch, the epoch of Hyperborea, the epoch of Lemuria, the epoch of Atlantis and the present Post-Atlantic epoch. Two more cycles of cultures will follow.

 

-------------------------------------------

13 This section is partly based on information given by Svetlana Christova.

 

14 Akordirane na choveshkata dusha (from the archives of Boyan Boev), Vol 1, Sofia, 1999, p 339.

 

15 Velichka Draganova and Lyudmila Dimitrova, ‘Spomen ot mladezhkite godini na Uchitelya’, in: Bratski zhivot, nr 39, July 2009.

 

16 Milka Kraleva, The Master Peter Deunov – His Life and Teaching, Sofia, 2001, pp 22-25, 30-31, Dnevnik na Uch- itelya Beinsa Duno (Peter Deunov), Sofia 2001, Lichen belezhnik na Peter K. Deunov, Sofia 2010, Peter Deunov, Chio-Eli-Meli-Mesail, Sofia, 2003, Peter Deunov, Pisma do purvite uchenitsi, Sofia, 1999 and Peter Deunov and Penyu Kirov, Epistolarni dialozi, part 1, 1898-1900, Sofia, 2010 (part 2 is available on the internet).

 

17 The Wellspring of Good – The Last Words of the Mas- ter Peter Deunov, compiled by Boyan Boev and Boris Nikolov, Sofia, 2002, p 225.