Vissarion

Vissarion

Sergei Anatolyevitch Torop (Russian: Серге́й Анато́льевич То́роп, Sergej Anatolʹevič Torop; born 14 January 1961), known as Vissarion (Russian: Виссарио́н, IPA: [vʲɪsərʲɪˈon], "He who gives new life" or "life-giving"), is a Russian spiritual teacher and founder of the non-profit, religious organization Church of the Last Testament, described by many organizations as a cult.According to the followers of Sergei Torop and some of his own explanations, on 18 August 1990, at the age of 29, Sergey had a “spiritual awakening”.[1] He gave his first public teaching after awakening in Minusinsk on 18 August 1991. He founded the Church of the Last Testament (Церковь Последнего Завета Tserkov Poslednego Zaveta), also known as the Community of Unified Faith, with its head church located in the Siberian Taiga in the Minusinsk Basin east of Abakan, in the small settlement called Abode of Dawn (official name) or The Sun City (unofficial name) near Petropavlovka. Since then, the Christianity-based religious movement has amassed more than 10,000 followers around the world with around 4,000 living in the few settlements in Siberia near Vissarion.[2][3] As Vissarion, he teaches reincarnation, veganism, and harmonious human relations predicting the end of the world.Since 1991, on the basis of Vissarion's meetings, teachings and speeches, a multi-volume text called The Last Testament has been written, outlining a set of principles focused on self-improvement, self-governance and community.In September 2020, Vissarion and two of his close students were arrested and taken away from homes by helicopters during an operation by Russia's Investigative Committee. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Vissarion has received more than 700,443 page views. His biography is available in 19 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 17 in 2019). Vissarion is the 2,899th most popular religious figure (down from 2,602nd in 2019), the 2,269th most popular biography from Russia (down from 2,076th in 2019) and the 45th most popular Russian Religious Figure.