Description
Not many Orenburg residents, even among believers, know that in our region there is the Holy Land of Palestine and Jerusalem, which you can visit without leaving your country. In order to touch the Shrine, you just need to get to the village of Oktyabrskoye, to the place blessed by Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia, called Ural Palestine or Little Jerusalem. The main religious attraction of the village of Oktyabrsky, Orenburg region, is the Church of St. Michael the Archangel, which was built in 1888. Before the revolution, the village of Oktyabrskoye was called Isaevo-Dedovo, therefore, this name is found in the chronicles of bygone years.
The Church of St. Michael the Archangel is a very beautiful building, a wonderful architectural monument. The church in the village of Oktyabrsky is one of the largest churches in the Orenburg region. We need to protect and respect our culture.
The construction of the Church in Isaevo-Dedovo (now Oktyabrskoye) in 1878 on the church holiday of Pentecost and lasted for twelve years. The church is built of stone, two residential buildings and four small buildings designed for watchmen were built near the church. According to the surviving sources, about 85 thousand rubles were spent on the construction of the temple (historical insurance card dated July 1, 1910). The money for the construction was allocated by residents of the Orenburg province, but the main contribution was made by Ivan Parfenyevich Tokarev, the head of a merchant family, the owner of several shops and warehouses in the village of Isaevo-Dedovo.
The church was illuminated on Sunday, October 15, 1900, in honor of Archangel Michael. Patronal feast of the village. Before that, there was a church of the same name in the village on the market square, according to Priest Vladimir Malitsky in the Diocesan Gazette of 1873 (now the stadium of the secondary school). There was also a wooden church of the Assumption on the site of the boiler house near the old cemetery.
In 1904, His Grace Joachim, Bishop of Orenburg and Ural, visited the church. A solemn meeting was arranged for him. The clergy came here from
neighboring parishes. All the pupils and pupils of the four schools of the village were in the temple with candles, which flooded the temple with bright light. The church owned two thousand square yards of land, of which forty-four acres of arable land, two church houses, four public houses and a house for watchmen. There were 550 volumes of books in the library. There were six noble families in the parish, 134 households of the bourgeois class and 761 peasant households.
To heat the church's premises, a very large furnace was built under it, into which a whole cart of firewood could be loaded at a time. One bookmark was just enough for Sunday worship in the church. Currently, the furnace room has been converted into the likeness of the so-called Little Jerusalem, in which the chapels of the Nativity of Christ, the Annunciation, and the Dormition of the Mother of God are arranged.
When the Bolsheviks came to power, the Church of St. Michael the Archangel was closed. The decision to close the church was made on October 7, 1931, and 5 years later, in 1936, the building was converted into a cinema called Iskra. The central dome, bells, priceless ancient icons, about 200 pieces in total – all this was irretrievably lost and looted.
The Church of St. Michael the Archangel was consecrated again only on October 29, 2000. In the same year, the church, also called Little Jerusalem, received the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II, who approved the name and blessed further efforts to improve the shrines of Ural Palestine. The restoration of the temple began in 2002 and has been going on for 13 years (as of 2015) with donations from people. The bell tower is currently being restored, and a new brick is being laid. All wooden windows have been replaced with new plastic ones. The church is functioning again and is open to all parishioners.
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