Life after death - stories of people who have experienced clinical death. Is there life after death? Here are eyewitness stories

There is life after death. And there are thousands of evidences of this. Until now, fundamental science has dismissed such stories. However, as Natalya Bekhtereva, a famous scientist who has studied the activity of the brain all her life, said, our consciousness is such matter that it seems that the keys to the secret door have already been selected. But behind it there are ten more... What is behind the door of life?

“She sees right through everything...”

Galina Lagoda was returning with her husband in a Zhiguli car from a country trip. Trying to pass an oncoming truck on a narrow highway, the husband sharply pulled to the right... The car was crushed by a tree standing by the road.

Intravision

Galina was brought to the Kaliningrad regional hospital with severe brain damage, ruptured kidneys, lungs, spleen and liver, and many fractures. The heart stopped, the pressure was at zero. “Having flown through black space, I found myself in a shining, light-filled space,” Galina Semyonovna tells me twenty years later. “In front of me stood a huge man in dazzling white clothes. I couldn’t see his face because of the light beam directed at me. “Why did you come here?” - he asked sternly. “I’m very tired, let me rest a little.” - “Rest and come back - you still have a lot to do.” Having regained consciousness after two weeks, during which she balanced between life and death, the patient told the head of the intensive care department, Evgeniy Zatovka, how the operations were carried out, which of the doctors stood where and what they did, what equipment they brought, from which cabinets they took what. After another operation on a shattered arm, Galina, during her morning medical rounds, asked the orthopedic doctor: “How is your stomach?” From amazement, he did not know what to answer - indeed, the doctor was tormented by abdominal pain. Now Galina Semyonovna lives in harmony with herself, believes in God and is not at all afraid of death.

"Flying like a cloud"

Yuri Burkov, a reserve major, does not like to remember the past. His story was told by his wife Lyudmila: “Yura fell from a great height, broke his spine and received a traumatic brain injury, and lost consciousness. After cardiac arrest, he lay in a coma for a long time. I was under terrible stress. During one of my hospital visits I lost my keys. And the husband, having finally regained consciousness, first of all asked: “Did you find the keys?” I shook my head in fear. “They are under the stairs,” he said. Only many years later did he confess to me: while he was in a coma, he saw my every step and heard every word - no matter how far I was from him. He flew in the form of a cloud, including to where his deceased parents and brother live. The mother tried to persuade her son to return, and the brother explained that they were all alive, only they no longer had bodies. Years later, sitting at the bedside of his seriously ill son, he reassured his wife: “Lyudochka, don’t cry, I know for sure that he won’t leave now. He will be with us for another year." And a year later, at the wake of his deceased son, he admonished his wife: “He did not die, but only moved to another world before you and me. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

Savely KASHNITSKY, Kaliningrad - Moscow.

Childbirth under the ceiling

“While the doctors were trying to pump me out, I observed an interesting thing: a bright white light (there is nothing like that on Earth!) and a long corridor. And so I seem to be waiting to enter this corridor. But then the doctors resuscitated me. During this time I felt that it was very cool THERE. I didn’t even want to leave!” These are the memories of 19-year-old Anna R., who survived clinical death. Such stories can be found in abundance on Internet forums where the topic of “life after death” is discussed.

Light in the tunnel

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, pictures of life flashing before your eyes, a feeling of love and peace, meetings with deceased relatives and some luminous creature - patients who returned from the other world talk about this. True, not all, but only 10-15% of them. The rest did not see or remember anything at all. The dying brain does not have enough oxygen, which is why it is “glitchy,” say skeptics. Disagreements among scientists have reached the point that the start of a new experiment was recently announced. For three years, American and British doctors will study the testimony of patients whose hearts stopped or their brains turned off. Among other things, the researchers are going to put various pictures on the shelves in the intensive care wards. You can see them only by soaring right up to the ceiling. If patients who have experienced clinical death retell their contents, it means that consciousness is really capable of leaving the body. One of the first who tried to explain the phenomenon of near-death experiences was academician Vladimir Negovsky. He founded the world's first Institute of General Reanimatology. Negovsky believed (and the scientific view has not changed since then) that the “light at the end of the tunnel” was explained by the so-called tube vision. The cortex of the occipital lobes of the brain dies off gradually, the field of vision narrows to a narrow strip, creating the impression of a tunnel. In a similar way, doctors explain the vision of pictures of a past life flashing before the gaze of a dying person. Brain structures fade and then recover unevenly. Therefore, a person has time to remember the most vivid events deposited in his memory. And the illusion of leaving the body, according to doctors, is the result of a failure of nerve signals. However, skeptics reach a dead end when it comes to answering trickier questions. Why do people who are blind from birth, at the moment of clinical death, see and then describe in detail what is happening in the operating room around them? And there is such evidence.

Leaving the body is a defensive reaction

It is curious, but many scientists do not see anything mystical in the fact that consciousness can leave the body. The only question is what conclusion to draw from this. Leading researcher at the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dmitry Spivak, who is a member of the International Association for the Study of Near-Death Experiences, assures that clinical death is only one of the options for an altered state of consciousness. “There are a lot of them: these are dreams, and drug experience, and a stressful situation, and the consequence of illness,” he says. “According to statistics, up to 30% of people at least once in their lives have felt leaving the body and observed themselves from the outside.” Dmitry Spivak himself examined the mental state of women in labor and found that about 9% of women experience “leaving the body” during childbirth! Here is the testimony of 33-year-old S.: “During childbirth, I had a lot of blood loss. Suddenly I began to see myself from under the ceiling. The pain has disappeared. And about a minute later she also unexpectedly returned to her place in the room and again began to experience severe pain.” It turns out that “leaving the body” is a normal phenomenon during childbirth. Some kind of mechanism embedded in the psyche, a program that works in extreme situations. Undoubtedly, childbirth is an extreme situation. But what could be more extreme than death itself?! It is possible that “flying in a tunnel” is also a protective program that is activated at a fatal moment for a person. But what will happen to his consciousness (soul) next? “I asked one dying woman: if there really is something THERE, try to give me a sign,” recalls Doctor of Medical Sciences Andrei Gnezdilov, who works at the St. Petersburg hospice. - And on the 40th day after death, I saw her in a dream. The woman said: “This is not death.” Many years of working in a hospice have convinced me and my colleagues: death is not the end, not the destruction of everything. The soul continues to live." Dmitry PISARENKO

Cup and polka dot dress

This story was told by Andrey Gnezdilov, Doctor of Medical Sciences: “During the operation, the patient’s heart stopped. The doctors were able to start it, and when the woman was transferred to intensive care, I visited her. She complained that she was not operated on by the same surgeon who promised. But she could not see the doctor, being in an unconscious state all the time. The patient said that during the operation some force pushed her out of her body. She calmly looked at the doctors, but then she was overcome by horror: what if I die before I can say goodbye to my mother and daughter? And her consciousness instantly moved home. She saw that the mother was sitting, knitting, and her daughter was playing with a doll. Then a neighbor came in and brought a polka dot dress for her daughter. The girl rushed towards her, but touched the cup - it fell and broke. The neighbor said: “Well, that’s good. Apparently, Yulia will be discharged soon.” And then the patient again found herself at the operating table and heard: “Everything is fine, she is saved.” Consciousness returned to the body. I went to visit this woman’s relatives. And it turned out that during the operation... a neighbor came in with a polka dot dress for a girl and the cup was broken.” This is not the only mysterious case in the practice of Gnezdilov and other workers of the St. Petersburg hospice. They are not surprised when a doctor dreams of his patient and thanks him for his care and touching attitude. And in the morning, upon arriving at work, the doctor finds out that the patient died during the night...

Church opinion

Priest Vladimir Vigilyansky, head of the press service of the Moscow Patriarchate: - Orthodox people believe in the afterlife and immortality. There is much confirmation and evidence of this in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. We consider the very concept of death only in connection with the coming resurrection, and this mystery ceases to be such if we live with Christ and for Christ’s sake. “Whoever lives and believes in Me will never die,” says the Lord (John 11:26). According to legend, in the first days the soul of the deceased walks through those places in which it worked the truth, and on the third day it ascends to heaven to the throne of God, where until the ninth day it is shown the abodes of saints and the beauty of paradise. On the ninth day, the soul again comes to God, and it is sent to hell, where wicked sinners reside and where the soul undergoes thirty days of ordeal (tests). On the fortieth day, the soul again comes to the Throne of God, where it appears naked before the judgment of its own conscience: has it passed these tests or not? And even in the case when some trials convict the soul of its sins, we hope for the mercy of God, in whom all deeds of sacrificial love and compassion will not go in vain.

I was born to the sound of bells. My parents' house is located a few tens of meters from a huge temple, which today is included in the Golden Yaroslavl Ring. As a child, I woke up to the sound of the gospel sounding from the bell tower. I remember the blessed state of mind with which we left the church to the sound of the bells after Sunday service. In every room, including the kitchen, of our large house there was a red corner with large icons in gilded icon cases. In the evenings, my grandmother always gathered us, five grandchildren, for home prayer. I left the village (parental) house at the age of 16 to study in Yaroslavl. Then my life with God was interrupted. After all, I was studying to be a teacher, and this was a time when teachers were forbidden to believe in God. My childhood habits of praying, going to church, repenting, and taking communion disappeared from my life.
I worked in schools for more than 40 years. But, unfortunately, far from God. I was devoted to the country, not to God. That’s why I didn’t instruct my students or my own children in God’s rules, I didn’t teach them to live like a church. We had a different faith then. Patristic literature came into my life when I had already retired. My youngest son, and then my grandson, often brought me books from churches. Now that my end is approaching, I increasingly wonder if I lived my life correctly. In church literature there are many indications of what awaits all of us after death. I thought this information would be useful for those working in the funeral industry. I decided to write an essay like a schoolgirl, as I once did, which I propose below.
Following Orthodox tradition, the burial and first commemoration of the deceased takes place on the third day after death. The next commemorations occur on the ninth and fortieth days. Why is this happening?
According to the teachings of the Orthodox Church, in the first three days the soul is allowed to fly around all the places on earth that are dear to it, where it felt good, where it did good deeds. Therefore, the funeral service and funeral follow only on the third day, and the soul moves into other spheres. On this day, the first commemoration occurs, because, starting from this day, she goes through ordeals - tests of the soul until her fate is decided at the Last Judgment. These tests consist of meeting with demons, whose will a person fulfilled during his life on earth, when he committed his sins. The spatial zone of these meetings is between earth and heaven, where the soul moves, and where it is periodically stopped and interrogated about certain sins by “spirits of wickedness in high places.” It is curious that one of the meanings of the word “ordeal” is “places where duties are collected,” otherwise known as “customs.” Thus, we can say that just as customs puts a barrier to the smuggling of smuggled goods across the border, so the ordeals put a barrier to the entry of souls burdened with sins into the Kingdom of Heaven. During the ordeal, the duty for earthly human sins is collected in full. Christian sources speak of different numbers of ordeals: from twenty to thirty or more. According to the teachings of the church, there are twenty of them. We'll talk about them.
Mental illnesses - sins - are imprinted on the soul, and it, being unhealthy as a result, is no longer able to really perceive the phenomena of the surrounding world. Just as a physically ill person cannot work normally, so a soul with an illness cannot live correctly and understand the processes of life. For this reason, a person makes a huge number of mistakes in his life and is not even able to see them. Committing sins, he seems to be in a “spiritual fever.” And only when going to heaven after death, going through ordeals, the soul becomes “sighted.” Here is a list of mental illnesses that, during ordeals, are imputed to the soul as sins, including minor ones.
FIRST ORDERAL - CELEBRATION AND FOLLOWING
At this ordeal there is an answer for foul language - speech filled with obscene words; blasphemy - an offensive attitude towards any shrine; desecration - desecration of something that is sacred to others; disorderly behavior - unsteady, obscene, unceremonious behavior; listening to anecdotes, witticisms, stupid jokes in relation to God and the church; listening, watching, reading negative: literature, television, video, radio programs.
SECOND ORDERAL - Slander
At this ordeal, spirits torture the soul for false promises; perjury - giving false or distorted testimony; hypocrisy - insincerity, ill will; flattery - obsequious praise covering up insincerity; betrayal.
TRIAL THIRD - RESULTS AND UNTRUTHS
Here the spirits of malice find out whether the soul has been noticed in humiliation - oppression by insults or belittling of its abilities; condemnation - disapproving opinion, censure; rudeness - lack of culture, discourtesy; indelicacy.
FOURTH ORDERAL - EMBRACE
Here they are tortured for gluttony - pleasing one's stomach to the detriment of the spirit and soul; drunkenness - constant and excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages; alcoholism - morbid attraction, addiction to alcohol; smoking; drug addiction - an irresistible attraction to drugs; uncleanliness - dirt, sloppiness; intemperance - lack of desire or ability to limit oneself in something; long-suffering - lack of long-suffering when you have to endure something for a long time; whim - capricious desire, whim.
FIFTH ORDERAL - PRIDE
During it, sinners are tortured for not working on their spiritual development; inertia of thinking - insusceptibility to new things, backwardness; negligence - a careless attitude towards one's duties; carelessness - a manifestation of carelessness; idleness is an insignificant activity that does not yield anything; laziness - lack of desire to act, work, love of inaction; killing time; killing an idea; life in vain.
SIXTH ORDERAL - THEFT
Here comes the answer for the sins of theft - the criminal appropriation of someone else's property; robbery - violent theft of someone else's property.
SEVENTH ORDERAL - LOVE OF AMERY
This is the ordeal of love of money - greed for money, wealth, stinginess, love for gifts; speculation - buying and reselling valuables for the purpose of profit.
THE EIGHTH ORDERAL - BRIBERY
It is responsible for extortion - bribery, usury, flattery.
THE NINTH ORDERAL - BRIBERY
Here one is held accountable for the incorrect use of power or measure; committing extortion or any injustice.
TENTH ORDERAL - ENVY
Next, the soul reaches the tenth ordeal, where they are tortured for jealousy - painful doubt about someone's fidelity or love; envy; unfriendliness.
ORDERAL ELEVENTH - VANITY
Demons accuse a soul that has reached the eleventh stage of vanity - arrogant arrogance, love of fame, veneration; megalomania - a painful exaltation of one's abilities; stubbornness - extreme intransigence, the desire to get one's way; egoism - preferring one's personal interests to the interests of others; stupidity - thoughts, words, actions devoid of reasonable content; disrespect for traditions; oblivion - loss of memory about something, neglect of something; disrespect for parents.
TWELFTH ORDERAL - ANGRY
The souls of sinners are tortured for anger - a feeling of strong indignation, indignation; irritability; hatred - a feeling of strong disgust, reluctance to see; enmity - actions imbued with hatred; anger - a feeling of angry irritation; gloat; ignorance; impudence.
THIRTEENTH ORDINARY - GREAT REMEMBER
On it, the souls of those who are vindictive are interrogated - those who have not forgiven the harm caused; touchy; vindictive - those who wanted to take revenge for the grievances caused; sowing discord and division.
The following ordeals are the most complex and difficult to pass, because here the most serious human sins are called to account.
FOURTEENTH ORDERAL - ROBBERY
So, the fourteenth stage is the ordeal of self-mutilation - injuring someone or oneself; beatings; intentional poisoning; assassination attempts - attempts to take the life of another person or oneself; murder of love for God and neighbors; deliberate abortion.
FIFTEENTH ORDERAL - MAGIC
This is the ordeal of spiritualism - the mystical belief in the possibility of communication with the souls of the dead; fortune telling - recognizing the past or future using various techniques; gambling - strong excitement, enthusiasm, passion.
SIXTEENTH ORDERAL - FORMARRY
It tortures those souls who in earthly life were engaged in fornication without being bound by the sacraments of marriage; committed the sin of incitement; temptation; shamelessness - contradictions of public morality, indecent behavior; debauchery - sexual immorality, vicious lifestyle; vulgarity; passions. The prince of this ordeal is dressed in stinking clothes, sprinkled with bloody foam, which were made for him by the shameful and nasty deeds of those who indulged in these sins on earth.
SEVENTEENTH ORDERAL - ADULTERY
Those who did not maintain marital fidelity both in reality and in dreams are tortured; committed fornication and kidnappings; as well as those who promised their purity to Christ, but broke the vow.
THE EIGHTEENTH ORDERAL - SODOMA
Here they hold the answer for the sin of sexual perversion.
NINETEENTH ORDERAL - IDOLATRY
Or the ordeal of heresy. Here they are tortured for selfishness - actions carried out without God's blessing; misunderstanding of one's purpose on earth; blasphemy - defamation of the name of God, God's works and creations, insult of church relics; lack of faith; superstition is a prejudice due to which many things that happen seem to be a manifestation of supernatural forces; fear; loss of will; suspiciousness; despair; weakness - insufficient consistency in one’s movement towards God; delusion - false ideas that lead away from the true path, from God; blind trust; murmur; despondency; cowardice; discontent.
THE TWENTIETH ORDERAL - UNMERCEFULNESS AND CRUELTY
The last, twentieth ordeal of no mercy may turn out to be completely impassable. The list of sins here includes: callousness - a heartless attitude; silent cry - a timid call that does not express one’s opinion, as well as a refusal of help and attention to someone in need; cruelty; turning a wake for the dead into an ordinary drunken feast. The main spirit of this ordeal is dry and sad, as if after a long illness, he cries, sobs and breathes the fire of unmercifulness.
Until the ninth day, the soul visits the heavenly abodes and admires the beauties of paradise. On the ninth day, the commemoration is performed again, because from this moment until the end of the forty-day period, the torment and horrors of hell are shown to the soul, which still does not know where it will end up.
The souls of saints who have accepted martyrdom are not subject to ordeal. They immediately go to heaven. In the Orthodox lives of saints one can find many stories about how the soul after death goes through ordeals. The story of the warrior Taxiot tells how he returned to life after spending six hours in the grave, and told about his meetings with the spirits of evil: “When I was dying, I saw some Ethiopians (demons - author’s note), their appearance was very scary, and my soul was confused. Then I saw two young men, very handsome; my soul rushed to them. We began to rise to heaven, meeting on the way the ordeals that hold the soul of every person.” Going through ordeals becomes especially difficult not only because a person is sinful by nature, but also because demons try to add sins not committed to the sins they have committed. After all, it is very important for them to get a human soul. But the soul is not alone in its encounters with demons. She is accompanied by angels. They weigh sins and good deeds on the scales, and if the latter outweigh, the soul goes through ordeal. In addition, angels take out gifts and give them to evil spirits as ransom. These gifts are those good deeds that the soul did while on earth, repentance for sins committed, as well as the prayers of the Church and loved ones. Therefore, commemoration is very important, because only the love and good memory of those left on earth will help the soul of the deceased to withstand torture and go through all the ordeals. Only on the fortieth day will she be assigned a place where she will await the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment. Many souls are in fear and confusion at the moment of waiting. It is possible to change their condition through prayers and remembrance, which is performed within forty days. By observing Orthodox traditions of burial and commemoration, we help the souls of deceased relatives and friends on their difficult journey until they find an eternal home.

Valentina YAKUSHINA

References
The ordeal of St. Theodora. Comp. Abbot Anthony, “The Ladder”.
Life, illness, death. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, Sergiev Posad.
About death and afterlife. "Diopter".
Afterlife. "Danilovsky Blagovestnik"
Soul after death. Seraphim Rose. "Royal Affair"
A word about death. "Sofia's Rays"
The afterlife or the final fate of a person. Tikhomirov E. “Father's House.”
How our dead live and how we will live after death. Monk Mitrofan. "Orthodox Brotherhood of the Holy Apostle John the Theologian."
Secrets of the underworld. Archimandrite Panteleimon. "Blagovest"
A word about death. Brianchaninov. "Lepta-press".
The secret life of the soul after physical death. St. Gregory (Dyachenko). "Orthodox brotherhood in the name of the Exaltation of the Honest Life-Giving Cross of the Lord."
Afterlife in the light. Revealed teachings. St. George Orlov. "Pilgrim".

Read the full version of the material in the printed version of the magazine

MY DEARS! THIS TOPIC WRITTEN FOR US BY THE MODERATOR OF THE "LIGHT OF ORTHODOXY" GROUP About freedom Peace to all! My article today is devoted to a sensitive, difficult and relevant topic for many people - freedom. What is freedom in relation to a human being? To answer this question, you must first “decipher” everything that is connected with this concept - life, death, independence, lack of freedom, slavery, sin, the meaning of life, free will and some others. In turn, in order to understand these concepts related to freedom, we need to understand a number of essential details that contribute to the “decipherment” and thus we will come to other concepts and topics, as well as to the following important details, which in turn... And so I will write until the second coming! Now let's get serious. The topic is really complex, but despite this, I will try to explain it as clearly and briefly as I can imagine it all. So, with the help of God, the Bible, the holy fathers, common sense and logic, let’s begin to pray. The life that a person lives on earth is not Life at all, but only the threshold of Life! The death that a person dies after living life on earth is not death at all, but just a door (transition, outcome) to Life or to death (1). It is clear that here I mean the concept of death, as final and eternal death in hell. Thus, the concept of a door cannot be good for a person crossing through it and discovering death behind it, which he himself quite rightly deserved with all his deeds and thoughts, willingly or unwillingly! And vice versa - the concept of a door (whatever it may be - violent, accidental, early, from illness, etc., etc.) cannot be evil for the human soul, which passes through it into Life! So we have discovered the two final “points” of good and evil, which are on the border of life and Life - death. Behind the door there is no longer any possibility of getting from death to Life (perhaps with very rare exceptions - through the prayers of holy people) and from Life to death (here I think without any exceptions). The starting “points” of good and evil are located in Eden before the fall of Adam and Eve (good) and after the fall (evil). Between these four “points” lies the life of absolutely every person. In such a life, a person cannot have any true freedom (except for the freedom of choice over which neither God nor the devil has power), we can only hope for freedom in Life. To understand all this, we must consider the falsity of freedom (or rather freedoms) in human life. To do this, let's imagine an absolutely “free” person. Let’s say this is a non-religious man who is absolutely independent of other people, the law, finances, prejudices, information, anyone’s beliefs, etc. He tries to live according to his conscience and goes through life with full responsibility for his “freedom.” Whatever he does and whatever he thinks about on a global scale, he will always return to the same point - the door behind which is absolute unknown! It is limited by the framework of life, which has a beginning, but does not have a clear, conscious and precise end. By resigning himself to the darkness and nothing outside the door, he thereby destroys his “freedom,” which in fact he never had! Such humility will lead him to inevitable despondency and the understanding that his children, grandchildren, friends and relatives have the same meaningless and hopeless end. This person can say (and believe it) that he is not afraid of death and that there is an infinity of the human race and the eternity of himself in his descendants. In fact, this is self-deception (because absolutely all people will die) which gives him at least some pathetic hope for the meaning of his life. Also, this humility before the afterlife nothingness gives him a subconscious feeling of the wrongness of his life, its purposelessness. For him, a vital example of a conscientious life were his parents, grandmothers, grandfathers... No one told him about Christ, his thoughts belonged to the earthly world, he saw evil only outside, and not inside himself, so he came to the realization of the door as absolute evil for yourself! WHAT TO DO??? How to get rid of the despondency of the collapse of life and gain hope for true freedom, that is, Life? Many religions talk about the possibility of eternal Life. It is only necessary to determine which religion is true! To do this from my point of view is easy and simple, you just need to study and analyze which of them is the most viable, all-conquering, strong and glorious for its saints, miracles, although I will not talk about saints, miracles and the internal content of religions here . I think the Christian religion will be beyond any competition here in all these respects. So let us remember the cruel persecution at the very beginning of the creation of the Church of Christ! Despite this, Christianity has only strengthened and expanded in an amazing (if not supernatural, miraculous) way! Further, continuing to recall historical facts - the cult of Caesar, incredible in its cruelty and savagery! Caligula, Nero, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Trajan, Decius. For a long time, the full power of the Roman Empire fell on Christians! I suppose that it was precisely at that time that the common people of the Roman Empire began to see the light, when they saw that Christians preferred the door to the renunciation of their God the Savior. The first Christian martyrs incredibly strengthened the truth of their faith and made people think - what is stronger than the cessation of life? The emperors used the full power of the law, wild animals, fire, poison, torture and every type of weapon available to intimidate and destroy Christianity. You don’t have to be an “archive worm” and a doctor of historical sciences with access to secret documents to understand that all these seven emperors were on the side of true evil! And evil, as we know, cannot fight evil so long and stubbornly; it is only capable of fighting with its opposite! How did this total persecution of the Christian faith and the Church end? Complete defeat of Roman paganism! What weapons did Christians use for this victory? Patience, humility, love, hope and unshakable faith in your God - the Savior! All these are weapons of defense, but as weapons of “attack” and “capture” (saving human souls), Christians successfully used the Gospel Word and their own example of living according to this Word. All this made it possible for the first Christians to receive an impenetrable shield and the all-conquering sword of Jesus Christ, which was the final predetermination of the defeat of the Roman power of Caesar! By the way, the Jews were freed from the cult of Caesar; they were involved in the persecution of Christians, as they used their influence on officials, administration and governors to fight the Christian “sect,” as they then believed. After the separation of Catholicism from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of Christ, persecution continued! But the persecutor was the church itself, and not the Orthodox one. INQUISITION! CRUSADES! And again, you don’t have to be a genius to determine whether the Catholic Church created evil or good in the person of these phenomena. Of course, they may ask me - what about the destruction of two-thirds of the pagan population during the time of Russia's adoption of Christian Orthodoxy? I will answer this question this way. Suppose you are right and the pagan faith of Rus' was true goodness and blessing for all people of the Earth. But why then did it not strengthen and expand in spite of persecution, as Christianity did at the time of its founding despite the monstrous opposition of Judaism and the Roman “divine” power? No, my dear neo-pagans - Rodnovers, true religion does not behave like that! The widespread disappearance from the face of the earth of the religion of polytheism and human sacrifice suggests that it was dead from its birth (2). All this proves the weakness, falsity and delusion of the ancient Slavic faith of our pre-Christian ancestors! After the baptism of Rus', our ancestors knew almost no military defeats! Why? Because, unlike all other states and peoples surrounding Rus', our glorious ancestors went into battle to die, and not to win (killing enemies)! Die for the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland! The Christian Orthodox faith, eternal, glorious, true, sacred, and not at all pagan! Of course, many people here can argue with me, as they say, “foaming at the mouth,” but the evidence lies on the surface! And whoever does not see them, from my point of view, does not have a sound mind. It is enough to recall the territory of Rus' under Prince Vladimir and compare it with the territory that exists now. Who achieved this? Who can name at least five famous and great people of the pagan faith who would develop and glorify Rus'? And how many of them are there in the Orthodox faith? And of course, within the framework of determining the truth of religions, one cannot help but mention the very recent events regarding the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church. Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev. 1917 - 1964. For 47 years, evil tried to destroy good. Masquerading as industrialization, collectivization, the fight against illiteracy, religious obscurantism, improving the lives of workers, using rabid propaganda of atheism, socialism, communist morality, using slogans of freedom, equality, brotherhood, etc. and so on. evil sought to destroy churches, monasteries, killing priests, faith, and with them the souls of people. This disguise was so cunning and plausible that even now many people consider that time (before Brezhnev) to be good and beneficial for all people of the USSR, without noticing the fall of the inner spiritual moral essence of man, that is, his distance from Jesus Christ. The true freedom of the God-man was replaced by the surrogate freedom of the ideas of socialism and communism. And again, nothing came of it for the opponents of Jesus Christ - good again defeated the evil power of Caesar using the same weapons as in ancient times. As paradoxical as it may sound, the sheep again prevailed over the wolves. “Behold, I send you out as sheep among wolves: therefore be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” Matt. (10:16). Divine Love, the power and glory of the Savior of all people is victorious over everything, well, it’s finally time for everyone to understand this, and not from my words, but after studying historical facts from the creation of the universe to the present day. Thus, only the Christian Orthodox religion is the only truth. It is she who can give a person great hope for eternal Life and true freedom in it, the essence of which is the acquisition of an incorruptible body, and also: “And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying: Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them; they will be His people, and God Himself will be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things have passed away. He who sits on the throne: Behold, I am creating everything new. And he says to me: for these words are true and faithful. And he said to me: I am the beginning and the end; to him who thirsts I will inherit everything freely. and I will be his God, and he will be My son" (Rev. 21:3 - 7). Modern (believers at heart) atheists and many others say - we don’t need a church, we live according to our conscience and regret (repent) at home about our sins that we committed earlier. Well, what about the sacrament of Baptism (which is not possible without studying the faith for an adult) and the sacrament of Communion (which is not possible without the sacrament of Confession and sacred rites) - I ask such people? After all, the grace received through these sacraments is absolutely necessary for the salvation of a person’s soul, for the ability to fight evil in oneself. And all this is not possible without priests, who, although in quotation marks, are “heirs” of the apostles - “He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives him who sent Me” (Matthew 10:40). God must be sought in the study of the Bible, the teachings of the Holy Fathers, in union with Him through the sacraments of the Church, prayer, humility, patience... in becoming like Him, and not in our souls! And only after such a search for God, true repentance, forgiveness and changing yourself in the image of God, will you be able to discover Him in your soul, which will mean your Love for Him and for all people. But such people do not pay attention to the sacraments of the church, proven over thousands of years. They are ready to risk their souls, just not to feel shame in front of the priest in confession. They forget that in addition to shame and torment about their previously committed abominations in the face of God, they can receive the greatest hope for Life and perfect freedom! “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). They do not understand a simple thing - eternal Life and the freedom granted in it outweigh absolutely everything that was before the door, and only for this reason all atheists should understand, believe, accept and say that. .. Christ is risen!!! An amazing thing, we are afraid of the door, but we are not afraid of sin, although the door does not always lead to death, but just one mortal sin is its guarantee! We do not want to fear God and be His slaves without understanding that this fear (in the sense of reverent awe of God) and slavery (in the sense of slavery to good and war with evil in ourselves) frees us from the fear of the door and gives us hope for liberation from death itself, which is the measure of the maximum freedom of human life on earth! Thus, even a person deprived of health, freedom of movement (prisoner), finances, etc., but having an insignificant grain of hope for Life, is much more free than the person I presented in the example above! Such a person knows that only God is absolutely always completely free. He has no need to choose; He absolutely knows His goals and how to achieve them. God eternally does true (absolute, Divine) good, where he wants and how he wants, but not a single person is now able to fully understand this goodness! He has neither internal nor external obstacles to this. The Almighty is outside of time, which means He is not affected by cause and effect relationships. God is eternally and infinitely Almighty, except for one thing - He cannot force a person to love Himself against his will, because Love, just like Him, is absolutely free! The concept of “freedom” is associated with many people with the absence of any restrictions or prohibitions, like absolute independence. And again an amazing thing arises - the more we receive such freedom, the more we, on the contrary, fall into dependence (slavery) of various passions, sins, bad habits and vices! “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Prov. 14:12). My dear readers, do not risk Life and freedom for the sake of your (false, non-Orthodox) understanding of life, freedom, hell and heaven... please don’t! Answer one question correctly - “Therefore I find a law, that when I want to do good, evil is present with me. For according to the inward man I delight in the law of God; but in my members I see another law, warring against the law of my mind and making me a captive of the law the sin that is in my members. O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? (Rom. 7:21 - 24). Our life gives us enough time and opportunity to sow correctly, we will reap outside the door. God gave us all an awareness of good and evil, a desire for Love, and through His Word revealed moral limits and paths. He also provided man with laws, rules of life and conscience, which is still a relative thing. The entire world before Moses lived according to the law of conscience, and what happened as a result? So it turns out that the law of conscience works well only in combination with the law of Jesus Christ! It is enough to remember how many righteous saints there were in the Old Testament history of mankind and how many there were after He created his Church! The death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ proved to all humanity the possibility of eternal Life, that evil and death must and can be overcome by any person who truly believes and receives grace! With all the strength of your soul, strive for good (which can be tested by untruth, suffering and seeming injustice), reject evil (which can masquerade as justice and goodness), do not question the teachings of Christ, follow Him and then we will be able to answer with joy and hope: Truly He is Risen !!! Always your ordinary person (with a gray soul) moderator of the group "LIGHT OF ORTHODOXY" (1) For the convenience of the narrative, I will call the threshold of Life life with a small letter, and the true (eternal) Life after life (Kingdom of Heaven) with a capital letter. Also, for ease of understanding, I will call human death after earthly life a door, and hell death. (2) My third article will be about dead religion in exactly a week. p.s. Despite the fact that I often mention the word “truth” in this article, I ask all my readers not to take my thoughts as the ultimate truth. Everyone separates the wheat from the chaff for himself. It should also be understood that everything written above is by and large not mine - this is the totality of my thoughts from everything I have read and thought about throughout my life, that is, in essence, these are the books that I read and how I understood them.

One of the main questions for everyone remains the question of what awaits us after death. For thousands of years, unsuccessful attempts have been made to unravel this mystery. Apart from guesswork, there are real facts confirming that death is not the end of the human journey.

There are a large number of paranormal videos that have taken the internet by storm. But even in this case, there are a lot of skeptics who say that the videos can be faked. It is difficult to disagree with them, because a person is not inclined to believe in what he cannot see with his own eyes.

There are many stories about how people returned from the other world when they were near death. How to perceive such cases is a matter of faith. However, often even the most inveterate skeptics changed themselves and their lives when faced with situations that cannot be explained using logic.

Religion about death

The vast majority of the world's religions have teachings about what awaits us after death. The most common is the doctrine of Heaven and Hell. Sometimes it is supplemented by an intermediate link: “walking” through the world of the living after death. Some peoples believe that such a fate awaits suicides and those who have not completed something important on this Earth.

A similar concept is seen in many religions. Despite all the differences, they have one thing in common: everything is tied to good and bad, and a person’s posthumous state depends on how he behaved during life. The religious description of the afterlife cannot be written off. Life after death exists - inexplicable facts confirm this.

One day something amazing happened to a priest who was the rector of the Baptist Church in the United States of America.

An ambulance arrived soon, but it was too late. The man's heart didn't beat. Doctors confirmed the cardiac arrest with a second test. They had no doubt that the man was dead. Around the same time, the police arrived at the scene of the accident. Among the officers there was a Christian who saw a cross in the priest’s pocket. He immediately noticed his clothes and realized who was in front of him. He could not send God's servant on his final journey without prayer. He said words of prayer as he climbed into the dilapidated car and took the hand of the man whose heart was not beating. While reading the lines, he heard a subtle groan, which shocked him. He checked his pulse again and realized that he could clearly feel the blood pulsing. Later, when the man miraculously recovered and began to live his old life, this story became popular. Perhaps the man really returned from the other world to complete important matters at the behest of God. One way or another, they could not give a scientific explanation for this, because the heart cannot start on its own.

The priest himself said more than once in his interviews that he saw only the white light and nothing else. He could have taken advantage of the situation and said that the Lord himself spoke to him or he saw angels, but he did not do this. A couple of reporters claimed that when asked what the man saw in this afterlife dream, he smiled discreetly and his eyes filled with tears. Perhaps he really saw something hidden, but did not want to make it public.

When people are in a short coma, their brain does not have time to die during this time. That is why it is worth paying attention to the numerous stories that people, being between life and death, saw a light so bright that even through closed eyes it seeps through as if the eyelids were transparent. One hundred percent of people came back to life and reported that the light began to move away from them. Religion interprets this very simply - their time has not yet come. A similar light was seen by the wise men approaching the cave where Jesus Christ was born. This is the glow of heaven, the afterlife. No one saw angels or God, but felt the touch of higher powers.

Another thing is dreams. Scientists have proven that we can dream anything that our brain can imagine. In a word, dreams are not limited by anything. It happens that people see their dead relatives in their dreams. If 40 days have not passed since death, this means that the person actually spoke to you from the afterlife. Unfortunately, dreams cannot be analyzed objectively from two points of view - scientific and religious-esoteric, because it’s all about sensations. You may dream about God, angels, heaven, hell, ghosts and whatever you want, but you don’t always feel that the meeting was real. It happens that in dreams we remember deceased grandparents or parents, but only occasionally does a real spirit come to someone in a dream. We all understand that it will be impossible to prove our feelings, so no one spreads their impressions further than outside the family circle. Those who believe in the afterlife, and even those who doubt, wake up after such dreams with a completely different view of the world. Spirits can predict the future, which has happened more than once in history. They can show dissatisfaction, joy, sympathy.

There are quite a famous story that happened in Scotland in the early 70s of the 20th century with an ordinary builder. A residential building was being built in Edinburgh. Norman McTagert, who was 32 years old, worked at the construction site. He fell from quite a height, lost consciousness and fell into a coma for a day. Shortly before this, he dreamed of falling. After he woke up, he told what he saw in the coma. According to the man, it was a long journey because he wanted to wake up, but he couldn’t. First he saw that same blinding bright light, and then he met his mother, who said that she had always wanted to become a grandmother. The most interesting thing is that as soon as he regained consciousness, his wife told him about the most pleasant news that was possible - Norman was going to become a dad. The woman found out about her pregnancy on the day of the tragedy. The man had serious health problems, but he not only survived, but also continued to work and feed his family.

At the end of the 90s, something very unusual happened in Canada.. The doctor on duty at one of the Vancouver hospitals was taking calls and filling out paperwork, but then she saw a little boy in white night pajamas. He shouted from the other end of the emergency room: “Tell my mom not to worry about me.” The girl was afraid that one of the patients had left the room, but then she saw the boy walk through the closed doors of the hospital. His house was a couple of minutes from the hospital. That's where he ran. The doctor was alarmed by the fact that it was three o'clock in the morning. She decided that she had to catch up with the boy at all costs, because even if he was not a patient, she needed to report him to the police. She ran after him for just a couple of minutes until the child ran into the house. The girl began to ring the doorbell, after which the mother of that same boy opened the door for her. She said that it was impossible for her son to leave the house, because he was very ill. She burst into tears and went into the room where the child lay in his crib. It turned out that the boy had died. The story received great resonance in society.

In the brutal Second World War one private Frenchman spent almost two hours firing back at the enemy during a battle in the city . Next to him was a man of about 40 years old, who covered him on the other side. It is impossible to imagine how great the surprise of an ordinary soldier in the French army was, who turned in that direction to say something to his partner, but realized that he had disappeared. A few minutes later, screams of approaching allies were heard, rushing to help. He and several other soldiers ran out to meet help, but the mysterious partner was not among them. He searched for him by name and rank, but never found the same fighter. Perhaps it was his guardian angel. Doctors say that in such stressful situations, mild hallucinations are possible, but talking with a man for an hour and a half cannot be called an ordinary mirage.

There are quite a lot of similar stories about life after death. Some of them are confirmed by eyewitnesses, but doubters still call it a fake and try to find scientific justification for people’s actions and their visions.

Real facts about the afterlife

Since ancient times, there have been cases where people saw ghosts. First they were photographed and then filmed. Some people think that this is an edit, but later they are personally convinced of the veracity of the pictures. Numerous stories cannot be considered proof of the existence of life after death, so people need evidence and scientific facts.

Fact one: Many have heard that after death a person becomes exactly 22 grams lighter. Scientists cannot explain this phenomenon in any way. Many believers tend to believe that 22 grams is the weight of the human soul. Many experiments were carried out that ended with the same result - the body became lighter by a certain amount. Why is the main question. People's skepticism cannot be eradicated, so many hope that an explanation will be found, but this is unlikely to happen. Ghosts can be seen by the human eye, hence their "body" has mass. Obviously, everything that has some kind of outline must be at least partly physical. Ghosts exist in greater dimensions than us. There are 4 of them: height, width, length and time. Ghosts have no control over time from the point of view from which we see it.

Fact two: The air temperature near ghosts decreases. This is typical, by the way, not only for the souls of dead people, but also for the so-called brownies. All this is the result of the action of the afterlife in reality. When a person dies, the temperature around him immediately drops sharply, literally for an instant. This indicates that the soul leaves the body. The temperature of the soul is approximately 5-7 degrees Celsius, as measurements show. During paranormal phenomena, the temperature also changes, so scientists have proven that this happens not only during immediate death, but also afterwards. The soul has a certain radius of influence around itself. Many horror films use this fact to bring the filming closer to reality. Many people confirm that when they felt the movement of a ghost or some entity near them, they felt very cold.

Here is an example of a paranormal video that features real ghosts.

The authors claim that this is not a joke, and experts who watched this collection say that approximately half of all such videos are the real truth. Particularly noteworthy is the part of this video where the girl is pushed by a ghost in the bathroom. Experts report that physical contact is possible and absolutely real, and the video is not fake. Almost all pictures of furniture moving may be true. The problem is that it is very easy to fake such a video, but in the moment where the chair next to the sitting girl began to move by itself, there was no acting. There are very, very many such cases around the world, but there are no fewer of those who just want to promote their video and become famous. Distinguishing fake from truth is difficult, but possible.

It is believed that the soul spends six days on an excursion in heaven, and then it goes to hell. All the time there are angels nearby who tell information about the good deeds performed by the soul during life. Ordeals are represented by demons who seek to drag the soul to hell. It is believed that there are 20 ordeals in total, but this is not the number of sins, but passions, which include many different vices.

20 ordeals of the soul after death:

1. Celebration. This category includes vain conversations, irrational laughter and songs.
2. Lie. A person is subjected to these ordeals if he lies in confession and to other people, as well as if he takes the name of the Lord in vain.
3. Condemnation and slander. If during his lifetime a person condemned those around him and spread gossip, it means that his soul will be tested as an opponent of Christ.
4. Gluttony. This includes gluttony, drunkenness, eating without prayer, and breaking fasts.
5. Laziness. The ordeal of the soul will be experienced by people who were lazy and did nothing, and also received payment for work not done.
6. Theft. This category includes not only sin when a person deliberately steals, but also if he borrowed money and ultimately did not pay it back.
7. Love of money and stinginess. The punishment will be felt by people who turned away from God, rejected love and pretended. This also includes the sin of stinginess, when a person deliberately refuses to help those in need.
8. Extortion. This includes the sin of appropriating someone else’s property, as well as investing money in dishonest things, participating in various sweepstakes and playing on the stock exchange. This sin also includes bribery and speculation.
9. Not true. You will have to experience the ordeal of the soul after death if a person deliberately lied during life. This sin is the most common, since many deceive, plot, deceive, etc.
10. Envy. During life, many people envy the success of others, wanting them to fall off the pedestal. Often a person experiences joy when others have a lot of problems and troubles, this is called the sin of envy.
11. Pride. This category includes the following sins: vanity, contempt, arrogance, arrogance, boasting, etc.
12. Anger and rage. The next ordeal that the soul goes through after death includes the following sins: desire for revenge, short temper, aggression, irritation. Such emotions cannot be felt not only towards people and animals, but even towards inanimate objects.
13. rancor. Many people are vindictive during their lifetime and do not let go of grudges for a long time, which means that their souls after death will pay in full for these sins.
14. Murder. The posthumous ordeal of the soul and the Last Judgment of God cannot be imagined without taking into account this sin, since it is the most terrible and unforgivable. This also includes suicide and abortion.
15. Witchcraft and Demon Summoning. Carrying out various rituals, fortune telling with cards, reading conspiracies, all this is a sin that will have to be paid for after death.
16. Fornication. Sexual relations between a man and a woman before marriage, as well as various thoughts and dreams regarding debauchery, are considered a sin.
17. Adultery. Cheating on one of the spouses in the family is considered a serious sin, for which you will need to pay in full. This also includes civil marriage, illegal birth of a child, divorce, etc.
18. Sins of Sodom. Sexual relationships between relatives, as well as unnatural relationships and various perversions, for example, lesbianism and bestiality.
19. Heresy. If a person during his lifetime talks incorrectly about faith, distorts information and mocks sacred objects, it means that the soul will have to pay for what he has done.
20. No Mercy. In order not to suffer for this sin, a person must show compassion during his life, help people and do good deeds.

When the sacrament of death is performed and the soul is separated from the body, it (the soul) remains on earth for the first days and, accompanied by angels, visits those places in which it used to create truth. She wanders around the house in which she was separated from her body, and sometimes stays near the coffin in which her body rests.

On the third day, every Christian soul is supposed to ascend to heaven to worship God.

On the third day, the body is consigned to the earth, and the soul must ascend to heaven: “and the dust will return to the earth, as it was, and the spirit will return to God, who gave it.”

If the soul has not known itself, has not fully realized itself here on earth, then, as a spiritual and moral being, it must, of necessity, realize itself beyond the grave; to realize what she had developed in herself, what she had adapted to, what sphere she was accustomed to, what constituted food and contentment for her. To realize oneself and thus carry out judgment on oneself before God’s judgment - this is what heavenly justice wants.

God did not want and does not want death, but man himself desired it. Here on earth, with the help of holy communion, the soul can come to consciousness, bring true repentance and receive remission of sins from God.

But behind the coffin, in order to bring the soul to the consciousness of its sinfulness, there are fallen spirits who, being the mentors of all evil on earth, will now present the soul with its sinful activity, recalling all the circumstances under which evil was committed. The soul realizes its sins. By this she already warns God’s judgment over her; so that the judgment of God, as it were, already determines what the soul itself has pronounced over itself.

Through repentance, sins committed are destroyed and are no longer mentioned anywhere, neither at the ordeal, nor at the trial.

Good angels at ordeals, for their part, represent the good deeds of the soul.

The entire space from earth to heaven represents twenty divisions or judgment seats, at which the coming soul is convicted by demons of sins.

ordeals- this is the inevitable path by which all human souls, both evil and good, make their transition from temporary earthly life to an eternal lot.

During the ordeals, the soul, in the presence of angels and demons, but also before the Eye of the All-Seeing God, is gradually and thoroughly tested in all deeds, words and thoughts.

Good souls, justified in all ordeals, are ascended by angels to the heavenly abodes for the beginning of eternal bliss, and sinful souls, detained at one or another ordeal, by the verdict of an invisible court, are drawn by demons to their dark abodes for the beginning of eternal torment.

Thus, ordeals are a private judgment that is carried out invisibly by the Lord himself through his angels over each human soul, including the evil tax collectors who accuse demons.

On the way to heaven, directed to the east, the soul encounters its first ordeal, on which evil spirits, having stopped the soul, accompanied by good angels, present her with her sins.

The questions in the ordeal begin with sins, as we call them, “small”, universal to mankind (idle talk), and the further they go, the more important they concern sins and end in the 20th ordeal with unmercifulness and harshness towards one’s neighbor - the most serious sins, for which, according to According to the word of God, there is “judgment without mercy” for those who have not shown mercy.

The first ordeal -WORD:(untruths, verbosity, idle talk, idle talk, vanity, slander, foul language, jokes, obscenity, vulgarity, distortion of words, simplifications, grandiosity, absurdities, ridicule, laughter, laughter, name-calling, singing passionate songs, rumors, grumpiness, tongue-tiedness, vileness, incitement, blasphemy, desecration of people and the name of God, taking things in vain, rudeness.)

The second ordeal is a lie(flattery, sycophancy, pleasing with cunning, meanness, cowardice, antics, vanity, isolation, imagination, artistry, perjury, perjury, concealing sins in confession, secrecy, breaking the promise given in confession not to repeat sins, deceit.)

The third ordeal - slander(insults, condemnation, distortion of the truth, sneaking, complaints, abuse, mockery, contributing to the sins of others, impudence, cynicism, moral pressure, threats, mistrust, doubts.)

The fourth ordeal is gluttony(binge eating, binge drinking, smoking, secret eating, breaking fasts, feasting, drunkenness, drug addiction, substance abuse, etc., gluttony.)

The fifth ordeal is laziness(negligence, inattention, oblivion, oversleeping, idleness, despondency, carelessness, cowardice, weakness of will, idleness, forgetfulness, carelessness, hackwork, parasitism, unnecessaryness, coldness and lukewarmness towards the spiritual, carelessness about prayer, carelessness about salvation, insensibility.)

The sixth ordeal is theft(embezzlement, theft, division, adventures, scams, complicity, use of stolen goods, fraud, misappropriation in the form of seizure, sacrilege.)

The seventh ordeal is love of money and stinginess.(self-interest, search for profit, over-concern, acquisitiveness, greed, stinginess, hoarding, lent money at interest, speculation, bribes.)

Eighth ordeal - interest(extortion, robbery, robbery, deceit, trickery, failure to repay debts, scams, fraud.)

The ninth ordeal is not true.(deception, falsehood, bribery, unjust trial, dishonor, extravagance, suspicion, concealment, complicity.)

The tenth ordeal is envy.(in material goods, in spiritual virtues, partiality, desire for someone else’s.)

Eleventh ordeal - pride(conceit, self-will, self-aggrandizement, exaltation, vanity, arrogance, hypocrisy, self-adoration, disobedience, non-compliance, disobedience, contempt, shamelessness, dishonesty, blasphemy, ignorance, insolence, self-justification, stubbornness, unrepentance, arrogance.)

The twelfth ordeal is rage and anger.(grudge, gloating, revenge, vindictiveness, sabotage, bullying, tricks, slander.)

The thirteenth ordeal is vindictiveness.(intransigence, hot temper, hatred, rage, blows, kicks, insolence, embitterment, despair, quarrels, squabbles, hysterics, scandal, treachery, mercilessness, rudeness, resentment.)

The fourteenth ordeal is murder.(thought, word, deed), fights, use of all kinds of instruments or drugs for murder, abortion (or complicity).

Fifteenth ordeal - magic(fortune telling, divination, astrology, horoscopes, fashion seduction, healing (extrasensory perception) hiding behind the name of God, levitation, witchcraft, witchcraft, sorcery, shamanism, witchcraft.)

Sixteenth ordeal -FORMARRY:(carnal cohabitation outside of church marriage, voluptuous views, dishonest thoughts, dreams, fantasies, raptures, pleasures, permission to sin, desecration of chastity, nightly desecrations, pornography, watching depraved films and programs, masturbation.)

The seventeenth ordeal - adultery(adultery and also seduction, violence, fall, violation of the vow of celibacy.)

Eighteenth ordeal - fornication of Sodom(perversion of nature, self-gratification, self-torture, violence, kidnapping, incest, corruption of minors (direct and indirect).

The Nineteenth Ordeal – Heresy(unbelief, superstition, distortions and distortions of the truth, distortions of Orthodoxy, doubts, apostasy, violation of church decrees, participation in heretical gatherings: Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientology, the Mother of God Center, Ivanova, Roerich, as well as in other atheistic associations and structures.)

The twentieth ordeal - no mercy(unmercy, insensibility, ruthlessness, persecution of the weak, cruelty, petrification, callousness, did not care about children, the elderly, the sick, did not give alms, did not sacrifice themselves and their time for the sake of others, inhumanity, heartlessness.)

The ordeal takes place on the third day after death. After worshiping God, it is commanded to show the soul the various abodes of saints and the beauty of paradise. Walking and viewing the heavenly abodes lasts six days. The soul is surprised and glorifies the Creator of everything - God. Contemplating all this, she changes and forgets the sorrow she had while in the body. But if she is guilty of sins, then at the sight of the pleasures of the saints she begins to grieve and reproach herself for having spent her life in carelessness, disobedience and not serving God as she should.

After exploring paradise, shower on the ninth day(from his separation from the body) again ascends to the worship of God. And how well the Church does that it brings offerings and prayers on the ninth day for the deceased. Knowing the afterlife state of the deceased soul, corresponding to the ninth day on earth, on which the second worship of God takes place, the Church and relatives pray to the Almighty to number the departed soul among the nine faces of angels.

After the second worship, the Master commands to show the soul hell with all its torments. The guided soul sees the torment of sinners everywhere, hears crying, groaning, gnashing of teeth. For thirty days the soul walks through the hellish sections, trembling, so as not to be condemned there to imprisonment.

Finally, on the fortieth day after separation from the body, the soul ascends for the third time to worship God. And only now does the Righteous Judge determine for her a place to stay appropriate for her affairs in earthly life. This means that an honest trial of the soul takes place on the fortieth day after its departure from the body.

The Holy Church commemorates the dead on the fortieth day. The fortieth day, or sorochina, is the day of determining the fate of the soul in the afterlife. This is a private court of Christ, determining the fate of the soul only until the time of the terrible general judgment. This afterlife state of the soul, corresponding to moral life on earth, is not final and can change.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the fortieth day from His resurrection, exalted the human nature assumed by Him into His Person, into a state of glory - sitting on the throne of His Divinity (“at the right hand of the Father”); So, according to this prototype, those who died on the fortieth day after death enter with their souls a certain state corresponding to their moral dignity.

Just as the Lord, having completed the work of our salvation, crowned it with His life and death with His ascension on the fortieth day, so the soul of the deceased, completing its life journey, receives reward on the fortieth day after death - its afterlife lot.

What do hell and heaven look like?

The majority of people believe that hell, the underworld, hell and fiery Gehenna are one place. Actually this is not true.

Hell- the place where the unclean live, and the earth is the place of their work. They have an artificial sun that does not provide heat, but only light. The air temperature in hell is constant throughout the year - from 0 to +4 °C.

Each type of unclean lives separately from another type. Hell can be compared to a nine-story building. Only the number of floors in it starts from top to bottom. The lower the unclean ones live, the more noble they are.

The key to hell is about four meters long and is made of an alloy of very rare metals and human blood.

On the eighth floor of hell there is inferno. It is called ashes because human souls are baked there, but not burned. The baking area was about 1200 square kilometers. The boilers contain resin and maintain temperatures between 240 and 300 °C. Cauldrons come in different capacities: for several hundred human souls or for just a few souls.

On Sundays, as well as on the days of the twelve annual Orthodox church holidays, the boilers are not heated. In addition, boilers are not heated the week before Easter and on Easter. These days sinful souls rest. There are currently just over five billion human souls in hell.

Below hell - in the abyss - is fiery Gehenna.

The underworld is a place where only the devil lives.

Heaven consists of seven heavens.

To the first sky the majority of people fall.

On the second- much less. Moreover, from the first to the second sky you won’t even get to visit, but from the second you can.

In the third heaven many saints. In paradise there is happiness, brotherhood, but there is no equality: as you serve God, such grace will come to you.

In the fourth and fifth heavens there are cherubim, seraphim, angels, dominions.

On the sixth - the Mother of God, A The Lord Himself is in the seventh heaven.

The Ordeal of Blessed Theodora.

Blessed Theodora's story about the ordeal.

At Rev. Vasily was a novice of Theodore, who served him a lot; Having accepted the monastic rank, she departed to the Lord.

One of the saint’s disciples, Gregory, had a desire to find out where Theodora was after her death, whether she had received mercy and joy from the Lord for her service to the holy elder. Often thinking about this, Gregory asked the elder to answer him what was wrong with Theodora, for he firmly believed that the saint of God knew all this. Not wanting to upset his spiritual son, Rev. Vasily prayed that the Lord would reveal to him the fate of blessed Theodora.

And so Gregory saw her in a dream - in a bright monastery, full of heavenly glory and

unspeakable blessings, which was prepared by God for St. Vasily and in which Theodora was installed through his prayers. Seeing her, Gregory was delighted and asked her how her soul was separated from her body, what she saw at her death, how she passed

air ordeals. Theodora answered these questions like this:

“Child Gregory, you asked about a terrible thing, it’s terrible to remember it. I saw faces I had never seen and heard words I had never heard. What can I tell you? I had to see and hear terrible things because of my deeds, but with the help and prayers of our father, the Monk Vasily, everything was easy for me. How can I convey to you, child, that bodily torment, that fear and confusion that the dying have to experience! Just as fire burns those thrown into it and turns them into ashes, so the pain of death in the last hour destroys a person. The death of sinners like me is truly terrible!

So, when the hour came for the separation of my soul from my body, I saw around my bed many Ethiopians, black as soot or tar, with eyes burning like coals. They made noise and shouting: some roared like cattle and animals, others barked like dogs,
some howled like wolves, and others grunted like pigs.

All of them, looking at me, became furious, threatened, gnashed their teeth, as if wanting to eat me; they prepared charters in which all my bad deeds were recorded. Then my poor soul began to tremble; the torment of death seemed not to exist for me: the menacing vision of the terrible Ethiopians was for me another, more terrible death. I turned my eyes away so as not to see their terrible faces, but they were everywhere and their voices came from everywhere.

When I was completely exhausted, I saw two Angels of God approaching me in the form of beautiful young men; their faces were bright, their eyes looked with love, the hair on their heads was as light as snow and shone like gold; the clothes looked like the light of lightning, and on the chest they were girded crosswise with golden belts.

Approaching my bed, they stood next to me on the right side, quietly talking to each other. Seeing them, I was happy; the black Ethiopians trembled and moved away; one of the bright young men addressed them with the following words:
“O shameless, damned, gloomy and evil enemies of the human race! Why do you always rush to come to the bedside of the dying, making noise, frightening and confusing every soul that is separated from the body? But don’t be too happy, you won’t find anything here, for God is merciful to her and you have no part or share in this soul.”

Hearing this, the Ethiopians began to rush about, raising a strong cry and saying: “How come we have no part in this soul? “And these are whose sins,” they said, pointing to the scrolls where everything was written down
my bad deeds - didn’t she do this and that?” And having said this, they stood and waited for my death.

Finally, death itself came, roaring like a lion and very terrible in appearance; she looked like a person, but only had no body and was made up of only bare human bones. With her were various instruments for torture: swords, spears, arrows, scythes, saws, axes and other weapons unknown to me.

My poor soul trembled when I saw this. The Holy Angels said to death: why are you delaying, free this soul from the body, free it quietly and quickly, because there are not many sins behind it.

Obeying this order, death approached me, took a small insult and first of all cut off my legs, then my arms, then gradually with other instruments it cut off my other members, separating body from body, and my whole body became dead. Then, taking the adze, she cut off my head, and it became like a stranger to me, for I could not turn it. After this, Death made some kind of drink in a cup and, bringing it to my lips, forcibly gave me a drink. This drink was so bitter that my soul could not bear it - it shuddered and jumped out of my body, as if forcibly torn out of it. Then the bright Angels took her into their arms.

I turned back and saw my body lying soulless, insensible and motionless, just as if someone takes off his clothes and, throwing them away, looks at them - so I looked at my body, from which I had freed myself, and was very surprised at this.

The demons, who were in the form of Ethiopians, surrounded the holy Angels who were holding me and shouted, showing my sins: “This soul has many sins, let him give us an answer for them!”

But the holy Angels began to look for my good deeds and, by the grace of God, they found and collected everything that, with the help of the Lord, I had done good: whether I gave alms, or fed the hungry, or gave drink to the thirsty, or clothed the naked, or led a stranger into her home and calmed him down, or served the saints, or visited the sick and in prison and helped him, or when she went to church with zeal and prayed with tenderness and tears, or when she listened with attention to church readings and
singing, or brought incense and candles to the church, or made some other offering, or poured wooden oil into the lamps in front of the holy icons and kissed them with reverence, or when she fasted and did not eat food during all holy fasts on Wednesday and Friday , or how many times I bowed and prayed at night, or when I turned to God with all my soul and cried about my sins, or when, with complete heartfelt repentance, I confessed my sins to God before my spiritual father and tried to atone for them with good deeds, or when I did for my neighbor some kind of good, or when I was not angry with someone who was at enmity with me, or when I suffered some kind of insult and abuse and did not remember them and was not angry for them, or when I returned good for evil, or when I humbled myself or lamented over someone else’s misfortune, or she herself was sick and endured it without complaint, or she was sick to another sick person, and consoled someone who was crying, or gave someone a helping hand, or helped in a good deed, or kept someone from doing something bad, or when she did not pay attention to vain matters, or refrained from swearing in vain, or slander and idle talk, and all my other smallest deeds were collected by the holy Angels, preparing to be laid against my sins.

The Ethiopians, seeing this, gnashed their teeth, because they wanted to kidnap me from the Angels and take me to the bottom of hell. At this time, our reverend father Vasily unexpectedly appeared there and said to the holy Angels: “My Lord, this soul served me a lot, calming my old age, and I prayed to God, and He gave it to me.”

Having said this, he took out from his bosom a golden bag, all full, as I thought, of pure gold, and gave it to the holy Angels, saying: “When you go through airy ordeals and evil spirits begin to torment this soul, redeem it with this from its debts.” ; By the grace of God I am rich, because I have collected many treasures for myself through my labors, and I give this bag to the soul who served me.” Having said this, he disappeared.

The crafty demons, seeing this, were in bewilderment and, raising lamentable cries, also disappeared. Then the saint of God, Vasily, came again and brought many vessels with pure oil, expensive myrrh, and, opening each vessel one after another, he poured everything on me, and the fragrance spread from me.

Then I realized that I had changed and became especially bright. The saint again turned to the Angels with the following words: “My Lords, when you have completed everything that is necessary for this soul, take it to the house prepared for me by the Lord God and settle it there.”
Having said this, he became invisible, and the holy Angels took me, and we went through the air to the east, rising to heaven.

ORDERAL 1st

When we ascended from the earth to the heights of heaven, we were first greeted by the airy spirits of the first ordeal, at which the sins of idle talk are tested. This is where we stopped.

They brought us many scrolls, where all the words that I had spoken since my youth were written down, everything that was said by me thoughtlessly and, moreover, shamefully. All the blasphemous deeds of my youth were immediately written down, as well as cases of idle laughter, to which youth is so prone. I immediately saw the bad words that I had ever spoken, the shameless songs of the world, and the spirits reproached me, pointing out the place and time and persons with whom I engaged in idle conversations and angering God with my words, and did not at all consider it a sin , and therefore did not confess this to her spiritual father. Looking at these scrolls, I was silent, as if speechless, because I had nothing to answer them: everything that was written down by them was the truth. And I was surprised how they hadn’t forgotten anything, because so many years had passed and I myself had forgotten about it a long time ago. They tested me in detail and in the most skillful way, and little by little I remembered everything. But the holy Angels who led me put an end to my ordeal at the first ordeal: they covered my sins, pointing out to the evil one some of my former good deeds, and what was missing from them to cover my sins, they added from the virtues of my father the Monk Basil and redeemed me from the first ordeal, and we moved on.

ORDERAL 2nd

We have approached another ordeal, called the ordeal of lies. Here a person gives account for every false word, and mainly for perjury, for calling on the name of the Lord in vain, for false testimonies, for failure to fulfill the vows given to God, for insincere confession of sins, and for everything like that when a person resorts to lies.

The spirits in this ordeal are fierce and cruel and especially test those going through this ordeal. When they stopped us, they began to ask me with all the details, and I was caught in the fact that I had lied twice about the smallest things.
things, so I didn’t put it as a sin for myself, and also in the fact that once, out of shame, I didn’t tell the whole truth in confession to my spiritual father. Having caught me in a lie, the spirits came to great joy and already wanted to kidnap me from the hands of the Angels, but they, to cover the sins they found, pointed to my good deeds, and replenished what was missing with the good deeds of my father, the Monk Vasily, and thereby redeemed me from this ordeal, and we went higher without hindrance.

ORDERAL 3rd

The ordeal that we later came to is called the ordeal of condemnation and slander. Here, when they stopped us, I saw how gravely the one who condemns his own sins.

neighbor, and how much evil there is when one slanders another, dishonors him, scolds him, when he swears and laughs at the sins of others, not paying attention to his own. Terrible spirits test sinners in this way because they anticipate the dignity of Christ and become judges and destroyers of their neighbors, when they themselves are immeasurably more worthy of condemnation. In this ordeal, by the grace of God, I did not find myself sinful in many ways, because throughout my entire life I was careful not to judge anyone, not to slander anyone, I did not mock anyone, I did not scold anyone; sometimes, just listening to how others condemned their neighbors, slandered them or laughed at them, in my thoughts I partly agreed with them and, through carelessness, added a little of myself to their speeches, but, having come to my senses, I immediately restrained myself. But even this, the spirits who tested me, put me into sin, and only through the merits of St. Basil did the holy Angels free me from this ordeal, and we went higher.

ORDERAL 4th

Continuing our journey, we reached a new ordeal, which is called the ordeal of gluttony. Bad spirits ran out to meet us, rejoicing that a new victim was coming to them.

The appearance of these spirits was ugly: they portrayed different types of voluptuous gluttons and vile drunkards; They carried dishes and bowls with food and various drinks. The food and drink were also vile in appearance, resembling stinking pus and vomit. The spirits of this ordeal seemed satiated and drunk, they jumped with music in their hands and did everything that feasters usually do, and cursed at the souls of sinners they brought to the ordeal.

These spirits, like dogs, surrounded us, stopped and began to show all my sins of this kind: did I ever eat secretly, or through force and beyond the need, or in the morning, like a pig, without prayer and the sign of the cross, or did I eat during holy fasts? before the time appointed by the church charter, or due to intemperance she ate before lunch, or during lunch she was over-filled. They also calculated my drunkenness, showing

cups and vessels from which I drank, and they directly said: you drank so many cups at such and such a time, and at such and such a feast, with such and such people; and in another place I drank so much and reached the point of unconsciousness and vomiting, and so many times I feasted and danced to music, clapping my hands, sang songs and jumped, and when they brought you home, I was exhausted from immeasurable drunkenness; The wicked spirits also showed me those cups from which I sometimes drank in the morning and on fasting days for the sake of guests for the sake of guests, or when, out of weakness, I drank to the point of intoxication and did not consider it a sin and did not repent, but on the contrary, I also tempted others to do the same. They also pointed out to me when on Sundays it happened to me to drink before the Holy Liturgy, and they pointed out many similar things to me from my sins of gluttony and rejoiced, already considering me in their power, and intended to take me to the bottom of hell; Even when she saw herself exposed and had nothing to say against them, she trembled.

But the holy Angels, having borrowed his good deeds from the treasury of St. Basil, covered my sins and removed them from the power of those evil spirits.

Seeing this, they raised a cry: “Woe to us! Our efforts are lost! Our hope is gone! and they began to send packages through the air where my sins were written; I was glad, and then we went from there without any hindrance.

During the journey to the next ordeal, the holy Angels had a conversation with each other. They said: “This soul truly receives great help from the saint of God Vasily: if his prayers did not help her, she would have to experience great need, going through the ordeals of the air.”

This is what the Angels accompanying me said, and I took it upon myself to ask them: “My Lords, it seems to me that no one living on earth knows what happens here, and what awaits the sinful soul after death?”

The Holy Angels answered me: “Do the divine scriptures, always read in churches and preached by the servants of God, say little about this! Only those addicted to earthly vanity do not pay attention to this, finding a special delight in eating daily to satiety and getting drunk, thus making the belly their god, not thinking about the future life and forgetting the words of Scripture: woe to you, who are filled now, for you will be hungry and those who get drunk, because you thirst. They consider the Holy Scriptures to be fables and live in neglect of their souls, feasting with songs and music and every day, like the rich man of the Gospel, making merry with light. But those who are merciful and merciful, do good to the poor and needy - these receive forgiveness of their sins from God and for their alms without
ordeals undergo special torture, according to the word of Scripture: alms delivers from death and forgives all sin. Those who do alms and truth are filled with life, but those who do not try to cleanse their sins with alms cannot avoid these trials, and the dark-shaped princes of the ordeals that you saw kidnap them and, cruelly torturing them, take them to the bottom of hell and keep them there in bonds until the terrible end. judgment of Christ. And it would have been impossible for you to avoid this if not for the treasury of good deeds of St. Basil, from which your sins were covered.”

ORDERAL 5th

Conversing in this way, we reached the ordeal called the ordeal of laziness, in which a person gives an answer for all the days and hours spent in idleness. Parasites also linger here, feeding on the labors of others and not wanting to do anything themselves, or taking payment for work not completed.

There they also ask for an account from those who do not care about the glory of the name of God and are too lazy to go to the Divine Liturgy and other services of God on holidays and Sundays. Here one experiences negligence and despondency, laziness and carelessness about one’s
the soul of both worldly and spiritual people, and many from here are led into the abyss. They tested me a lot here, and if it weren’t for the virtues of St. Basil, who made up for the lack of my good deeds, then I would not have been freed from the debt to the evil spirits of this ordeal for my sins; but they covered everything, and I was taken out of there.

ORDERAL 6th

The next ordeal is theft. We were detained there for a short time, and few good deeds were required to cover my sins, because I did not commit theft, except for one, very small one, in childhood due to foolishness.

ORDERAL 7th

After the ordeal of theft, we came to the ordeal of love of money and stinginess. But we also passed this ordeal safely, because, by the grace of God, I did not care
During my earthly life, about acquiring property, I was not a lover of money, but was content with what the Lord sent me, I was not stingy, and what I had, I diligently gave to those in need.

ORDERAL 8th

Ascending higher, we have reached the ordeal called the ordeal of extortion, where those who give away their money at interest and thereby receive unrighteous gains are tested.
Here those who appropriate for themselves what belongs to others give an account. The crafty spirits of this ordeal thoroughly searched me, and not finding any sin behind me, they gnashed their teeth; We, having thanked God, went higher.

ORDERAL 9th

We have reached the ordeal called the ordeal of untruth, where all unrighteous judges are tortured, who conduct their trials for money, acquit the guilty, condemn the innocent; Here those who do not pay due wages to mercenaries or use the wrong measure when trading, etc., are tortured. But we, by the grace of God, passed this ordeal without any hindrance, covering my sins of this kind with only a few good deeds.

ORDERAL 10th

We also successfully passed the next ordeal, called the ordeal of envy. I didn’t have any sins of this kind at all, because I never envied. And although
Other sins were also experienced here: dislike, brotherly hatred, enmity, hatred, but, by the mercy of God, I turned out to be innocent of all these sins and saw how the demons furiously gnashed their teeth, but I was not afraid of them, and, rejoicing, we went higher.

ORDERAL 11th

In a similar way, we went through the ordeal of pride, where arrogant and proud spirits test those who are vain, think a lot about themselves and boast; The souls of those who are disrespectful to father and mother, as well as to the authorities appointed by God, are especially carefully tested here: cases of disobedience to them, and other acts of pride, and vain words are considered. I needed very, very few good deeds to cover my sins during this ordeal, and I received freedom.

ORDERAL 12th

The new ordeal that we later achieved was an ordeal of anger and rage; but even here, despite the fact that the spirits torturing here are fierce, they received little from us, and we continued our path, thanking God, who covered my sins with the prayers of my father, the Monk Vasily.

ORDERAL 13th

After the ordeal of anger and rage, we were presented with an ordeal in which those who harbor evil in their hearts against their neighbors and repay evil for evil are mercilessly tortured. From here the spirits of evil with particular fury reduce the souls of sinners to Tartarus. But God’s mercy did not abandon me here either: I never had anger against anyone, I did not remember what was done to me
evil, but, on the contrary, I forgave my enemies and, as far as I was able, revealed my love for them, thus defeating evil with good. Therefore, I did not turn out to be sinful in anything during this ordeal; the demons wept that I was freely leaving their cruel hands; We continued on our way in joy.

On the way, I asked the holy Angels who led me: “My Lords, I ask you, tell me how these terrible air powers know all the evil deeds of all the people who live in the world, just like mine, and not only reveal those created, but also which only the one who did them knows?”

The Holy Angels answered me: “Every Christian, from his most holy baptism, receives from God a Guardian Angel, who invisibly protects a person and throughout his life, even until the hour of death, instructs in all good and all these good deeds that a person does during his life.” earthly life, writes down so that he can receive mercy from the Lord for them and eternal reward in the Kingdom of Heaven. So the prince of darkness, who wants to destroy the human race, assigns to each person one of the evil spirits, who always follows the person and observes all his evil deeds from his youth, encouraging them with his intrigues, and collects everything that the person has done that is bad. Then he takes all these sins to the ordeal, writing each one in the appropriate place.

Hence, the princes of the air know all the sins of all the people who live in the world. When the soul is separated from the body and strives to ascend to heaven to its Creator, then evil spirits hinder it, showing lists of its sins; and if the soul has more good deeds than sins, then they cannot restrain it; when will her sins be revealed?
more than good deeds, then they hold it for a while, imprison it in the prison of God’s ignorance and torture it, as far as the power of God allows them, until the soul, through the prayers of the Church and relatives, receives freedom. If any soul turns out to be so sinful and unworthy before God that all hope for its salvation is lost and it is threatened with eternal death, then it is brought down into the abyss, where it remains until the second coming of the Lord, when eternal torment begins for it in fiery hell.

Know also that only the souls of those who are enlightened by holy baptism are tested in this way. Those who do not believe in Christ, idolaters and, in general, everyone who does not know the true God do not ascend this way, because during earthly life they are alive only in body, and in soul are already buried in hell. And when they die, the demons, without any testing, take their souls and bring them down to Gehenna and the abyss.”

ORDERAL 14th

While I was talking in this way with the holy Angels, we entered the ordeal called the ordeal of murder.
Here, not only robbery is tormented, but they demand an account for any punishment inflicted on someone, for any blow on the shoulders or head, on the cheek or neck, or when someone angrily pushes his neighbor away from him. Evil spirits experience all this here in detail and weigh it; We went through this ordeal without hindrance, leaving a small part of good deeds to cover my sins.

ORDERAL 15th

We also passed through the next ordeal without any hindrance, where we are tortured by spirits for sorcery, witchcraft, charm, whispering, and invoking demons. The spirits of this ordeal are similar in appearance to four-legged reptiles, scorpions, snakes and toads; in a word, it’s scary and disgusting to look at them. By the grace of God, the spirits of this ordeal did not find a single similar sin in me, and we moved on; the spirits shouted after me with rage: “Let's see how you leave the prodigal places when you get there!”

When we began to ascend higher, I asked the Angels who were leading me:
“My Lord, do all Christians go through these ordeals and is there no way for anyone to go through here without torture and fear?”

The Holy Angels answered me: “For the souls of believers ascending to heaven, there is no other way - everyone goes here, but not everyone is tested in ordeals like you, but only sinners like you, that is, those who, out of shame, did not sincerely open to the spiritual father of all your sins in confession. If someone sincerely repents of all sins, then the sins, by the mercy of God, are invisibly blotted out, and when such a soul passes here, the aerial torturers open their books and find nothing written behind it; then they can no longer frighten her, cause her anything unpleasant, and the soul ascends in joy to the throne of grace. And you, if you had repented of everything before your spiritual father and received permission from him, you would have avoided the horrors of going through ordeals; But what also helps you is that you have long stopped committing mortal sins and have been leading a virtuous life for many years, and mainly the prayers of St. Basil, whom you diligently served on earth, help you.”

ORDERAL 16th

During this conversation, we reached the ordeal called prodigal, where a person is tortured for all kinds of fornication and all kinds of impure passionate thoughts, for consenting to sin, for bad touches and passionate touches. The prince of this ordeal sat on the throne dressed in stinking, nasty clothes, sprinkled with bloody foam and replacing him with a royal scarlet robe; many demons stood before him. When they saw me, they were surprised that I had reached their ordeal, and they brought out scrolls in which my fornication was written down, began to count them, indicating the persons with whom I sinned in my youth, and the time when I sinned, i.e. day or night, and the place where she committed the sin. I couldn’t answer them and stood there, trembling with shame and fear.

The Holy Angels, who were leading me, began to say to the demons: “She has long since left the life of prodigal life and has spent all this time in purity and abstinence.”

The demons answered: “And we know that she stopped leading a prodigal life, but she did not reveal it to her spiritual father and did not bear penance from him to atone for her previous sins - therefore she is ours, and you either leave or redeem her with good deeds.” .

The Holy Angels pointed out many of my good deeds, and even more with the good deeds of St. Basil they covered my sins, and I barely got rid of severe misfortune. We moved on.

ORDERAL 17th

The next ordeal was the ordeal of adultery, where the sins of those living in marriage are tortured: if someone did not maintain marital fidelity, or desecrated his bed, he must give an account here. Those who sin in abduction for fornication and violence are also tortured here.

Here they test persons who dedicated themselves to God and took a vow of chastity, but did not keep their vow and fell into fornication; the torture of these is especially terrible. At this ordeal I turned out to be a lot of sinners, I was caught in adultery, and evil spirits already wanted to kidnap me from the hands of the Angels and take me to the bottom of hell. But there are many holy angels
They argued with them and barely redeemed me, leaving all my good deeds here to the last and adding a lot from the treasury of St. Basil. And taking me from them, they went further.

TOLLSHIP 18th

After this, we reached the ordeal of Sodom, where sins that disagree with either male or female nature are tortured, as well as copulation with demons and dumb animals, and incest, and other secret sins of this kind, which are shameful to even remember.

The prince of this ordeal, the worst of all the demons that surrounded him, was completely covered with stinking pus; its ugliness is difficult to describe. They were all burning with rage; They hastily ran out to meet us and surrounded us. But, by the grace of God, they did not find me guilty of anything sinful and therefore ran back in shame; We, rejoicing, emerged from this ordeal.

After this, the holy Angels said to me: “You saw, Theodora, terrible and nasty prodigal ordeals. Know that a rare soul passes through them without being detained, because the whole world lies in the evil of temptations and defilements and all people are voluptuous and prone to fornication. A person is already inclined towards these things from early youth, and is unlikely to save himself from uncleanness; a few who mortify their carnal lusts and therefore freely pass through these ordeals; the majority die here; fierce torturers kidnap the souls of fornicators and, terribly torturing them, take them to hell. You, Theodora, thank God that through the prayers of Saint Basil you passed through these prodigal ordeals, and you will no longer encounter delays.”

TOLLSHIP 19th

After the ordeals of the prodigal, we came to the ordeal of heresies, where people are tortured for incorrect opinions about objects of faith, as well as for apostasy from the Orthodox faith, distrust of the true teaching, doubts in the faith, blasphemy, and the like. I went through this ordeal without stopping, and we were already not far from the gates of heaven.

ORDERAL 20th

But before we reached the entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven, we were met by the evil spirits of the last ordeal, which is called the ordeal of unmercifulness and hard-heartedness. The torturers of this ordeal are especially cruel, especially their prince. In appearance, he is dry, sad, and in his rage he suffocates with merciless fire. In this ordeal, the souls of the merciless are tested without any mercy. And if someone turns out to have accomplished many feats, strictly observed fasts, was vigilant in prayer, preserved purity of heart and mortified the flesh with abstinence, but was unmerciful, unmerciful, deaf to the pleas of his neighbor - he is brought down from this ordeal, imprisoned in the hellish abyss and does not receive forgiveness forever. But we, through the prayers of St. Vasily, who helped me everywhere with his good deeds, passed through this ordeal without hindrance.

This ended a series of aerial ordeals, and we joyfully approached the gates of heaven. These gates were as bright as crystal, and a radiance that could not be described was visible all around; Sun-shaped youths shone in them, and when they saw me,
led by Angels to the heavenly gates, they were filled with joy because, covered by the mercy of God, I went through all the airy ordeals. They kindly greeted us and led us inside.

What I saw and heard there, Grigory - it’s impossible to describe! I was brought to the Throne of the unapproachable glory of God, which was surrounded by Cherubim, Seraphim and many heavenly armies, praising God with ineffable songs; I

fell on her face and bowed to the invisible and inaccessible to the human mind Deity. Then the heavenly powers sang a sweet song, praising the mercy of God, which cannot be exhausted by the sins of people, and a voice was heard commanding the Angels who were leading me, so that they would take me to see the monasteries of the saints, as well as all the torments of sinners, and then calm me down in the monastery prepared for blessed Basil . At this command, I was taken everywhere, and I saw villages and abodes filled with glory and grace, prepared for those who love God. Those who led me showed me separately the monasteries of the Apostles, and the monasteries of the Prophets, and the monasteries of the Martyrs, and the monasteries of the Holy Hierarchs, and special monasteries for each rank of saints. Each monastery was distinguished by its extraordinary beauty, and in length and width I could compare each one with Constantinople, if only they were not even better and did not have many bright, not made by hand rooms. Everyone who was there, seeing me, rejoiced at my salvation, met and kissed me, glorifying God, who delivered me from the evil one.

When we walked around these monasteries, I was brought down to the underworld, and there I saw the unbearable terrible torment that was prepared in hell for sinners. Showing them, the Angels who led me said to me: “You see, Theodora, from what torment, through prayers
Saint Basil, the Lord has delivered you.” I heard screams and crying and bitter sobs there; some groaned, others exclaimed angrily: alas for us! There were those who cursed their birthday, but there was no one who took pity on them.

Having finished examining the places of torment, the Angels took me out of there and brought me to the monastery of St. Basil, telling me: “Now St. Basil is commemorating you.” Then I realized that I had come to this place of peace forty days after my separation from the body.”

Blessed Theodora recounted all this to Gregory in a dream vision and showed him the beauty of that monastery and the spiritual riches that were gained through the arduous exploits of St. Basil; She also showed Gregory Theodora both pleasure and glory, and various golden-leafed and fruit-rich gardens, and in general all the spiritual joy of the righteous.

ordeals

Ordeals are obstacles through which every soul must go through upon separation from the body on the way to the throne of God for private judgment; this is a test (conviction of sins) of the soul carried out in the air by evil spirits. The ordeal takes place on the third day after death.

Two angels lead the soul along this path. Each of the ordeals is controlled by demons - unclean spirits who try to take the soul going through the ordeal to hell. Demons provide a list of sins related to a given ordeal (a list of lies at the ordeal of lies, etc.), and angels provide good deeds committed by the soul during life.

There are 20 ordeals in total:

1. idle talk and foul language

2. lies
3. condemnation and slander
4. binge eating and drunkenness
5. laziness
6. theft
7. love of money and stinginess
8. covetousness
9. untruths and vanity
10. envy
11. pride
12. anger
13. rancor
14. robbery
15. sorcery, charm, poisoning with herbs, summoning demons
16. fornication
17. adultery
18. sins of sodom
19. idolatry and all kinds of heresies
20. unmerciful and hard-hearted

1. Ordeal2. Ordeals only reveal the state of a person’s soul that has already developed during earthly life3. The doctrine of ordeals is the teaching of the Church

1. Trials

St. Theophan the Recluse explains the spiritual meaning of ordeals: “What are ordeals? - This is an image of a private court after death, at which the entire life of the dying person is reviewed with all sins and good deeds. Sins are recognized as atoned for by opposite good deeds or corresponding repentance.

Find “Cheti-Minei month March”. There, on the 26th, the passage of the ordeals of St. Elder Theodora is described. - All unjustified sinners who die in life undergo ordeal. Only perfect Christians do not linger at ordeals, but ascend straight to heaven like a bright streak.”

Saint John (Maksimovich): “The soul...continues to live, without ceasing its existence for a single moment. Through many manifestations of the dead we have been given partial knowledge of what happens to the soul when it leaves the body. When vision with the physical eyes ceases, spiritual vision begins.

...on leaving the body the soul finds itself among other spirits, good and evil. Usually she is drawn to those who are closer to her in spirit, and if, while in the body, she was influenced by some of them, then she will remain dependent on them after leaving the body, no matter how disgusting they turned out to be upon meeting.

During the first two days the soul enjoys relative freedom and can visit those places on earth that are dear to it, but on the third day it moves to other spheres. At this time (on the third day) the soul passes through legions of evil spirits who block its path and accuse it of various sins into which they themselves have drawn it.

According to various revelations, there are twenty such obstacles, the so-called “ordeals,” at each of which one or another sin is tortured; Having gone through one ordeal, the soul comes to the next. And only after successfully passing through all of them can the soul continue its journey without being immediately thrown into Gehenna.

How terrible these demons and ordeals are can be seen from the fact that the Mother of God Herself, when Archangel Gabriel informed Her of the approach of death, prayed to His Son to deliver Her soul from these demons, and in response to Her prayers the Lord Jesus Christ Himself appeared from Heaven accept the soul of His Most Pure Mother and take Her to Heaven. (This is visibly depicted on the traditional Orthodox icon of the Assumption.) The third day is truly terrible for the soul of the deceased, and for this reason it especially needs prayers.”

Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) writes:

“After the soul separates from the body, independent life begins for it in the invisible world. The spiritual experience accumulated by the Church makes it possible to construct a clear and harmonious teaching about the afterlife of man.

A disciple of St. Macarius of Alexandria (+ 395) says: “When we walked through the desert, I saw two angels who accompanied St. Macarius, one on the right side, the other on the left.” One of them talked about what the soul does in the first 40 days after death: “when on the third day there is an offering in the Church, the soul of the deceased receives from the angel guarding it relief from the grief that it feels from separation from the body; receives because praise and offerings in the Church of God have been made for her, which is why good hope is born in her. For for two days the soul, together with the angels who are with it, is allowed to walk on the earth wherever it wants. Therefore, the soul that loves the body sometimes wanders around the house in which it was separated from the body, sometimes around the coffin in which the body is laid... And the virtuous soul goes to those places in which it used to do the truth. On the third day, He who rose from the dead on the third day - the God of all - commands, in imitation of His Resurrection, every Christian soul to ascend to heaven to worship the God of all. So, the good Church is in the habit of making an offering and prayer for the soul on the third day. ... The great ascetic of our time, St. John (Maksimovich) writes: “It should be borne in mind that the description of the first two days after death gives a general rule, which in no case covers all situations... the saints, who were not at all attached to worldly things, lived in constant anticipation of the transition to another world , are not drawn even to the places where they did good deeds, but immediately begin their ascent to heaven.”

The Orthodox Church attaches great importance to the doctrine of aerial ordeals, which begin on the third day after the separation of the soul from the body. She passes through the airspace of the “outpost”, where evil spirits accuse her of her sins and strive to keep her as one akin to them. The holy fathers write about this (Ephraim the Syrian, Athanasius the Great, Macarius the Great, John Chrysostom, etc.). The soul of a man who lived according to the commandments of God and the statutes of St. The church passes through these “outposts” painlessly and after the fortieth day receives a temporary resting place. It is necessary for loved ones to pray in Church and at home for the departed, remembering that until the Last Judgment much depends on these prayers. “Truly, truly, I say to you, the time is coming, and has already come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and having heard, they will live” (John 5:25).”

Monk Mitrofan writes in his book “Afterlife”:

“The immeasurable space between heaven and earth, or between the triumphant and militant Churches, this space is in ordinary spoken human language, and in St. In the Scriptures, and in the writings of the Holy Fathers, it is called air. So, here air is not called the subtle ethereal substance surrounding the earth, but space itself.

This space is filled with rejected, fallen angels, whose entire activity is to deviate a person from salvation, making him an instrument of untruth. They cunningly and hostilely act on our internal and external activities in order to make us accomplices of their destruction: “Seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8), - Apostle Peter testifies about the devil. That the air space is the dwelling place of evil spirits is evidenced by the chosen vessels of the Holy Spirit, and we believe this truth.

From the very moment that followed the fall of our first parents and the expulsion of sweets from paradise, the Cherub was placed at the tree of life (Gen. 3:24), but another, fallen angel, in turn, stood on the way to paradise in order to prevent man from entering . The gates of heaven were closed for man, and the prince of the world from that time on did not allow a single human soul separated from the body to enter heaven.

Both the righteous, except Elijah and Enoch, and sinners descended to hell.

The first to harmlessly pass this impassable path to paradise was the Conqueror of Death, the Destroyer of Hell; and the doors of heaven opened from that time. The prudent thief followed the Lord harmlessly, and all the Old Testament righteous people, the saints brought out of hell by the Lord, walk this path harmlessly, or, if they sometimes suffer demonic stops, then their virtues outweigh their falls.

If we, being already enlightened by the light of Christ and having free will to do right or wrong, constantly become their captives, doers of unrighteousness, executors of their vile will, then much less will they leave the soul when it is separated from the body and must go to God through air space.

Of course, they will present to the soul all the rights to own it, as a faithful executor of their suggestions, thoughts, desires and feelings.

Demons present her sinful activity in its entirety and the soul realizes the justice of this testimony.

If the soul has not recognized itself, has not fully recognized itself here on earth, then, as a spiritual and moral being, it must, of necessity, recognize itself beyond the grave; to realize what she had developed in herself, what she had adapted to, what sphere she was accustomed to, what constituted food and pleasure for her. To recognize oneself and thus pronounce judgment on oneself, before God’s judgment - this is what heavenly justice wants. Behind the coffin, in order to bring the soul to the consciousness of its sinfulness, there are fallen spirits who, being the teachers of all evil on earth, will now present the soul with its sinful activity, and will recall all the circumstances under which evil was committed. The soul realizes its sins. By this she already warns God’s judgment over her; so that the judgment of God, as it were, already determines what the soul itself has pronounced over itself.

Good angels at ordeals, for their part, represent the good deeds of the soul.”

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes that ordeals are the execution of God’s justice over the soul, carried out through the mediation of angels, both holy and evil, so that the soul recognizes itself:

“All who have clearly rejected the Redeemer are henceforth the property of Satan: their souls, upon separation from their bodies, descend straight to hell. But even Christians who deviate towards sin are not worthy of immediate relocation from earthly life to blissful eternity. Justice itself demands that these deviations to sin, these betrayals of the Redeemer be weighed and evaluated. Trial and analysis are necessary to determine the degree of deviation towards sin of the Christian soul, in order to determine what prevails in it - eternal life or eternal death. And every Christian soul, upon its departure from the body, awaits the impartial Judgment of God, as the holy Apostle Paul said: “it lies for man alone to die, and then comes the judgment” (Heb. 9:27).

The justice of God carries out judgment on Christian souls who have departed from their bodies, through angels, both holy and evil. The former, during a person’s earthly life, notice all his good deeds, and the latter notice all his crimes. When the soul of a Christian begins to ascend to heaven, guided by the holy Angels, dark spirits expose it with its sins unerased by repentance, as victims to Satan, as guarantees of communication and the same eternal fate with him.

To torture souls passing through the airspace, the dark authorities have installed separate courts and guards in remarkable order. Along the layers of heaven, from the earth to the sky itself, there are guard regiments of fallen spirits. Each department is in charge of a special type of sin and torments the soul in it when the soul reaches this department. The aerial demonic guards and judgment seats are called “ordeals” in the patristic writings, and the spirits serving in them are called “publicans.”

In the time of Christ and in the first centuries of the Christian Church, the collector of state duties was called a publican. Since this duty, according to the simplicity of ancient customs, was entrusted to a person without positive responsibility and accountability, the tax collectors allowed themselves all the means of violence, various kinds of tricks, fault-finding, countless abuses and inhuman robbery. They usually stood at city gates, in markets and other public places, so that no one could escape their watchful observation. The behavior of the tax collectors made them a terror to the people. According to his concept, the name of the publican expressed a person without feelings, without rules, capable of any crime, of any humiliating act, breathing, living by them - a rejected person. In this sense, the Lord compared the stubborn and desperate disobedient of the Church with a pagan and a tax collector (Matthew 18:17). For the Old Testament worshipers of the true God, nothing was more disgusting than a servant of idols: the publican was just as hateful to them. The name publicans spread from people to the demons who guard the sunrise from earth to heaven, due to the similarity of the office and its performance. As sons and confidants of lies, demons convict human souls not only of the sins they have committed, but also of those they have never been subjected to. They resort to fabrications and deceptions, combining slander with shamelessness and arrogance, in order to snatch the soul from the hands of angels and multiply with it countless prisoners of hell.”

On the way to heaven, the soul encounters the first ordeal, at which evil spirits, stopping the soul, accompanied by good angels, present it with its sins in words (much verbosity, idle talk, idle talk, foul language, ridicule, blasphemy, singing songs and passionate hymns, disorderly exclamations, laughter, laughter, etc.).

The second ordeal is lies (any lie, perjury, excessive invocation of the name of God, failure to fulfill vows given to God, concealing sins before the confessor in confession).

The third ordeal is slander (slander of one's neighbor, condemnation, destruction, dishonoring him, cursing, ridicule while forgetting one's own sins and shortcomings, while not paying attention to them).

The fourth ordeal is gluttony (overeating, drunkenness, eating without prayer, breaking fasts, lust, satiety, feasting, in a word - all types of pleasing the belly). The fifth ordeal is laziness (laziness and negligence in serving God, abandonment of prayer, parasitism, mercenaries who perform their duties with negligence).

The sixth ordeal is theft (all kinds of theft - gross and specious, open and secret).

The seventh ordeal is love of money and stinginess. Eighth - usurers (usurers, extortionists and appropriators of others' property).

The ninth ordeal is untruths (unrighteous: judgment, measure, weight and all other untruths).

The tenth ordeal is envy. The eleventh ordeal is pride (pride, vanity, conceit, self-aggrandizement, failure to give due honor to parents, spiritual and civil authorities, disobedience to them and disobedience to them).

Twelfth - rage and anger.

The thirteenth is vindictiveness. The fourteenth is murder. The fifteenth is sorcery (witchcraft, seduction, poisoning, slander, whispers, magical invocation of demons).

The sixteenth ordeal is fornication (everything that relates to this defilement: thoughts, desires and deeds themselves; fornication of persons not bound by the sacrament of marriage, pleasure in sin, voluptuous views, bad touch and touch).

Seventeenth - adultery (failure to maintain marital fidelity, prodigal falls of persons who have dedicated themselves to God).

The eighteenth ordeal is Sodom (unnatural prodigal sins and incest).

The nineteenth ordeal is of heresies (false wisdom about faith, doubt in faith, apostasy from the Orthodox faith, blasphemy).

And finally, the last, twentieth ordeal - unmercifulness (unmercy and cruelty).

Moreover, if a Christian confessed his sin in confession and repented of it, then he will not be remembered at the ordeal. Through repentance, sins committed are destroyed and are no longer mentioned anywhere, neither at the ordeal, nor at the trial. In the life of St. Basil the New, we read the question of Theodora, who was going through ordeals, and the answer to it:

“After this, I asked the Angels who accompanied me: “For every sin that a person commits in life, he is tortured in these ordeals, after death, or, perhaps, is it possible to atone for his sin in life in order to be cleansed of it and there is no more suffering for him here. I’m just in awe of how detailed everything goes.” The angels answered me that not everyone is tested like this in ordeals, but only those like me, who did not confess sincerely before death. If I had confessed to my spiritual father without any shame or fear everything sinful and if I had received forgiveness from my spiritual father, then I would have gone through all these ordeals without hindrance and I would not have had to be tortured for a single sin. But since I did not want to sincerely confess my sins to my spiritual father, here they torture me for this.

...Those who diligently strive for repentance always receive forgiveness from God, and through this a free transition from this life to the blissful life after death. The evil spirits who are in ordeals along with their scriptures, having opened them, do not find anything written, for the Holy Spirit makes everything written invisible. And they see this, and know that everything written down by them has been blotted out thanks to confession, and then they grieve greatly. If the person is still alive, then they try to write some other sins in this place again. Great, truly, is the salvation of a person in confession!.. It saves him from many troubles and misfortunes, makes it possible to go through all the ordeals without hindrance and get closer to God. Others do not confess in the hope that there will still be time for salvation and forgiveness of sins; others are simply ashamed to tell their confessor their sins in confession - these are the people who will be tested strictly in the ordeals.”

Blessed Diadochos writes about the need for special care in relation to our involuntary, sometimes unknown to us sins:

“If we do not confess enough of them, then during our exodus we will find an indefinite fear in ourselves.” “And we, who love the Lord, should wish and pray that at that time we may be free from any fear: for whoever is then in fear will not pass freely past the princes of hell, because they consider the fearfulness of the soul to be a sign of its complicity in their evil, as it is in them themselves.”

Knowing the afterlife state of the soul, that is, the passage of ordeals and the appearance to God for worship, corresponding to the third day, the Church and relatives, wanting to prove that they remember and love the deceased, pray to the Lord for the harmless passage of the soul through air ordeals and for the forgiveness of its sins. The liberation of the soul from sins constitutes its resurrection for a blessed, eternal life. So, following the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead on the third day, a requiem service is served for the deceased, so that he too would be resurrected on the third day for an endless, glorious life with Christ.

2. Ordeals only reveal the state of a person’s soul that has already developed during earthly life

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov):... Just as the resurrection of the Christian soul from sinful death takes place during its earthly wanderings, in exactly the same way it is mysteriously accomplished here on earth, its torture by the aerial authorities, its captivity by them or liberation from them; when moving through the air, this freedom and captivity are only revealed.”

Elder Paisiy Svyatogorets: “Some are worried about when the Second Coming will take place. However, for a dying person, the Second Coming, so to speak, is already coming. Because a person is judged according to the state in which death overtakes him.”

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov): The great saints of God, who have completely passed from the nature of the old Adam into the nature of the New Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, in this graceful and holy newness, with their honest souls, go through the airy demonic ordeals with extraordinary speed and great glory. They are carried to Heaven by the Holy Spirit...

Saint Theophan the Recluse, in his interpretation of the 80th verse of the 118th Psalm (“Be my heart blameless in your justifications, so that I will not be ashamed”) explains the last words as follows:

“The second moment of non-shame is the time of death and going through ordeals. No matter how wild the thought of ordeals may seem to smart people, they cannot be avoided. What are these Mytniks looking for in those passing by? Whether they have their goods. What is their product? Passion. Therefore, whoever has an immaculate heart and is free from passions, they cannot find anything to which they could become attached; on the contrary, the quality opposite to them will strike them themselves like lightning arrows. To this, one of the little learned people expressed another thought: ordeals seem to be something terrible; but it is very possible that demons, instead of something terrible, represent something lovely. Seductively and charmingly, according to all types of passions, they present to the passing soul one after another. When, during earthly life, passions are expelled from the heart and virtues opposite to them are implanted, then whatever charming thing you imagine, the soul, which has no sympathy for it, passes it by, turning away from it with disgust. And when the heart is not cleansed, then for which passion it most sympathizes, that is why the soul rushes there. The demons take her as if they were friends, and then they know where to put her. This means that it is very doubtful that the soul, while it still has sympathies for the objects of any passions, will not be ashamed at the ordeal. The shame here is that the soul itself is thrown into hell.”

3. The doctrine of ordeals is the teaching of the Church

His Eminence Macarius writes: “The continuous, ever-present and widespread use in the Church of the doctrine of ordeals, especially among the teachers of the fourth century, indisputably testifies that it was handed down to them from the teachers of previous centuries and is based on the apostolic tradition” (Right. Dogma. Theology. Volume 5- y).

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov): The doctrine of ordeals is the teaching of the Church. “There is no doubt” that the holy Apostle Paul speaks of them when he proclaims that Christians are destined to wage war against the spirits of wickedness in high places. We find this teaching in the most ancient church Tradition and in church prayers. The Most Holy Virgin, the Mother of God, notified by the Archangel Gabriel of her approaching repose, brought tearful prayers to the Lord for the deliverance of Her soul from the evil spirits in heaven. When the very hour of Her honorable dormition had come, when the Son Himself and Her God descended to her with tens of angels and righteous spirits, She, before betraying Her most holy soul into the all-holy hands of Christ, uttered the following words in prayer to Him: “Receive now in My spirit in the world and protect Me from the dark region, so that no aspiration of Satan meets Me.”

Saint Athanasius the Great, Patriarch of Alexandria, in the biography of Saint Anthony the Great, narrates the following:

“One day he (Antony), at the approach of the ninth hour, having begun to pray before eating food, was suddenly caught up in the Spirit and lifted up by the Angels to a height. The air demons opposed his procession; The angels, arguing with them, demanded an explanation of the reasons for their opposition, because Anthony had no sins. The demons tried to expose the sins he had committed since birth; but the Angels stopped the mouths of the slanderers, telling them that they should not count his sins from birth, already blotted out by the grace of Christ, but let them present, if they have, the sins he committed after the time he dedicated himself to God by entering monasticism. When accusing the demons, they uttered many blatant lies; but since their slander was devoid of evidence, a free path opened for Anthony. He immediately came to his senses and saw that he was standing in the very place where he stood for prayer. Forgetting about food, he spent the whole night in tears and lamentations, thinking about the multitude of human enemies, about the fight against such an army, about the difficulty of the path to heaven through the air and about the words of the Apostle, who said: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but to the beginning of the power of this air (Eph. 6:12), which, knowing that the powers of the air are only seeking this, are concerned about this with all their efforts, are straining and striving for this in order to deprive us of free passage to heaven, admonishes: “ take up all the weapons of God, that you may be able to resist in the day of cruelty" (Eph. 6:13), "so that the adversary may be put to shame, having nothing to say reproachfully against us" (Titus 2:8).

St. John Chrysostom, having said that a dying person, even if he was a great ruler on earth, is overcome with confusion, fear, and bewilderment when he “sees the terrible angelic powers and the opposing forces that have come” to separate the soul from the body, adds:

“Then we need many prayers, many helpers, many good deeds, great intercession from the Angels as we move through the air. If, when traveling to a foreign country or a foreign city, we need a guide, then how much more do we need guides and assistants to guide us past the invisible elders and authorities of the world rulers of this air, called persecutors, publicans, and tax collectors!

Venerable Macarius the Great says:

“Hearing that under the heavens there are rivers of serpents, mouths of lions, dark powers, a burning fire that throws all members into confusion, don’t you know that if you do not receive the pledge of the Holy Spirit when you leave the body, they will seize your soul and prevent you from entering heaven".

“When the human soul leaves the body, a great mystery takes place. For if she is guilty of sins, then hordes of demons come; evil angels and dark forces take this soul and drag it to their side. No one should be surprised by this. For if a person, while still alive, while still in this world, submitted, surrendered and enslaved him, then will they not possess him any more and enslave him when he leaves this world? As for the other, better part, it happens to them differently. That is, with the holy servants of God even in this life there are angels, holy spirits surround them and protect them. And when their souls are separated from their bodies, the faces of angels accept them into their society, into a bright life, and thus lead them to the Lord.”

Venerable Ephraim the Syrian: “When the sovereign forces approach, when terrible armies come, when the divine takers command the soul to move from the body, when, dragging us by force, they take us to the inevitable judgment seat, then, seeing them, the poor man... all comes to hesitation, as if from earthquakes, everything trembles... The divine takers, having taken the soul, ascend through the air, where the rulers, powers and rulers of the world of opposing forces stand. These are our evil accusers, terrible tax collectors, inventory clerks, tax collectors; they meet on the way, describe, examine and calculate the sins and handwritings of this person, the sins of youth and old age, voluntary and involuntary, committed by deed, word, thought. There is great fear there, great trepidation for the poor soul, the indescribable need that she will then suffer from the countless number of enemies surrounding her in darkness, slandering her, in order to prevent her from ascending to heaven, settling in the light of the living, and entering the land of life. But the holy angels, having taken the soul, take it away.”

“Do you not know, my brethren, what fear and what suffering we are subjected to at the hour of departure from this life when the soul is separated from the body?.. Good Angels and the Heavenly Army approach the soul, as well as all... the opposing forces and princes of darkness. Both want to take the soul or assign it a place. If the soul acquired good qualities here, led an honest life and was virtuous, then on the day of its departure these virtues, which it acquired here, become good Angels surrounding it, and do not allow any opposing force to touch it. In joy and joy, with the holy Angels, they take her and carry her to Christ, the Lord and King of Glory, and worship Him together with her and with all the Heavenly Powers. Finally, the soul is taken to a place of rest, to unspeakable joy, to eternal light, where there is no sorrow, no sighing, no tears, no worries, where there is immortal life and eternal joy in the Kingdom of Heaven with all others who have pleased God. If the soul in this world lived shamefully, indulging in the passions of dishonor and being carried away by carnal pleasures and the vanity of this world, then on the day of its departure the passions and pleasures that it acquired in this life become crafty demons and surround the poor soul, and do not allow one to approach her Angels of God; but together with the opposing forces, the princes of darkness, they take her, pitiful, shedding tears, sad and lamenting, and take her to dark places, gloomy and sad, where sinners await the day of Judgment and eternal torment, when the devil and his angels will be cast down.”

The great saint of God, viewer of mysteries, Saint Niphon, Bishop of the Cyprus city of Constantius, standing one day in prayer, saw the heavens open and many Angels, some of whom descended to earth, others ascended to the mountain, lifting human souls to heavenly abodes. He began to listen to this spectacle, and behold, two Angels strived for heights, carrying their souls. When they approached the fornication ordeal, the demons came out and said with anger: “This soul is ours! How dare you carry it past us when it is ours?” The Angels answered: “On what basis do you call her yours?” - The demons said: “Until her death, she sinned, being defiled not only by natural, but also by supernatural sins, and she condemned her neighbor, and what’s worse, she died without repentance: what do you say to this?” - The angels answered: “Truly we will not believe either you or your father, Satan, until we ask the guardian angel of this soul.” The guardian angel asked said: “Exactly, this man has sinned a lot; but as soon as he became ill, he began to cry and confess his sins to God. Whether God has forgiven him, He knows. To Him is the power, To Him is glory to the righteous judgment.” Then the Angels, despising the accusation of demons, entered with their souls into the gates of heaven. - Then the Blessed One saw another soul being lifted up by the Angels. The demons, running out to them, cried out: “Why are you carrying souls without our knowledge, like this gold-loving, prodigal, quarrelsome, practicing robbery?” The Angels answered: “We probably know that, although she fell into all this, she cried, sighed, confessing and giving alms, and therefore God granted her forgiveness.” The demons said: “If this soul is worthy of God’s mercy, then take the sinners of the whole world; We have no business working here.” The Angels answered them: “All sinners who confess their sins with humility and tears will accept forgiveness by the grace of God; those who die without repentance are judged by God.” Thus, having shamed the demons, they passed on. Again the Holy One saw the ascended soul of a certain God-loving, pure, merciful man, loving to all. The demons stood in the distance and gnashed their teeth at this soul; The angels of God came out to meet her from the gates of heaven and, greeting her, said: “Glory to Thee, Christ God, that Thou didst not deliver her into the hands of her enemies and delivered her from the depths of hell!” - Blessed Niphon also saw that demons were drawing a certain soul to hell. This was the soul of one slave, whom the master tormented with hunger and beatings and who, unable to bear the torment, hanged himself, having been taught by the devil. The guardian angel walked in the distance and wept bitterly; the demons rejoiced. And a command came from God to the weeping Angel to go to Rome, there to take custody of the newborn baby, who was being baptized at that time. - Again the Saint saw a soul carried through the air by Angels, which was taken from them by demons at the fourth ordeal and cast into the abyss. It was the soul of a man given over to fornication, sorcery and robbery, who died suddenly without repentance.

The Monk Isaiah the Hermit, in his will to his disciples, commanded “to have death before our eyes every day and to take care of how to accomplish the exodus from the body and how to pass by the powers of darkness that are about to meet us in the air.”

The Monk Abba Dorotheos, a monastic student of the same hostel of Abba Serida, writes in one of his letters: “When the soul is insensitive (cruelty), frequent reading of the Divine Scripture and the touching words of the God-bearing fathers, remembrance of the Last Judgment of God, the exodus of the soul from the body, is useful. about the terrible forces that would meet her, with whose complicity she did evil in this short and disastrous life.

The doctrine of ordeals, like the doctrine of the location of heaven and hell, is found as a well-known and generally accepted teaching throughout the entire area of ​​worship of the Orthodox Church.”

See also: Death.

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) about the ordeals. - St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov). A word about death St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov). An offering to modern monasticism:

Chapter 2. People will be judged at the court of God according to the Gospel commandments

Ordeals. - Saint Theophan the Recluse. Guide to spiritual lifeSt. Theophan the Recluse. Illness and deathAir ordeals. - Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose). Soul after death:

8. Teachings of Bishop Theophan the Recluse on aerial ordeals

Eyewitness accounts of the ordealsVision of Gregory, a disciple of St. Basil, about the ordeals of St. TheodoraK. Ikskul. Incredible to many, but a true incident: The Resurrection of Claudia Ustyuzhanina

The Tale of Taxiot the Warrior The Life of Our Venerable Father Mark of Athens Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology:

In the 19th century, Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, speaking about the state of the soul after death, wrote: “It should, however, be noted that, just as in general in the depiction of objects of the spiritual world, for us clothed in flesh, features that are more or less sensual, humanoid are inevitable, so , in particular, they are inevitably admitted in the detailed teaching about the ordeals that the human soul goes through when separated from the body. Therefore, we must firmly remember the instruction given by the angel Venerable. Macarius of Alexandria, as soon as he began to speak about ordeals: “Take earthly things here for the weakest image of heavenly ones.” It is necessary to imagine the ordeals not in a crude, sensual sense, but as much as is possible for us in the spiritual sense, and not get attached to the particulars that are given by different writers and in different legends of the Church itself, despite the unity of the basic thought about the ordeals.” These extremely significant words of the angel cannot in any way diminish when we come into contact with messages about that world. For our human psyche is very inclined to take images for reality, as a result of which completely distorted ideas are created not only about heaven, hell, ordeals, etc., but also about God, about spiritual life, about salvation. These distortions easily lead a Christian into paganism. And a pagan Christian - what could be worse?

What earthly and heavenly things are being talked about here? About ordeals, which, despite the simplicity of their earthly depiction in Orthodox hagiographic literature, have a deep spiritual, heavenly meaning. There is nothing like this in any of the religious teachings. Even Catholicism, with its dogma of purgatory, distorted the picture of the posthumous state of man. Purgatory and ordeals are fundamentally different things. Purgatory, in the views of Catholic theologians, is a place of torment to compensate for the lack of human merit in satisfying the justice of God. Ordeal is a trial of conscience and a test of the spiritual state of the soul in the face of God’s love, on the one hand, and devilish passionate temptations, on the other.

Church tradition says that there are twenty ordeals - twenty certain tests of the state of the soul before, if you like, its home, which we call the Kingdom of God. These are twenty steps of ascent to this house, which can become the steps of a person’s fall - depending on his condition.

Somewhere in the 50s, one bishop died - an old, sweet, pleasant man, but it was difficult to call him a spiritual and ascetic. His death was very significant - he kept looking around him and saying: “Everything is wrong, everything is wrong. Not like that at all!”

His surprise is understandable. Indeed, although we all understand that “everything is wrong” there, we nevertheless involuntarily imagine that life in the image and likeness of this life. We imagine both hell and heaven according to Dante, and the ordeal, again, in accordance with those pictures that we look at with curiosity in simple brochures. Whether we want it or not, we cannot in any way renounce these earthly ideas.

And, surprisingly, modern science can provide us with some help in understanding this issue.

For example, nuclear physicists who study the world of elementary particles argue that in the macroworld - that is, in the world in which we live - there are no concepts that can adequately express the realities of the microworld. Therefore, in order to somehow present them to the general public, physicists are forced to find and invent words, names and images taken from our usual experience. True, the picture sometimes emerges as fantastic, but understandable in its constituent parts. Well, for example, imagine - time flows backwards. What does it mean - backwards, how can this time flow in reverse? First the duck falls, and then the hunter shoots? This is absurd. But one of the theories of quantum mechanics points in this way to the processes occurring in the intra-atomic world. And it seems that we are beginning to understand something... although without understanding anything.

Or take the concept of a wave particle, called “waveicle” in English. If you think about it, this is a rather absurd expression - a wave cannot be a particle, and a particle cannot be a wave. But with the help of this paradoxical concept, which does not fit into the framework of our common sense, scientists try to express the dual nature of the nature of matter at the level of the atom, the dual aspect of elementary particles (which, depending on the specific situation, appear either as particles or as waves). Modern science offers many such paradoxes. How are they useful to us? By what they show: if a person’s capabilities are so limited in knowing and expressing in “human language” the realities of this world, then, obviously, they are even more limited in understanding the world of that world. This is the main thing to keep in mind when trying to comprehend the same ordeals and, in general, the posthumous existence of the soul. The realities there are completely different, everything there is not the same as here.

Posthumous exam for goodness

According to church teaching, after a three-day stay at the tomb, the soul of the deceased contemplates the heavenly abodes from the 3rd to the 9th day, and from the 9th to the 40th day it is shown the torment of hell. How can we understand these earthly images, “earthly things”?

The soul, being by nature a resident of that world, freed from the plump body, becomes capable of seeing that world in a completely different way, characteristic of it, in contrast to the body. There everything is revealed to the soul. And if, as the Apostle Paul writes, in earthly conditions we see “as if through a glass darkly,” then there “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12), that is, as it really is. This vision or knowledge, in contrast to earthly knowledge, which is mainly external in nature and often purely rational, after the death of the body acquires a different character - participation in what is known. In this case, participation means the unity of the knower with the known. So the soul there enters into unity with the world of spirits, for it itself is spiritual in this sense. But with what spirits does the soul unite? We can believe that each virtue has its own spirit, its own angel, just as each passion has its own spirit, its own demon. But more on that later.

For some reason, it is usually believed that the soul is tested only when it comes to its passions, that is, in the period from the 9th to the 40th day. However, there is no doubt that the soul is tested for everything: both for good and for evil.

So after three days, a kind of personality test begins. First - in the face of good. The soul follows the path of all the virtues (according to the Apostle, these are “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, mercy, meekness, self-control,” etc. - Gal. 5; 22). For example, the soul finds itself in the face of meekness. Will she perceive it as that precious quality that she strove for and that she was looking for in her earthly life, although she could not acquire it in those conditions, or, on the contrary, will she be repelled by meekness as something alien and unacceptable? Will she unite with the spirit of meekness or not? Thus, during six earthly days there will be a special test of the soul in the face of all virtues.

At the same time, I would like to note that every virtue is beautiful, for God Himself is ineffable Beauty, and the soul with all its fullness sees there the beauty of these properties of God. And in this, if you like, “exam of goodness,” the soul is tested: has it, in the conditions of earthly freedom, acquired at least some desire for this eternal Beauty?

And the exam for evil

A similar test, the same examination of the soul continues, from the 9th to the 40th day. A stage begins, which is usually called ordeals. There are twenty of them, and much more is said about them than about contemplating the beauty of virtues. The reason for this, apparently, is that the overwhelming majority of people are immeasurably more enslaved by passions than they are involved in virtues. That is why this exam requires more time. Here the soul reveals the full power of each of its passions - hatred, envy, pride, deceit, fornication, gluttony...

We all know what the fire of passion means - despite reason, despite the desire for good, despite even one’s own well-being, a person suddenly submits, for example, to insane anger, greed, lust, and so on! Submits to a “favorite” passion or passions. This very thing begins there, but in the face of not just conscience, not just convictions - but in front of that Shrine itself, in the face of that Beauty that has just been revealed to the soul in all its possible completeness. It is here that the power of passion that a person acquired during earthly life is revealed in its entirety. Therefore, the one who did not fight passion, but, moreover, served it, for whom it became the meaning of his life, will not be able to renounce it even in the face of God’s Love itself. So there is a breakdown at the ordeal and the descent of the soul into the bosom of a meaningless and unquenchable fire of burning passion. For under earthly conditions passion could sometimes still obtain food for itself for some time. There the torment of Tantalus really opens up.

By the way, they're starting ordeal from the most seemingly innocent sin. From idle talk. From something to which we usually do not attach any importance. The Apostle James says exactly the opposite: “... the tongue... is an uncontrollable evil; it is filled with deadly poison” (James 3; 8). And the Holy Fathers and even pagan sages call idleness and its natural and usual manifestation - idle talk - the mother of all vices. Rev. John of Karpafsky, for example, wrote: “Nothing upsets a usually good mood more than laughter, jokes and idle talk.”

The twenty ordeals cover, I would say, twenty categories of passions, not specific sins, but passions, each of which includes many varieties of sins. That is, each ordeal covers a whole nest of related sins. Let's say theft. It has many types: direct, when someone got into a person’s pocket, and accounting additions, and inappropriate, in one’s own interests, use of budget funds, and bribes for the purpose of profit, etc. and so on. The same applies to all other ordeals. So - twenty passions, twenty exams for sins.

In very vivid, earthly concepts and expressions it is written about the ordeals in the life of St. Basil the New, where Blessed Theodora talks about what happened to her beyond the boundaries of earthly life. And reading her story, you involuntarily remember the wonderful words of the angel: “Take earthly things here for the weakest image of heavenly ones.” Blessed Theodora saw monsters there, lakes of fire, and terrible faces, heard terrible screams, and observed the torment to which sinful souls were subjected. All these are “earthly things.” In reality, as the angel warned us, this is only a “weak image,” a weak semblance of those completely spiritual (and in this sense, “heavenly”) events that happen to a soul that is unable to reject passions. Everything is wrong there!

But why, in this case, is it shown this way? The reason is that there are no other means to warn a person still living about the suffering that awaits everyone who tramples on conscience and truth. For example, how to explain the effect of radiation to a person who has no idea about it and does not understand its destructive effect on the body? Apparently, it would be necessary to say that terrible invisible rays emanate from this place; a pagan would be more likely to understand if he was warned that evil spirits live here, or, on the contrary, this place is sacred and should not be approached...

- Do you understand, man?

- Got it.

What did he understand? Not what radiation is, not how it works, but most importantly: there is a serious danger here, you need to be extremely careful. So it is with paintings of ordeals. Yes, there is suffering, and it is caused by an unrighteous lifestyle.

But Blessed Theodora also speaks about demons who torment the soul for sins.

Uniting with the Spirit of God or with tormenting demons

Entire iconographic cycles were created based on the life of St. Theodora. Perhaps many have seen books with pictures depicting various tortures at ordeals. The artists’ imagination is very strong and vivid, and therefore these pictures are impressive. When you look, what’s not happening there: what torment, torture! And there really is torment there, but it is of a completely different nature. This is important to know, because it is of great importance for understanding the afterlife of all people, including non-Christians.

So, we come to the question of the action of demons on the soul in the afterlife. A very interesting thought on this issue was expressed by Saint Theophan the Recluse (Govorov) in his interpretation of the 80th verse of the 118th Psalm (“Be my heart blameless in your justification, so that I will not be ashamed”). This is how he explains the last words: “The second moment of non-shame is the time of death and the passage of ordeals. No matter how wild the thought of ordeals may seem to smart people, they cannot be avoided. What are these Mytniks looking for in those passing by? Whether they have their goods. What is their product? Passion. Therefore, whoever has an immaculate heart and is free from passions, they cannot find anything to which they could become attached; on the contrary, the quality opposite to them will strike them themselves like lightning arrows. To this, one of the little learned people expressed another thought: ordeals seem to be something terrible; but it is very possible that demons, instead of something terrible, represent something lovely. Seductively and charmingly, according to all types of passions, they present to the passing soul one after another. When, during earthly life, passions are expelled from the heart and virtues opposite to them are implanted, then whatever charming thing you imagine, the soul, which has no sympathy for it, passes it by, turning away from it with disgust. And when the heart is not cleansed, then for which passion it most sympathizes, that is why the soul rushes there. The demons take her as if they were friends, and then they know where to put her. This means that it is very doubtful that the soul, while it still has sympathies for the objects of any passions, will not be ashamed at the ordeal. The shame here is that the soul itself is thrown into hell.”

Thought of St. Theophan follows the instructions of St. Anthony the Great. I will also quote his wonderful words: “God is good and impassive and unchanging. If anyone, recognizing that it is blessed and true that God does not change, is however perplexed as to how He (being such) rejoices over the good, turns away from the evil, is angry at sinners, and when they repent, is merciful to them; then to this it must be said that God does not rejoice and is not angry: for joy and anger are passions. It is absurd to think that the Divine would be good or bad because of human affairs. God is good and does only good things, but does not harm anyone, being always the same; and when we are good, we enter into communication with God, out of similarity with Him, and when we become evil, we separate from God, out of dissimilarity with Him. Living virtuously, we become God's, and when we become evil, we become rejected from him; and this does not mean that He has anger against us, but that our sins do not allow God to shine in us, but unite us with demons tormentors. If we then gain permission from our sins through prayers of good deeds, this does not mean that we have pleased God and changed Him, but that through such actions and our turning to God, having healed the evil that exists in us, we again become capable of tasting God’s goodness; so to say: God turns away from the wicked is the same as saying: the sun is hidden from those deprived of sight.”

In short, when we lead a correct (i.e. righteous) life, live according to the commandments and repent of violating them, then our spirit unites with the Spirit of God, and good things happen to us. When we act against our conscience and violate the commandments, our spirit becomes one with the tormenting demons, and thus we fall into their power. And according to the degree of our voluntary consent to sin, our voluntary submission to their power, they torment us. And if there is still repentance on earth, then it is already too late. But it turns out that it is not God who punishes us for our sins, but we ourselves, through our passions, give ourselves into the hands of tormentors. And their “work” begins - they are a kind of predators or sewer trucks that cleanse the environment of sewage. This is what happens to the soul after death at the ordeal.

The ordeal, therefore, is essentially nothing more than a kind of test of a person’s passions. Here a person shows himself - who he is, what he strived for, what he wanted. But they are not only a test - they are also a guarantee of the possible purification of the soul through the prayers of the Church.

“Passion a thousand times stronger than on earth...”

But, apparently, it is necessary to say once again what it is passion. We know about sin: for example, a person deceived, stumbled, this happens to everyone. Passion is something else - something that already pulls towards itself, and sometimes so irresistibly that a person cannot cope with himself. Although he understands perfectly well that this is bad, that it is bad, that it is harmful not only for the soul (although he most often forgets about the soul), but also for the body, he cannot cope with himself. In the face of conscience, in the face, if you like, of one’s own good, he cannot cope! This state is referred to as passion.

Passion is a truly terrible thing. Look what people do in the madness of passion, in the slavery of passion. They kill, maim, betray each other.

The Slavic word “passion” means, first of all, suffering, as well as a strong desire for something forbidden, sinful - that is, ultimately, also suffering. Passions are suffering. Christianity warns that all passions, being sinful, bring suffering to a person, and only suffering. Passion is a deception, it is a drug, it is a delight! After death, the real action of passions, their real cruelty, is revealed.

All our sins are committed when the soul is united with the body. A soul without a body can neither do good nor sin. The Fathers definitely say that the seat of passions is the soul, and not the body. The roots of passions are not in the body, but in the soul. Even the grossest bodily passions are rooted in the soul. That is why they do not go out, do not disappear with the death of the body. With them a person leaves this world.

How do these unresolved passions manifest themselves in that world? I will quote the thought of Abbot Nikon (Vorobyov): “Pasions a thousand times stronger than on earth will burn you like fire without any possibility of quenching them.” This is extremely serious.

Here on earth it is easier with our passions. So, I fell asleep - and all my passions fell asleep. For example, I get so angry at someone that I’m ready to tear him to pieces. But time passed and the passion gradually subsided. And soon they became friends. Here you can fight vices. In addition, passions are covered up by our physicality and therefore do not act in full force - or rather, rarely and, as a rule, they do not act this way for very long. But there a person, freed from physicality, finds himself confronted with their full action. Complete! Nothing interferes with their manifestation, the body does not close them, no sleep distracts them, no fatigue extinguishes them! In a word - continuous suffering, since the person himself does not have “any opportunity to satisfy them”! Plus, demons seduce us and then inflame and multiply the effect of our passions.

I was told how during World War II, after the Leningrad blockade was lifted, a woman ran up to a huge line for bread in the rear and hysterically shouted: “I’m from Leningrad.” Everyone immediately parted when they saw her crazy eyes, her terrible state. This is what only one passion is. Passion is a serious illness, the cure of which requires a lot of work and a long time. That is why it is so dangerous not to fight sin - often repeated, it turns into passion, and then real trouble comes not only in this life, but, what is a thousand times worse, in the next. And when a person has a whole bunch of passions? What will happen to him in Eternity?! If only this one thought were deeply rooted in us, we would, without a doubt, begin to approach our lives completely differently.

That is why Christianity, as a religion of love, reminds us: remember, man, you are not a mortal, but an immortal being, and therefore prepare for immortality. And the great happiness of Christians is that they know about this and can prepare. On the contrary, what horror does the unbeliever and the ignorant face after death!

Twenty ordeals reveal the state of a person’s soul, they are nothing more than twenty kind of litmus tests, twenty, if you like, exams, at which all its spiritual content is revealed and its fate is determined. True, it’s not final yet. There will be more prayers from the Church, there will be a Last Judgment.

Like connects with like. The Power of Repentance

Each stage of ordeal is a test of the strength of the rootedness of a certain passion in a person, when its full strength is revealed. The one who did not fight passion, who obeyed it, who lived this passion, cultivated it, gave all the strength of his soul to its cultivation - falls, breaks down in this ordeal. And this - either a fall or going through an ordeal - is no longer determined by the effort of a person’s will, but by the action of the spiritual state prevailing in him. Abbess Arsenia, one of the remarkable ascetics at the turn of the 20th century (1905), wrote: “When a person lives an earthly life, he cannot know how enslaved his spirit is, depending on another spirit, he cannot fully know this because he has a will with which he acts as he pleases. But when the will is taken away with death, then the soul will see to whose power it is enslaved. The Spirit of God brings the righteous into eternal abodes, enlightening them, illuminating them, idolizing them. The same souls who had communion with the devil will be possessed by it.”

In other words, if we on earth do not fight small temptations, do not resist their pressure, then we thereby weaken our will and gradually destroy it. And there, in the face of a 1000-fold greater power of passion, our will will be taken away altogether, and the soul will be in the power of the tormenting demon. It’s this last thing I’d like to say again.

If we turn to the description of the ordeals, we find the spirits of evil present there everywhere - in different forms. Blessed Theodora even describes the appearance of some of them, although it is clear that these are only weak semblances of their true being. The most serious thing - we have already emphasized this - is that, as Anthony the Great writes, the soul, submitted to passion, unites there with tormenting demons. And this happens, so to speak, naturally, for like always connects with like. In the conditions of earthly life, we also unite with people of the same spirit. Sometimes they wonder - how did these people get together? Then, upon closer acquaintance, it turns out: they have the same spirit! They are unanimous. A single spirit united them.

When the soul goes through ordeals, it is tested by the passion of each ordeal, by its spirits, tormenting demons, and, according to its state, it is either torn away from them or united with them, falling into the most severe suffering.

There is another side to this suffering. That world is a world of true light, in which all our sins will be revealed to everyone; in the face of all friends, acquaintances, and relatives, everything that is crafty, base, and unscrupulous will suddenly be revealed. Just imagine such a picture! That is why the Church calls everyone to prompt repentance. Repentance in Greek is metanoia, that is, a change of mind, way of thinking, a change in the goals of one’s life, aspirations. Repentance also means hatred of sin, aversion to it.

This is how wonderfully St. speaks about this. Isaac the Syrian: “Because God knew by His merciful knowledge that if absolute righteousness were required of people, then only one in ten thousand would be found who would enter the Kingdom of Heaven, He gave them a medicine suitable for everyone, repentance, so that everyone every day and at every moment there was available to them a means of correction through the power of this medicine and that through contrition they would wash themselves at all times from any defilement that might happen, and be renewed every day through repentance.”

What does true repentance give? Take Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Look: he was ready to go to hard labor, even to go with joy, just to atone for his evil, to return to his previous state of soul. This is what repentance is: it is truly a change of the soul, its salvation.

And even a small striving for good and repentance for evil can become the drop that tips the scales towards God. This drop, or, as Barsanuphius the Great said, this “copper obol”, quite insignificant, becomes the guarantee that the Lord unites with such a soul and defeats the evil that is present in it.

This is the enormous significance of sincere repentance and sincere struggle in this life of ours. They become the key to saving the passage of ordeals.

We Christians must be infinitely grateful to God for the fact that He revealed to us in advance the posthumous secret of the ordeals, so that here we would struggle with our bad inclinations, fight and repent. For if, I repeat, a person has even a small germ of such a struggle, if there is at least some compulsion to live according to the Gospel, then the Lord Himself will fill in what is missing and free us from the hands of destroying demons. The word of Christ is true: “You have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things; enter into the joy of your Master” (Matthew 25; 23).

Christianity provides the greatest means of human salvation - repentance. The Lord wants us not to suffer here, and especially after death. Therefore, the Church calls: man, before it’s too late, take care of yourself...

We are free to do good and evil

Why, when talking about a person’s posthumous path, do we constantly emphasize that it is a test of the soul - first for good, and then for evil? Why the test?

Because God, in the very creation of man, gave him His image, which presupposes such freedom that God Himself cannot touch. For He needs free individuals, not slaves. Salvation is His free election, out of love for truth, holiness and beauty, and not for the sake of “spiritual” pleasures or the threat of punishment.

Why did God humble himself to the point of the cross, and not appear to the world as an all-powerful, wisest, invincible king? Why did He come to people not as a patriarch, not a bishop, not a theologian, not a philosopher, not a Pharisee, but as a beggar, homeless, from an earthly point of view, the last person who does not have a single external advantage over any person? The reason for this is obvious: power, power, external splendor, glory would certainly captivate the whole world, everyone would slavishly worship Him and “accept” His teaching in order to receive as much as possible... bread and circuses. Christ wanted nothing but the truth to attract a person to Him, nothing external to replace it, not to stand in the way of its acceptance. It is no coincidence that the Lord uttered such meaningful words: “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth; everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). External effects are idols that throughout human history have been trying to replace God.

Unfortunately, much of church life has followed the path of external, so-called “church” splendor, or rather purely worldly splendor. This brings to mind the words of one American Protestant, who not only did not hesitate, but, on the contrary, proudly shared: “In our church, everything should be entertaining in order to attract people.” And the spiritual law is known: the more outside, the less inside. Even at the beginning of the 16th century, the Monk Nilus of Sorsky tried to defend non-covetousness in monasticism, spoke out against all luxury, wealth and estates in the Church as degrading and unnatural, but his voice was not accepted, or rather, was rejected - the process of secularization of Christian consciousness turned out to be irreversible. And it is quite obvious that it led to the split of the 17th century, Peter I, the October Revolution, and at the end of the 20th century - to the so-called “perestroika”. And it will lead to even worse. For the Church is the “leaven” of society, and its spiritual state determines the internal and external well-being of the people.

Saint Philaret of Moscow said bitterly in the 19th century: “How boring it is to see that monasteries all want pilgrims, that is, they themselves seek entertainment and temptation. True, sometimes they lack methods, but what they lack more is non-covetousness, simplicity, hope in the Gods, and a taste for silence.” And he: “If war had to be declared on any clothing, then, in my opinion, not on the hats of priestly wives, but on the magnificent robes of bishops and priests. At least this is the first thing, but this was forgotten. “Let your priests, O Lord, be clothed with righteousness.” Perhaps even now there will be a saint who will say similar things about modern church life.

So the Lord, with his coming, showed that he is not only the greatest Love; but also the greatest Humility, and He cannot exert any, even the slightest, pressure on human freedom, therefore salvation is possible for everyone who freely accepts God and responds to Love with love. From here it becomes clear why earthly living conditions are so important. Only while in the body is a person fully human and can do good or evil, sin, break the commandments, or repent and lead a righteous life. Our freedom, our choice, is exercised on earth. After death there is no longer a choice, but the choice made on earth is realized, and the fruits of earthly life are revealed. The soul simply finds itself faced with the result of all human earthly activity. Therefore, there, in another world, a person is already powerless to change himself - he can only be helped. But more on that later.

On this day, one might say, the initial outcome of life is summed up. 40th day, if you like, is the first gathering of the fruits of a person’s earthly life. The Church teaches that the soul presents itself to the throne of God, before which God’s determination about man takes place. But it would also be correct to say: man’s self-determination occurs in the face of God. After all, God does not commit any violence against any person. God is the greatest, ultimate Love and Humility. Therefore, when on the 40th day the soul comes before God in some special way, then, apparently, here its spiritual state is fully revealed to it and its natural union occurs either with the Spirit of God or with the spirits of tormenting passions. This is what the Church calls private court, a private definition of personality.

Only this judgment is unusual - it is not God who judges and condemns man, but man, finding himself in the face of the Divine shrine, either ascends to Him, or, on the contrary, falls into the abyss. And all this no longer depends on his will, but on that spiritual state that was the result of his entire earthly life.

However, God’s determination on the 40th day, according to the teachings of the Church, is still not the last judgment. There will be another and final one, it is called the Last Judgment. On it, the fate of many, many people, through the prayers of the Church, will change.

From the book “The Afterlife of the Soul”