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A sinful soul, rejected by God, is not only tormented by its conscience and its state of rejection, but is also imprisoned in a terrible underground prison called hell, tartarus, Gehenna, where it is subjected to fierce torment that can torment its ethereal nature. All this is said in the Holy Scriptures and is revealed by the Holy Spirit according to His election and discretion to people worthy of such a revelation, a revelation that is most useful for the soul. Hell is located in the interior of the earth. God, pronouncing a decree on Adam during his expulsion from paradise, first calculated earthly executions for the transgressor of the paradise commandment, then announced that Adam would be subjected to these executions until he returned to the earth from which he was taken. “You are dust,” the Lord told him, “and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:19). It is not said here that he will go to the ground with one body: the pronounced sentence for those who dare to rebel against God is more terrible than it appears to an easy, superficial glance. The righteous of the Old Testament, as is obvious from the Holy Scriptures, constantly recognized the bowels of the earth as the place of hell. “With sorrow I will go down to my son into the underworld” (Gen. 37:35), says the holy patriarch Jacob, when they brought him false news about the death of his beloved son Joseph. The Holy Scriptures everywhere call the torments of hell eternal; this teaching has been and is constantly preached by the Holy Church. Our Lord Jesus Christ confirmed this terrible truth several times in the Holy Gospel. Foretolding to rejected sinners a common fate with the fallen angels, He announced that He would tell them at His Last Judgment: “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). According to the utterance of the final determination on the human race, those who perished will go into “eternal torment” (Matthew 25:46). In the story of the hard-hearted rich man and the beggar Lazarus, the Lord testified that between the abodes of eternal bliss and the prisons of hell “a great abyss has been established” and there is no transition from bliss to torment and from torment to bliss (Luke 16:26). The “worm” of hell “does not die, and the fire” of hell “does not go out” (Mark 9:48). The hellish dungeons represent the strange and terrible destruction of life while preserving life. There is a complete cessation of all activity, there is only suffering, there is dominated by the most severe of heart ailments - despair, there are cries and groans that do not attract any consolation to the soul torn apart by them. There are insoluble bonds and shackles, there is impenetrable darkness, despite the abundance of flame, there is the kingdom of eternal death. The torments of hell are so terrible that the most severe of earthly torments—violent death—are insignificant in comparison with them. The Savior of the world, foreshadowing the field of martyrdom to His disciples, commanded: “I tell you, My friends: do not be afraid of those who kill the body and then are unable to do anything more; But I’ll tell you whom to fear: fear the one who, after killing, can throw you into Gehenna: so, I tell you, fear him” (Luke 12: 4-5). Looking with the eye of faith at the indescribable bliss prepared for the faithful servants of God and at the equally ineffable torment awaiting the infidel slaves, the holy martyrs trampled underfoot the cruelest executions that the frenzied malice of the tormentors invented against them, and with countless sorrows and deaths they crushed eternal death under their feet. The holy monks - the mysterious martyrs - looked at the torments of hell with the unceasing memory of them, and with this memory they overthrew the thoughts and dreams of the tempter, who picturesquely and captivatingly painted before their imagination, sophisticated in the desert, a disastrous voluptuousness. We are assigned hell, eternal fire, a never-ending worm to constantly reproach and torment us if we spend our earthly life in sins and sinful pleasures. And we are looking for these pleasures, we are chasing after them, they are our desires and thoughts. We live as if there is no hell, as if we are immortal, eternal on earth, as if we have achieved infinite bliss. In vain does the Word of God thunder with threats, in vain does it proclaim terrible endless torments! We see the death of our brothers, we participate in their burial: this does not make any impression on us, as if death is the lot of other people, not ours at all. We, like the dead, have neither remembrance, nor premonition of death, nor remembrance, nor premonition of the future. We're definitely dead. “You bear the name that you are alive, but you are dead” (Rev. 3:1), - the untruthful Word of God testifies about every carnal man. The earthly life of each of us is very short - we don’t see how it will pass. We can’t see how death will creep up on each of us! In the terrible hour of death, all gluttony and drunkenness, all fornication and adultery will seem to us like a stinking and deep pit and abyss. How we will begin to regret that we were lying in this pit! Then we will know that the enjoyment of any passion is the most unfortunate, the most sorrowful seduction. Blessed is the one who has stocked up on salvation, stocked up on salvation through his prayers, through his alms, through his repentance. Such a one will enter into the joy of his Lord; such a one will enter the paradise of sweetness, where rivers of God’s grace flow, where the eternal feast of salvation is celebrated. On the contrary, the soul that was drowned in sins during earthly life will be brought down to hell by fierce demons. O brothers! The torments that await sinners in the dungeons of the underworld are inexpressible. There is eternal darkness and at the same time unquenchable fire, there is the gnashing of teeth, there is an everlasting worm. There are incessant screams and moans; they beg for mercy, but there is no one who would hear and pay attention to the most convincing and pitiful prayers! They ask for help and deliverance, but there is no one helping and delivering. After the fall of the first man and his rejection by God - and in him the entire human race - all people, having ended their earthly wanderings with the death of their bodies, descended in souls into the underworld prisons of hell. Hell is in the bowels of the earth. There burns “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41), which, therefore, by their fall preceded the creation of the material world. There is pitch darkness, there is tartarus, there is gnashing of teeth, there is a never-ending worm, there is crying without consolation, incessant and in vain. There are various torments according to the variety of sins; there, different degrees of torment correspond to different degrees of sinfulness. Mental death, an essential death that struck the human race in its ancestors, expressing its power over the body of the earthly wanderer during his earthly wandering through illnesses and other countless sufferings, at the end of his earthly wandering, expresses this power with the most terrible phenomenon - the separation of the soul from the body. When the soul is separated from the body, the power of death over a person receives full development (here we are talking about the times preceding the Redeemer): the body, decaying and stinking, is buried in the bowels of the earth, and the soul of every person - both the wicked and the Old Testament righteous - descends into hell. The souls of the wicked were thrown into eternal fire, as if they finally belonged to eternal death; the souls of the righteous descended into hell, into its dungeons, less deep and terrible, where they remained, languishing with life in hell and at the same time consoled by the hope of redemption. We have all loved our empty and stupid wishes, we have loved the corruptible, the temporary, the flesh and blood that lives in them - eternal death!.. The narrow path is the path of self-sacrifice, the narrow and wide path is self-indulgence! We are crowded, we are in a hurry, we are pushing each other into the already full, already satiated abyss of hell! Do you doubt the existence of hell and eternal torment? - You repeat the current fashionable objection: “This is incompatible with the mercy of such a good Being as God.” Ah, my friend! Can such a weak, limited being as man judge by himself about God, the infinite Being who surpasses all comprehension and judgment - draw positive conclusions about God from looking into himself? Leave your own judgment and believe with all your heart everything the Gospel teaches us. The Savior Himself said: “And these will go into eternal torment” (Matthew 25:46); in another place he said: “in hell, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes” (Luke 16:23). The Savior said that there is hell, there is eternal torment - why should you object! If you give room to this objection, it means that you doubt the truth of the Savior’s words and reject them. Whoever rejects even one dogma from the teachings of Christ denies Christ. Think carefully: your doubt is not such a light sin. If you internalize it and implement it with words, you will fall into mortal sin. One word of faith can save, and one word of unbelief can destroy a soul. The thief, at the hour of death, already on the cross, confessed Christ - and opened the doors to heaven for himself; The Pharisees, rejecting the Truth, blasphemed the Holy Spirit - and died. “By your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:37), the Savior announced. – If you allow your mind to object to the teachings of Christ, it will find thousands of thousands of them: it is inexhaustible - when we allow it to become infected with hostility towards Christ. Little by little he will reject all Christian dogmas! This is not news - this is the fruit of unbridled, arbitrary judgment; How many atheists and blasphemers have appeared from him in the world! In appearance, to inexperienced eyes, they seemed to be brilliant minds that broke chains, went free, discovered the truth and showed it to other people. But the consequences showed that their imaginary truth is the most terrible, most destructive delusion. Streams of blood washed false thoughts, but the thought was not cleansed by this bath! It is terrible to stain a thought with a lie: human blood is not able to wash away these fierce stains. For such washing, humanity needed the Blood of the God-Man. It received this blood, washed itself in it, cleansed itself! Holded by the hand of faith, it came into the light of true knowledge of God and self-knowledge, came out there from the deep dark abyss of the carnal, false mind. This mind calls man back into the abyss - and man heeds the murderous call! What's so wonderful? Man retained his character: in paradise, filled with the fragrance and pleasure of the Divine, he did not stop entrusting his attention to the flattering words of the devil. My friend! You are a Christian, a member of the Orthodox Eastern Church; remain faithful to the spiritual body of which you are a member, maintain union with the holy Church to which you belong, preserve your spiritual dignity as a priceless treasure. Because of your weakness, do not go into judgment about dogmas: this is a deep abyss, a dangerous sea; many swimmers, inexperienced and arrogant, drowned in it. Safely, with the hope of abundant spiritual gain, only those who have been fed by the mind in the right hand of the Spirit can swim and rush along the wonderful waves of theology. According to the advice of the holy Apostle Paul, cast down every thought that is placed on the mind of Christ. Do not enter into any argument or reasoning with doubts and objections generated by false reason; cut off the heads of these snakes with the sword of faith, as soon as they put these heads out of their lair! This is a straightforward matter, the right thing! A deed worthy of one who was once and forever united with Christ. Before the union there is reasoning, after the conclusion of the union it is already a crime. Nothing, nothing violates or shakes your loyalty! Oh! It is more tolerable to have not entered into an alliance than to be a traitor. With humility, bow your head to the good yoke, lead a pious life, go to church more often, read the New Testament and the writings of the Holy Fathers, do good to your neighbors: in due time, the Divine teaching of Christ, from which holiness and truth breathes, will be assimilated to your soul. Then no doubts will come to her. Christ's teaching is supernatural as Divine: it is approachable to the human mind through faith alone. It is a crazy undertaking to explain the supernatural by human reasoning, which obviously cannot leave the general, ordinary, natural circle. The consequences of a crazy undertaking: inconsistency, countless objections, rejection of the unnatural, even if this unnatural was Divine. People in their actions mostly contradict themselves! They take care of their eyes so that they don’t get clogged, but they don’t even think about protecting their mind – this eye of the soul; they litter it with all sorts of rubbish. The Lord commanded to keep the mind, because it is the leader of man. If the mind goes astray from the true path, a person’s whole life becomes a delusion. In order for the mind to stray from the true path, it doesn’t take much—one false thought: “If your eye is pure,” says the Savior, “then your whole body will be bright; and if it is bad, then your body will be dark. So, look: is not the light that is in you darkness? (Luke 11:34–35). We do not observe this all-holy testament at all, we do not see that our light, that is, the mind, does not become darkness, we throw all sorts of things into it, it becomes decisive darkness and pours darkness over all our behavior, throughout our entire lives. Why should thoughts be born in your soul that are hostile to God—thoughts of destructive unbelief and superstition? You have certainly read various empty foreign books, heard a lot of various unfounded judgments about religion, with which our time is so rich, so poor in true religious knowledge. “Nothing leads a person to blasphemy more than reading heretical books,” said Isaac of Syria. Give up this disorderly reading, which fills the mind with confused and perverse concepts, depriving it of firmness, independence, correct view, leading to a state of skeptical hesitation. Engage in a thorough study of the Eastern Church according to its Tradition, contained in the writings of the Holy Fathers. Do you belong to this Church? It's your duty to get to know her properly. Look how firmly the heterodox in the West know their religion! – True, it is less difficult for them to learn their faith in detail. The papist only believed in the pope as in God, did everything: he is a papist to perfection! He can be crazy as much as he wants! A Protestant only doubts the entire Tradition, protests against the entire teaching of Christ, however, retaining the name of a Christian for himself - he has done everything: he is completely Protestant. Having achieved such perfection, both the Roman and the Protestant write multi-volume works, their creations are loaded onto ships, and go to Russia to look for readers. Don’t read what these people wrote without understanding what they write. You know so little about the current general fashion of the Christian religion that you can easily internalize some false thought and damage your soul with it. There is hell, and there is eternal torment; With a pious life, make them non-existent for yourself!.. I have often heard the thought of doubt, now expressed by you and supported precisely by the argument that you gave - that the existence of hell and eternal torment is incompatible with the mercy of God. Once, after such a conversation, when the visitor who was talking to me left me, I involuntarily, without noticing it, plunged into thoughtfulness. My heart was sad. However, no particular thought occupied me. This was the impression the visitor left me. And how could I not be left with a sad impression when I heard a Christian who dared to directly contradict Christ, who dared to recognize the words of Self-Truth - God - as a lie, a fiction of superstition! How could I not be left with a sad impression when I saw that the mercy of God was being rejected, which can only be accepted and preserved by the right confession of the dogmas of the Christian faith, which is given by God Himself, and the vain human speculation about the mercy of God is given as an excuse for such rejection! “Suddenly a thought appears to me suggesting a trip around the world. The thought was so bright and gave me such a pleasant feeling that I didn’t think about it at all. I wholeheartedly agree. Guided by her, I fly as if in a balloon. I see all the countries, nothing stops me on my way, I rush past the sky-high mountains, I move quickly across rivers, across lakes, across seas. In the shortest possible time I looked around the entire universe - moreover, sitting calmly in my chairs. What did I see during my journey? The suffering of humanity. Yes! I saw suffering, both physical and moral: I did not meet a single person who did not suffer. I saw suffering in the palaces and on the throne, I saw it among the shimmering abundance. Where the body was healthy and nourished, there the heart was hungry, sick - unable to endure the severe illness, it uttered incessant groans. I saw prisoners buried for life in stuffy and gloomy dungeons, I saw them rummaging in the abysses of the earth, where the light of the sun does not reach, where, with the sound of chains and the blows of hammers and axes, gold is mined - a means to the pleasures of some through the constant misfortune of those who mine. I saw in the most educated states entire families dying of hunger, I saw the majority of the population in distress from poverty and lack of morality. I saw humanity humiliated by crimes! I saw humanity distorted by delusions! I saw humanity disfigured by barbarism! I saw humanity reduced to the likeness of dumb beasts and beasts of prey! People are caught there like animals; there they trade them like soulless goods, like cattle; and in this marketplace a person is a commodity of little value: his price is less than the price of livestock. There man lives almost like a dumb animal; and there he lives like a fierce beast, finding pleasure in shedding blood, devouring his own kind with mad, frenzied joy. Oh! It would be better not to exist than to exist so violently, so horribly. This is a picture of ordinary human life on earth. We must also remember the disasters to which humanity is subjected from time to time and place: about earthquakes, pestilences, civil strife, about the sword of conquerors, which sheds blood so abundantly when it is in the hand of Batu or Tamerlane. And for several thousand years now, one generation has been replaced on earth by another, replaced solely for suffering. However, God, the Creator and Lord of everything, omnipotent and all-good, looks at all this. This most terrible evil in which the human race suffers on earth does not prevent God from being all-good. No matter how much we add numbers to the infinite, no matter how much we subtract them from it, it does not change, it remains infinite!.. But if you look at the earth on which so many generations have suffered in turn, on which so many generations have died out a more or less cruel death, the thought of hell and eternal torment ceases to be strange!.. The human race is the category of fallen beings. Earth is the threshold of hell with initial executions for criminals. The Savior made it the threshold of heaven. You might be interested in: