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God, pronouncing a decree on Adam when expelling him 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 land from which he was taken. “You are earth,” the Lord said to him, “and you will return to earth” (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 what it seems 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. “I will go down to my son, lamenting, into hell” (Gen. 37:37), said the holy Patriarch Jacob, when they brought him false news about the death of his beloved son, Joseph. “Leave me a little,” the righteous, long-suffering Job begs God from the midst of the temptations that surrounded him everywhere, “before I even leave, I will never return, to a dark and gloomy land, to a land of eternal darkness, where there is no light, lower than to see the belly of man” (Job 10:20-22). The God-inspired legislator of the Israelites, Moses, announcing to the people the wrath of God against Korah and his accomplices, said: “If these die the death of all people, and if after the presence of all people there will be a visit to them, then the Lord will not send me an ambassador. But the Lord will clearly show, and the earth will open its mouth, and I will devour their houses, and their booths, and all their trees, and they will go down alive into hell... Even as all these words ceased, the Scripture continues to narrate, the earth became gray under their feet... and they went down alive into hell” (Num. 16:29-35). The Prophet David sang to the Lord: “Your mercy is great upon me, and You have delivered my soul from the lowest hell” (Ps. 85:13). ...The same place for hell is determined by the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament. Announcing the descent into hell with His Soul and the Divinity inseparable from it, the God-Man said: “The Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights” (Matthew 12:40). Explaining the words of the Savior, Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria says that the Lord fulfilled this prediction of His, “descending into the underworld to hell.” The Lord, in the words of the holy Apostle Paul, “descended into the lowest parts of the earth,” according to the Russian translation: “into the depths of the earth” (Eph. 4:9), and in the words of the Apostle Peter: “to those in spiritual prison, He came down and preached” (1 Pet. 3:19). “The deified Soul of Christ,” says Saint John of Damascus, “descends into hell so that just as the sun of righteousness may shine for those living on earth, so for those sitting under the earth in darkness and the shadow of death, the light may shine” (Accurate presentation of the Orthodox Faith). 3. 89–91 For beginners, it is more useful to read akathists and canons for prayers than the Psalter. 6.299 Of the other prayers, the akathist to the Lord Jesus is most useful for the novice. Read it once a week, standing or sitting, whichever is more convenient for you, but certainly with attention and slowly. 6.526 (See Prayer, Rule, Church Prayer). The word anathema means excommunication, rejection. When the Church anathematizes any teaching, this means that the teaching contains blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and for salvation it must be rejected and eliminated, just as poison is eliminated from food. When a person is anathematized, it means that that person has internalized the blasphemous teaching irrevocably, depriving himself and those of his neighbors to whom he communicates his way of thinking from salvation. When a person intends to leave a blasphemous teaching and accept the teaching contained by the Orthodox Church, then he is obliged, according to the rules of the Orthodox Church, to anathematize the false teaching that he has hitherto contained and which has destroyed him, alienating him from God, keeping him in enmity towards God, in blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, in communion with Satan. The meaning of anathema is the meaning of spiritual church healing against an illness in the human spirit that causes eternal death. All human teachings cause eternal death, introducing their own reasoning, drawn from false reason, from carnal wisdom, this common property of fallen spirits and people, into the God-revealed teaching about God. Human reasoning introduced into the teachings of the Christian faith is called heresy, and adherence to this teaching is called evil faith. 4.79 The word Angel means "messenger". The Angels received this name from their service to the salvation of the human race, for which they are used by the All-Good God and which they perform with holy zeal and love. The Apostle Paul said: “Are they not servants who are sent into ministry for those who want to inherit salvation?” (Heb. 1:14). ...The time of the creation of Angels is not defined definitively in the Holy Scriptures; but, according to the teaching generally accepted by the Holy Church, the creation of Angels preceded the creation of the material world and man. Angels are created out of nothing. Suddenly seeing themselves created in wonderful grace and bliss, what gratitude, reverence and love they felt to the Creator, who gave them together existence and spiritual pleasure! Their continuous occupation became contemplation and praise of the Creator. The Lord Himself said about them: “When the stars were created, all My angels praised Me with a great voice” (Job 38:7). These words of Holy Scripture most clearly prove that the Angels were created before the world we see and, being present at its creation, glorified the wisdom and power of the Creator. They were created, like the visible world, by the Word of God: “By this,” says the holy Apostle Paul, “all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether they were thrones, whether they were dominions, whether they were principalities, whether they were powers: by Him all things were created” (Col. 1:16). Here the apostle, under the name of thrones, dominions, principalities and authorities, means the various ranks of Angels. The Holy Church recognizes three such ranks; Each rank, or hierarchy, consists of three ranks. The first hierarchy consists of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; the second - Dominance, Strength and Authority; the third – Principalities, Archangels and Angels. The doctrine of this division of Angels was set forth by Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, a disciple of the Holy Apostle Paul, who, as we have seen, names some ranks in his writings. Those closest to the Throne of God are the six-winged Seraphim, as Saint Isaiah the Prophet saw in his vision. “I have seen,” he says, “the Lord sitting on the throne, high and exalted, and the house of His glory is filled. And the Seraphim stood around Him, six kril to one, and six kril to another: and two were the veils of their faces, and two were the veils of their feet, and two were the veils of the fly. And I cried out to one another and said: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is filled with His glory” (Isa. 6:1-3). According to the Seraphim, the God-wise, many-eyed Cherubim stand before the Throne of God, then the Thrones and, in order, the other angelic ranks. The Angels stand before the Throne of God with great reverent fear, which is poured into them by the incomprehensible greatness of the Divine, not with the fear that repentant sinners feel and which is taken away by love, but with the fear that endures throughout the ages and constitutes one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit - the fear with which God is terrible for all those around Him. From the unceasing contemplation of the immeasurable greatness of God, they are in an unceasing blissful frenzy and rapture and express it with unceasing praise. They burn with love for God and in self-forgetfulness, in which they exist in God, and no longer in themselves, they find inexhaustible and endless pleasure. 9. 305–306 Angels, when appearing to people, always appeared in the form of humans. Scripture does not mention a single appearance of Angels in any other form; narrating that the Angels appeared in the form of men, Scripture nowhere specifies their behavior, which would certainly have been done if the Angels definitely did not have any appearance or had a non-human appearance. We have no right to understand Angels otherwise than as Scripture portrays them. 3.227 The seat of the holy Angels is heaven. The Lord revealed this to us. “The angels in heaven,” He said, “can always see the face of My Heavenly Father” (Matthew 18:10). “In the resurrection they neither marry nor commit violence, but as the angels of God are in heaven” (Matthew 22:30). And from many other places of Scripture it is clear that heaven is the abode of Angels. While in heaven, they are sent by God to earth to fulfill various commands of God, as we have seen from the above narratives of Scripture; They are also sent to help all those who are being saved, as the holy Apostle Paul said: ...we send souls to serve for those who want to inherit salvation (Heb. 1:14). 3. 230–231 The Holy Church teaches us that every Christian receives from God at holy baptism a holy Guardian Angel, who, invisibly protecting the Christian, instructs him in every good deed throughout his life, reminding him of the commandments of God. Likewise, the prince of darkness, who wants to draw the entire human race into his destruction, assigns one of the evil spirits to a person, who, following a person everywhere, tries to draw him into every kind of sin (Dogmatic Theology of the Orthodox Catholic Eastern Church). From the concepts presented here it is clear that a Christian must remain vigilant over himself throughout his entire earthly life, being filled with both fear and courage. He must constantly be on guard and in fear from his enemy and murderer, and at the same time constantly remain in courage and vigor from the conviction that his powerful helper, the holy Angel, is constantly near him. The Venerable Pimen the Great said: “The great help of God embraces man; but he is not allowed to see her.” It is not allowed to see her, of course, so that a person, having hoped for this help, does not become careless and does not abandon his feasible feats. 5. 322–323 You might be interested in: