My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
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THE PROSELYTE (Part VI)
Life After Death...Mysteries Beyond the Grave
With death comes the separation of the soul from the body. The body returns to the earth from which it was taken. It decomposes but it is not lost. The time will come when it will be resurrected, spiritualized and made incorruptible, at the time of the just judgment. And then it will be reunited with the soul to be judged along with the soul. In the meantime, the soul which was separated through death, from the body, lives in a middle state. It undergoes the Particular Judgment. "It is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). This means that immediately after death the soul is judged individually. It remains after this particular judgment until the Final Judgment, at the Second Coming of Christ, having a foretaste of paradise or of hell.
At the Final Judgment, which will take place at the Second Coming of Christ, all people will be presented before Him to be judged. The Evangelist Matthew tells us the following: "Before Him will be gathered all nations" (St. Matthew 25:32). At the Final Judgment, the souls will not be the only ones to be presented. We will be presented wholly, with our body and soul--with all our personhood, body and soul will be judged. Saint Paul tells us: "For we must all appear before the judgment of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body" (2 Corinthians 5:10).
At the Final Judgment, everyone will be judged according to their faith and their works. Christ will then separate the just from the unjust or sinners. "Come, O blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (St. Matthew 25:34), and to the sinners, He will say: "Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (St. Matthew 25:41). Then "they [sinners] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (St. Matthew 25:46). This will be the Final Judgment. The just will be grounded in their righteousness and will always be righteous, and will live eternally. The sinners will be stabilized in their sin. They will not be able to change. They will live in hell. They too will live. They will not vanish, as some fools say. The above verse makes that vividly clear.
This will occur to man after death. In order for this to happen, two things must come first: The resurrection of the dead by which the soul will be reunited with the body, and the Second Coming of Christ.
The Holy Scripture is our basic authority of faith and is the witness of what the Christian faith is, and our tradition is an interpretation and understanding of Holy Scripture. Our Tradition is a way of understanding the Scripture and has a sense of which even the Scripture itself is a testimony to the tradition of faith or the Kanona Pisteos (the rule of faith) that even antedated the writing of Scripture.
It is beyond any doubt that we Christians are convinced that we are created for life; it is not God's will that we die. God doesn't want death; He wants life. In the Scripture, death is the enemy. The Apostle Paul even calls death, "the last enemy." Death is not natural, not a natural part of our life and not willed by God. The Wisdom of Solomon, which for us is part of the Holy Bible, says very clearly, "God did not create death." Death comes into the world as a rebellion against God. Death comes into the world because people do not choose life, but choose death, darkness, and themselves over God.
Saint Athanasios said, "if you choose yourself you are choosing nothing because that is what you are without God", since we are created out of nothing. For God gives our whole life to us, Who is the Living God, and the only One Who lives.
In the Orthodox funeral service, we hear the fifth chapter of Saint John's gospel. It says, "...the hour is coming in which all who are in the grave will hear His voice and come forth - those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father Who sent Me". This part of the gospel is extremely important, which says all and everyone will be raised. Not just good people, but everyone. The Universal Resurrection is our teaching because death is destroyed.
Jesus is raised and glorified...He says, 'he who can believe in Me cannot die". Saint Paul, 'I will gladly die and be with Christ, but if I have to hang around here let it be fruitful work.' However, Christ is risen and glorified and is at the right hand of the Father. That is the most repeated sentence of the Old and New Testaments and is found in Psalm 109 (110). The Psalm says, "That the Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool". The last enemy to be put under is death. When death is destroyed, everything is subject to Christ. He subjects everything to God the Father and God will be all in all. This then will be the Messianic age, when the dead will be raised and God with glory will fill all creation. There will then be life for all those who repent and want to be righteous with God and there will be torment for those who do not repent and do not want the righteousness of God.
The teaching of the Holy Scripture is that death is a cathartic process even for the most righteous person. Perhaps the only person for whom death was a shear transition was the Holy Theotokos, who was so full of God, life, faith, and grace that her death is a pure entrance into paradise. All the rest of us are not the Theotokos and we are not pure. There is sin and rebellion in us where our desire is for God and our prayer is for God and we want to repent still there is that in us that cannot enter into the presence of God or the very heart of the Father (which is everlasting life). This impediment must be burnt away. I believe that our teaching is that this process of dying is this cathartic process where at the end of which you are either with God forever or away from God forever tormenting yourself with the demons and being tormented by the love of God that is still upon you even though you are an unrepentant sinner. In fact, many of the Saints say that the greatest torture of hell is not only the tortures of the evil but the torture of the mercy and love of God that is still upon you (because God loves you no matter what). Saint Isaac the Syrian said that there is no greater torment than to be scourged with the scourge of love.
When you die and enter the presence of love and you resist it that becomes torture to you. Saint Mark of Ephesus said that our Church tradition has no teaching on material-hellfire. God is not a punisher. Jesus on the Cross was not punished for our sins. Jesus on the Cross loved and trusted God so He can destroy death by death. The punishment comes from our own evil and the love of God upon us when we reject it. God is not torturing or punishing us. We must conquer the devils as He did. We must resist the temptations as He did. We must destroy death the way that He did. Jesus said, "He who believes in Me will do the work I do." Our Lord gives us the power to do through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Mysteries (Sacraments) and the life of the Church. (Sources: Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Canada and a homily of Fr. Thomas Hopko of blessed memory)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" -- Saint John Chrysostomos
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George