Yesterday we looked at
the first ten tollhouses in which God will allow the demons to test your faith on
your journey after death. We looked at how one would be judged and the sort of
things that will be asked of you by the angels and demons as God makes his judgment
regarding your soul. The first ten were relatively concentrated on the pride
and the dereliction of your duty with fellow man. We have seen that pride is
the root cause of all life’s problems and as we reach further up the ascent
into heaven we no doubt will as well encounter the tollhouse of pride. While I would
again stress this is figurative language, the journey of the soul is something
that we Orthodox take seriously. Especially as it regards to the prayers for
the dead and if you haven’t read that blog I suggest you do so. May God grant us understanding as we continue
this discussion on the tollhouse road.
The eleventh torment is
that of pride. Yes, after we have endured all our sins that we have committed regarding
avarice, envy, and love of riches we come to heart of the matter. We come to
pride. It is here at the eleventh tollhouse all of the prideful moments of our
lives will be laid bare. All the times we have forgotten to honor our parents,
our government, and the superiors God has placed over us, will be exposed. We
will be asked to account for our sins as they have taken place. There is often
a lot of talk in the media today about pride. The LGBTQ+ community has even
rallied around the very term in a sense to be proud of who they are. God does
not ask us to proud of ourselves. Because without Him our lives are nothing.
God asks us to be humble, to be meek, to seek Him and Him alone. Being self-absorbed
in ourselves we lose the focus to focus on those around us. Taking care of
others, being kind and in short we become lovers of ourselves. God does not look kindly on us rejecting his
plan for our lives, seeking our own earthly desires. But here the pride we have
accumulated in ourselves will be exposed. It is a grave sin brothers and sisters.
Do not fall into it.
The twelfth torment is
that of anger. Christ himself was once filled with holy anger for the things
that he found in the temple, and how he drove the moneychangers and others from
the temple in Jerusalem. However, we are not so much concerned with holy anger
for the things that God abhors and detests. We are talking about the things said
to those out of anger and hatred for our fellow man. How many times do we lose
our temper when things aren’t going our way and we lash out because we are
filled with such rage that we become hostile to those around us. We speak ill
of each other and we harm the salvation and very being of people by our
actions. Do we punish our children severely when an encouraging word or a light
punishment was sufficient for their actions? Do we show wrath against people
who have wronged us? Oftentimes we do. We live in a world today where people
are seeking to be first without equals, not among equals. We don’t treat each
other with respect. We cancel those who disagree with us, and we shame those
with a dissenting voice. We create in ourselves this self-righteousness that is
not at all how Christ acted. He could have gotten angry and lashed out at
Pilate, Herod, the pharisees and Sanhedrin. But he did not. We must control our
temper lest it is laid bare for us at this tollhouse and exposes us as a fraud
and hypocrite. We must walk with humility and patience. Knowing that our fellow
man is also sinful. Anger and hatred have no place in the heart of a Christian.
We must root this out with prayer, fasting and the Holy Eucharist. Otherwise here
at the 12th tollhouse the demons will come and will be able to overcome
us.
The thirteenth torment is
again exposing more of the same, but it hearkens back to what Christ says, “love
your enemies.” The thirteenth torment is that of holding grudges. How many
people do we absolutely hate and cannot forgive them for their actions? Here I am
convicted again of my own sins in my own life where I have despised someone for
a wrong they have committed against me. And I humbly ask you to pray for me
that I might forgive them for their actions. I pray that we will forgive all people
for their actions. People today do not want to forgive their neighbor,
believing themselves to be above reproach and that what they want is more
important. Holding grudges and basically already judging them in place of God is
a dangerous sin. Are we better than God? Do we have more knowledge and wisdom
than the God that created all things? If we believe this brothers and sisters,
we must repent immediately. We must turn from our wicked ways and go and seek
forgiveness not just from God but from the person we have a grudge against. We
must learn to let it go. The thirteenth tollhouse will expose this and I would
not want for Satan to have any way of accusing us at the judgement of my
failure to love.
The fourteenth torment is
murder. Christ says hating one’s brother or sister is already committing murder
in the heart. Have we killed? Have we struck someone down because we wanted to?
Taking a life is never easy, but so too is holding anger in hearts. Committing
murder in our souls against our neighbor. We must restrain ourselves from
harming one another. Even if it means rejecting our passion of harming someone
who has harmed us.
The fifteenth torment is
that of sorcery. Now today’s world places a large emphasis on sorcery with the
Harry Potter novels, the Charmed television series, and other books that
feature fantastical feats with use of magic. We dear brothers and sisters, must
reject it for what it is. We must reject it, because magic is using the power
of the demons to achieve our goals. To achieve what we want. Magic is real.
Wiccans today perform magic through the use of their spells and other acts that
a Christian must reject. It may be enjoyment for us to watch shows and want to
have that sort of power. But when we let the demons creep into our minds using their
subtle but effective methods we could get the idea that we too should practice
witchcraft and use the power of the demonic arts to achieve our goals. Here the
sins of sorcery and witchcraft will be laid bare for us. If we have not participated
in this we have nothing to fear for we must be reminded that God sees all and
forgives all. If we only repent we will not be subject to the terrors of the
demons.
Now we come to the sexual
torments. Those of which are terrible and great in the world today. We see these
most often in the culture that we live in especially here in the United States.
The sixteenth torment is fornication. Lust and the power of sex is rampant in
the world today. We see this with Onlyfans, with Instagram, and other social media
sites catering to our desire to fulfill our sexual urges. Porn is easily accessible
to our youth, to everyone really. Pornhub caters to people who are seeking to
fulfill a longing for companionship. We do not wish to seek the companionship
of God. We want earthly desires to take away the responsibility of living our
lives in fellowship with God and do not want to account for our actions. It is
said here that these sins will be exposed and the demons as our prosecutors
will accuse of us all the sins we have committed in fornication and lusting
after those who we find desirable.
Next is the seventeenth torment.
Getting closer to paradise, but still a ways to go. Adultery is here exposed.
The seventeenth torment will see all that which we have done in relation to the
marriage bed laid bare. Have we been faithful to our spouse? Have we sought
another while being married to the person God has intended? For most Christians
and people this will be an easy tollhouse as for most keeping the marriage bed
sacred has been a duty and an honor. They have found the person they want to
spend the rest of their lives with and will do anything to keep it pure. But
for others, through divorce and their own pride they have sought to destroy it
whether openly or secretly. Swinging and websites like Ashley Madison have made
it easy for a person to cheat on their spouse with the help of few people or a
few simple clicks. People have rejected the love of their spouse and the love of
God for love of themselves. We must not
fall into that trap brothers and sisters. We must rise above it, whether we are
celibate for the glory of God or have found a spouse. We must keep the marriage
bed sacred and love the person God has entrusted to us with the upmost purity.
The eighteenth torment is
that of homosexuality and sodomic sins. These sins are those where we have
lusted after the person of our same gender our same kind. We have turned from
the love between a man and woman and twisted it. We see this with the LGBTQ+ community
today, calling for love is love. We see people accept it as natural, as a way
in which God has intended but this tollhouse and Christianity in general know
that it is not. It is a foreign concept that has invaded the minds and hearts
of the people of this generation. I have
known many people who were of this persuasion in my life and it is an unnatural
persuasion. It is not the life God has intended for us. Yet, through repentance
they too can be saved. It is not that God will condemn them and sentence them,
for we know God will forgive everything if we only confess. But confession must
be pure, it must be an about face. We cannot continue to live in sin when we
know it is not God’s chosen plan.
The next to last torment,
the nineteenth torment is that of heresies. I have spoken quite often on heresies
here, but this is once again a serious issue and must be taken accordingly.
Here we will be asked if we upheld the doctrines of the Church. Whether we held
within our hearts the true faith, or if we have allowed false teachings to permeate
our lives. Have we clung true to the faith that has been preserved for 2000 years
or have we allowed new ideas and teachings to be adopted as our own. The
Orthodox Church is unchanging and unrepentant in our belief that we have
protected the faith that God established and that everything outside of it is
heresy. Yes that will be off putting for some, but you must look and discover
the truth for yourself. I nor anyone else can come to a realization of faith
for you. Heresy is a dangerous game, one that if not carefully discerned can
lead to the corruption of the soul and eventually its condemnation.
Finally the twentieth and
last torment. Here the soul will experience the greatest of trials, where
nothing else but mercy will matter. Have
we granted mercy in our life time to those who deserve it? Have we rejected giving
it when it mattered most? This is the last and greatest trial the soul will
take up in the ascension to heaven. But do not fear, for God forgives all. We
must only be able to understand and ask for mercy. Here in this lifetime we
must seek mercy for all people, not just our own life. We must be willing to give
mercy to even those who we believe do not deserve it. It is difficult, but with
God’s grace and love in our hearts everything is possible.
We have reached the end of
our journey and have completed the road to paradise. The tollhouse road was
filled with distressing things. My mother told me other day after reading Part 1,
that I need to remember that the demons do not have the power to drag us to
hell. And yet she is indeed right. Only ourselves condemn us. The demons do not
have the authority to drag us down and bring us into hell. Only by the judgment
from God. Though this is figurative language and much of it is misunderstood by
even the most scholarly of priests and clergy, we must understand that these
torments are indeed real and will be used to judge us as to whether our
salvation has been secured through Jesus or if we were simply going through the
motions. Our lives are filled with opportunities to turn to Christ or to turn
away. I am saved, am being saved, and will be saved. It is not a once saved
always saved mentality. It is a living our lives in accordance to the commandments
and we must fulfill them to have a true Christian faith. For most they will
fall away. Others will rise to the occasion and live out as best they can the
teachings of Christ. So I leave you with a question. Will you take up your
cross and follow Christ or will you follow Satan and his demons?
Amen.
