Such experiences have occurred to Orthodox Christians right down to the present century. They are clearly not dreams or visions, but waking experiences of the demons as they are in themselves — but only, of course, after one’s spiritual eyes have been opened to see these beings who are normally invisible to human eyes. Until quite recently it was perhaps only a few “old-fashioned” or “simple-minded” Orthodox Christians who could still believe in the “literal truth” of such accounts; even now some Orthodox find them hard to accept, so pervasive has been the modern belief that angels and demons are “pure spirits” and do not act in such “material” ways. Only with the greatly increased demonic activity of recent years do these accounts once again begin to seem at least plausible. Now also the widespread “after-death” experiences have opened up the realm of non-material reality to many ordinary people who have had no contact with the occult, and a coherent and true explanation of this realm and its beings has become one of the needs of the times. Only Orthodox Christianity can supply this explanation, having preserved the authentic Christian doctrine to our own days.
Now let us see more specifically how angels (and demons) appear at the moment of death.
CHAPTER THREE
Appearances of Angels and Demons at the Hour of Death
In these experiences the newly-deceased is usually met by two angels. This is how the author of “Unbelievable for Many” describes them: “Hardly had the old nurse uttered these words (‘May he inherit the Kingdom of Heaven!’), than two angels appeared at my side; for some reason in one of them I recognized my Guardian Angel, but the other was unknown to me” (p. 22). (Later a pious wanderer told him that this was the “meeting angel.”) St. Theodora, whose journey after death through the aerial “toll-houses” is related in the Life of St. Basil the New (10th century, March 26), related that “when I was at the end of my strength, I suddenly saw two radiant angels of God, who were like splendid youths of inexpressible beauty. Their faces were brighter than the sun, their gaze was full of love, the hair of their head was white like snow, around their head a golden radiance was poured out, their garments glistened like lightning and were girded about the chest with golden sashes in cross-form” (see translation in Eternal Mysteries Beyond the Grave, p. 70). The 6th-century bishop of Gaul, St. Salvius, thus describes his own death experience: “When my cell shook four days ago, and you saw me lying dead, I was raised up by two angels and carried to the highest peak of heaven” (St. Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, VII, 1; see the life of St. Salvius in The Orthodox Word, 1977, no. 5).
The mission of these angels is to take the soul of the newly-reposed on its journey into the afterlife. There is nothing vague about them, either in appearance or action; having a human appearance, they firmly grasp the “subtle body” of the soul and conduct it away. “The light-bearing angels immediately took my soul in their arms” (St. Theodora, see Eternal Mysteries, p. 71).
“Having taken me by the arms, the angels carried me right through the wall of the ward ...” (“Unbelievable for Many,” p. 22). St. Salvius was “raised up by two angels.” Such examples could be multiplied.
It cannot be asserted, therefore, that the “being of light” in today’s experiences — who has no visible form, who does not conduct the soul anywhere, who stops to engage the soul in dialogue and shows “flashbacks” of one’s past life — is a guiding angel of the afterlife. Not every being that appears as an angel is such in fact, for even Satan fashioneth himself into an angel of light (II Cor. 11:14); and so these beings without even the appearance of angels can certainly not be identified as such. Unmistakable encounters with angels seem almost never to occur in today’s “after-death” experiences — for a reason we shall attempt to explain below.
Is it possible, then, that the “being of light” is actually a demon masquerading as a formless “angel of light” in order to tempt the dying even at the moment when the soul is leaving the body? Dr. Moody (Life after Life, pp. 107-8; Reflections, pp. 58-60) and other investigators actually raise this question, only to dismiss the possibility as not in harmony with the “good” results the apparition produces in the dying. To be sure, the views of “evil” of such investigators are naive in the extreme; Dr. Moody thinks that “Satan would presumably tell his servants to follow a course of hate and destruction” (Life after Life, p. 108) and seems to be totally unaware of the Christian literature which describes the actual nature of demonic temptations, which invariably are presented to their victims as something “good.”
What, then, is the Orthodox teaching about demonic temptations at the hour of death? St. Basil the Great, in his interpretation of the words of the Psalm, Save me from them that persecute me, and do Thou deliver me lest at any time like a lion he seize my soul (Ps. 7:1-2), offers this explanation: “I think that the noble athletes of God who have wrestled considerably with the invisible enemies during the whole of their lives, after they have escaped all of their persecutions and reached the end of their life, are examined by the prince of this world in order that, if they are found to have wounds from wrestling or any stains or effects of sin, they may be detained. But, if they are found unwounded and sinless, they may be brought by Christ into their rest as being unconquered and free. Therefore, the Prophet prays both for his life here and for his future life.
Here he says: Save me from them that persecute me, and there, at the time of triaclass="underline" Deliver me, lest at any time like a lion he seize my soul. And this you can learn from the Lord Himself, Who before His suffering said: Now the prince of this world cometh, and he hath nothing in Me (John 14:30)” (St. Basil, Exegetic Homilies, Catholic University of America Press, 1963, pp. 167-68).1
Indeed, it is not only Christian strugglers who have to face the testing by demons at the hour of death. St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, vividly describes what often happens to ordinary sinners at their death. “Most persons may be then heard relating horrors, and fearful visions, the spectacle of which the dying are unable to endure, but often shake their very bed with great power, gaze fearfully on the bystanders, the soul urging itself inwards, unwilling to be torn away from the body, and unable to bear the sight of the approaching angels. If human beings that are frightful strike terror into us beholding them, when we see angels threatening, and stern powers, among our visitors, what shall we not suffer, the soul being forced from the body, and dragged away, and bewailing much, all in vain?” (Homily 53 on St. Matthew, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Eerdmans edition, 1973, vol. 10, pp. 331-32.)
The Orthodox Lives of Saints have numerous accounts of such demonic spectacles which appear at the moment of death, usually with the aim of frightening the dying person and making him despair over his salvation. St. Gregory in his Dialogues, for example, tells of a certain rich man who was a slave to numerous passions: “A short time before he died, he saw hideous spirits standing before him, threatening fiercely to carry him to the depths of hell…. The entire family gathered round, weeping and lamenting. Though they could not actually see the evil spirits and their horrible attacks, they could tell from the sick man’s own declarations, from the pallor on his face and from this trembling body, that the evil spirits were present. In mortal terror of these horrible images, he kept tossing from side to side on his bed.... And now, nearly worn out and despairing of any relief, he shouted, ‘Give me time until morning! Hold off at least until morning!’ With that his life was snatched away” (Dialogues IV, 40, pp. 245-46). St. Gregory reports other similar incidents, as does Bede in his History of the English Church and People (Book V, Chs. 13, 15). Even in 19th- century America such experiences were not at all uncommon; a recent anthology contains numerous 19th-century death-bed visions of unrepentant sinners with such titles as “I am in the flames — pull me out!”, “Oh save me! They drag me down!”, “I am going to hell!”, and “The devil is coming to drag my soul down to hell!” (John Myers, Voices from the Edge of Eternity, Spire Books, Old Tappan, N.J., 1973, pp. 71, 109, 167, 196, etc.)
1
This passage probably refers more particularly to the toll-houses which are encountered after death; in Chapter Six below there is a detailed discussion of the experience of demonic trials and temptations undergone by the soul both before and after death.