The world is the life of men on earth solely for the sake of the earth, solely for the purpose of satisfying their sinful desires, for the purpose of carnal pleasure, for the purpose of material progress, with a goal completely opposite to the lofty and all-good purpose with which man was placed by God on earth. "The world is the general name of all passions. The world is carnal life and carnal wisdom. Where the movement and action of the passions have ceased, there the world has died." Thus the great instructor of monasticism, St. Isaac of Syria [1505], is inquisitive. The Holy Spirit commands His disciples to hate this world, to renounce this world, when He says: "Love not the world, neither are you in the world." If anyone loves the world, there is no love of the Father in him. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of this world. And the world passes away, and the lust thereof: but he who does the will of God endures forever [1506]. The whole world lies in evil [1507]. The love of this world is enmity to God: for whoever desires the world to be a friend is an enemy of God [1508].

But when the Holy Scriptures say that God so loved the world, as He gave His Only-begotten Son to eat, so that whosoever believeth in it shall not perish, but have eternal life,[1509] then by the word "peace" we must understand all men, not excluding sinners, as the Apostle John the Theologian says: Wherefore the love of God hath manifested itself in us, as God hath sent His Only-begotten Son into the world, that we may live by Him [1510].

Again: and the whole of human society, in conjunction with their sinful life, in conjunction with their bodily pleasures, with their material progress, with their pandemonium, is called "the world." This world is hostile to God and His servants. If the world hates you, said the God-Man to His disciples, "lead, for you will hate Me before you." If you were of the world, the world would love its own: as you are from the world, but you have been chosen from the world, for this reason the world hates you [1511]. This world has been and remains alien to both God the Creator and God the Redeemer; he recognizes the persecution and murder of God's servants as the service of truth [1512].

The head and ruler of this world, hostile to God, is the fallen angel; Other fallen angels and people carried away by him help and serve him in this insane and audacious battle. The earth itself and its creatures, formerly subject to Adam, after the fall of Adam, together with him submitted to Satan. Satan himself thus testified to his power over the world: having dared to approach the Son of God for temptation, he led Him up to a high mountain and, having shown all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, said: "To Thee will I give all this power and their glory: for it is delivered to me, and to Him if I will, I will give it" [1513]. Satan calls the power over the world not his own, but his self-loyalty. Exactly: she is devoted to him. "The enemy, who deceived Adam," says St. Macarius the Great, "and thus assumed dominion over him, deprived him of all power and proclaimed him the prince of this world. At first, God made man the prince of this world and the lord of all visible things... When he gave himself over to the flattery of the enemy, he at the same time betrayed his superiors to the deceiver. Sowing for the sake of guilt, the Magi and sorcerers, acting contrary to the power, by the permission of God, a certain wondrous creator appears, possessing poisonous beasts and entering into fire and water without harm" [1514]. For this reason, the Holy Scriptures call the fallen angel the ruler of the world, the prince of this world [1515].

Idolatry

Satan was not satisfied with the fact that he subdued man and with the earth under his power, that he kept him in captivity, arousing in him various passions and fettering him with them, that by serving sin he brought him into the service of himself. The thought that enveloped the angel in heaven did not leave him in the heavenly realm, whither he was cast down from heaven as in the antechamber of hell: the thought of becoming equal to God. He fulfilled it by introducing idolatry on earth. The human race, gradually multiplying on earth, at the same time more and more passed from the satisfaction of needs to the satisfaction of whims and sinful desires. Not compatible with such a life is true knowledge of God and self-knowledge! Men, drowned in earthly cares and pleasures, having become exclusively flesh, have lost the very concept of the true God. But the feeling of worship of God is a feeling inalienable from the human heart, as innate and natural to it: it is not destroyed by the fall, it is devoid of correctness. Led by this unconscious feeling, men gave divine worship to the inventor and parent of sin, the fallen angel and his host of demons. Man deified the sin that killed him in all its forms, deified the representatives of sin – the demons. He recognized the satisfaction of all passions as divine pleasures. And fornication, and drunkenness, and theft, and murder are given honor. Each passion was depicted as its own idol or idol. The idol was a symbol of a demon, completely alien to life, completely dead to spiritual sensations. Before such idols both public and private or domestic worship was performed; before idols, sacrifices were made of animals, and often of people. The death of the spirit was strong because it was reflected in a negative life. But the outward service to idols was in essence the service of demons, as the Divine Apostle Paul teaches us [1516]. Idolic temples and idols themselves were the favorite abode of demons. From these dwellings they uttered voices and prophecies to deceive unfortunate mankind. And man himself, having ceased to be the temple of the Living God, became the temple and dwelling place of Satan [1517].

Idolatry has taken hold of all men and the whole earth. A few chosen people have preserved true knowledge of God and divine services. Subsequently, God chose and set apart the people of Israel to serve Him, giving them a written Law. But the disease of idolatry was so strong in fallen mankind that even the chosen people, often abandoning the worship of the One True God, strove to worship idols.

Man, having been deprived of the Divine Light of the Holy Spirit by his fall, had to be content with his own, meager light – reason.

The human sciences, being the fruit of the fall, satisfying man, presenting to him God's grace and God Himself as unnecessary, blasphemy, rejecting, and humiliating the Holy Spirit, have become the most powerful instrument and means of sin and the devil to maintain and strengthen the fall. The light of men united with the light of demons and formed human learning (wisdom), hostile to God, corrupting man with devil-like pride [1518]; Overwhelmed by the disease of learning, the sage of this world subordinates everything to his mind and serves as his own idol, fulfilling Satan's proposal: "Ye shall be as God, leading good and evil." Learning, left to itself, is self-deception, is demonic deception, is knowledge full of falsehood and leads the scientist into a false attitude both to himself and to everything [1519]. Learning is an abomination and foolishness before God; it is possession. It proclaims its blindness to be the most satisfactory knowledge and vision, and thus makes blindness incurable, and the fall it preserves the inalienable property of the unfortunate scribe and Pharisee [1520]. Carnal wisdom is enmity against God: for he does not submit to the law of God, for he can do less. Carnal wisdom is death [1521]. The Holy Spirit commands the rejection of earthly wisdom for those who wish to approach God and become a partaker of spiritual wisdom [1522]. The Apostle Paul notes that few of the scholars have accepted the Christian faith [1523]; on the contrary, for these imaginary and pompous sages, spiritual wisdom, which is all-abundant and all-perfect in Christ, seemed madness [1524]. Philosophers and artists were the greatest champions of idolatry and enemies of the true knowledge of God. After the establishment of the Christian faith in the world, learning gave birth to innumerable heresies, and with them it tried to overthrow the holy Faith. The greatest crime – the murder of the God-Man – was committed by the scholars in the name of their wisdom and in the name of their law [1525]. In our time, learning returns the pagans who have accepted Christianity to paganism and, rejecting Christianity, reintroduces idolatry and service to Satan, changing forms for the most convenient deception of mankind. A rare, very rare scribe learns the Kingdom of Heaven and brings out the new teaching of the Spirit before the company of his brethren, cloaking this teaching in the old rags of human learning, so that it may be more easily accepted by those who love the old than the new [1526].

Death and Hell

After the fall of the first man and the rejection of him by God, and in him of the entire human race, all men, having ended their earthly pilgrimage with the death of the body, descended with their souls into the underworld of the dungeons of hell. Hell is in the bowels of the earth [1527]. There burns the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels [1528], who, 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 worm that never sleeps, there is weeping without consolation, uninterrupted and in vain. There are various torments for the variety of sins; there are different degrees of torment corresponding to different degrees of sinfulness. Spiritual death, essential death, which struck the human race in its ancestors, expressing its power over the body of the earthly pilgrim during his earthly pilgrimage through illnesses and other innumerable sufferings, at the end of his earthly pilgrimage expresses this power by the most terrible phenomenon: the separation of the soul from the body. After the separation of the soul from the body, the power of death over a person is fully developed (here we are talking about the times that preceded the Redeemer): the decaying and stinking body 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 cast into eternal fire, as definitively belonging to eternal death; the souls of the righteous descended into hell, into its less deep and terrible prisons, where they dwelt, languishing in life in hell and together comforting themselves with the hope of redemption. All the circumstances of earthly life prove to man that he is an exile on earth for a terrible crime; but death proves this most of all. It shows neither respect nor regret for anything high and important human. It amazes youth, beauty, genius, power, and wealth. Nothing can prevent man from inexorable death, which serves as empirical proof for the human race of its fall, its transgression before God, its execution. It bears witness before men that man is a creature and a slave, rebelling against his Creator and Lord, that the most famous and most important deeds of man for the earth mean nothing for eternity, that the lofty things of man are an abomination before God [1529]. Death is an execution. Striking every man, it proves that every man is a criminal; By striking all human beings without exception, it proves that humanity is punished for a crime common to all mankind. Death reveres piety alone, and the prayer of the righteous can sometimes stop the axe of death and postpone its hour [1530].

The Prosperity of Evil on Earth

When the human race had spent many millennia in cruel enslavement to a fallen angel, then the Redeemer promised by God appeared on earth. Before we begin to describe this greatest and most miraculous event, let us also look at the state of the ill-fated world at the time when the Lord descended to earth and became man for the renewal and salvation of mankind. The world was immersed in idolatry throughout its entire space. Men, hating one another, envious of one another, poured their blood on the whole surface of the earth in fierce battles, in which numerous peoples were exterminated and disappeared, reaped by the sword and deprived of nationality by slavery and sold in the markets of the universe like cattle or soulless goods. The calamities and ruin of mankind are recognized as the greatest glory for mankind, and the conquerors, stained with the blood of their brethren, were proclaimed their gods during their lifetime. Other evildoers, distinguished by abominable vices, were given divine honor after their death. The satisfaction of the most shameful passions was considered the highest pleasure. Some of the most outcast men entered into open communion with Satan, putting on his power, and contributed to the strengthening of his dominion over the earth and mankind [1531]. This domination reached its full development. The chosen people of Israel also bowed to this dominion. Greatly diminished in numbers and degraded in civil terms, this people fell under the power of idolatrous peoples. His inner, essential strength, which consisted in communion with God through the knowledge and fulfillment of His will, was exhausted. Life according to God's commandments, which forms in man purity of mind and heart, which is overshadowed by Divine grace, enlightening man with true spiritual reason and theology, was replaced in most cases by the school study of the Law, combined with neglect of God-pleasing life, which the scribes and Pharisees, as the Jewish scholars of that time were called, tried to replace with pretense and hypocrisy. These scholars, darkened by satanic pride, full of contempt and hatred for all other classes of the people, slaves of the passions, incapable of faith because of their unlimited and frenzied attachment to earthly glory and earthly advantages, capable of all kinds of crimes because of this attachment, the perpetrators of these crimes, seized their doctrine in power, rejected the commandments of God from it, introduced into it their absurd traditions, striving in their blindness to perdition, they themselves drew the people led by them to it [1532]. Few, very few people remained faithful to God by their very lives and by their true knowledge of God, depending on such a life. Their holy names are in the Holy Gospel [1533].