Aerial toll house

God answered his prayers (according to this account) by sending Theodora herself to Gregory; and told him, in great detail, about her journey through the toll houses.

"[8][9] In the Greek and Slavonic Euchologion, in the canon for the departure of the soul by St. Andrew, the following words are found in Ode 7: "All holy angels of the Almighty God, have mercy upon me and save me from all the evil toll-houses".

"Do thou count me worthy to escape the hordes of bodiless barbarians, and rise through the aerial depths and enter into Heaven" (Ode 8, p. 81).

For example, Saint Theodoros the Great Ascetic [fr] instructs to "reflect on the dreadful reckoning that is to come, how the harsh keepers of the toll homes will bring before as one by one the actions, words and thoughts which they suggested but which we accepted and made our own".

[16] The same way, Saint John of Karpathos wrote: "When the soul leaves the body, the enemy advances to attack it, fiercely reviling it and accusing it of its sins in a harsh and terrifying manner.

"[17] "The tradition of the tollgates was firmly established throughout the east long before the end of late antiquity, although it received typically Byzantine elaboration in the tenth-century Life of Basil the Younger (d.

[1][19] A number of contemporary church figures support the teaching on toll-houses, including Ephraim (Moraitis),[20] Constantine Cavarnos,[21] Fr.

Hierotheos (Vlachos),[23] John of Shanghai and San Francisco,[24] Justin Popović in his Dogmatics of the Orthodox Church,[6] Nikolaj Velimirović,[25] and Michael Pomazansky.

He stated that since "[s]uch a doctrine was almost unknown during the first millennium, and even during the second, it remains but one vision of the fate of the soul among other alternatives"; he adds that since the only references to this belief during the first millennium are to be found in St. Athanasius' Life of Anthony, in an homily "widely regarded as spurious[ly]" attributed to Cyril of Alexandria, and in "pious tales attributed to a certain Macarius and Anastasius of Sinai", the doctrine "fails spectacularly" to pass the test of the Vincentian canon.

[32] However, two dedicated chapters in the book The Departure of the Soul According to the Teaching of the Orthodox Church allegedly reveal for the first time over 100 falsifications, misrepresentations, and errors in Puhalo's and Azkoul's writings.

Both writers' works are asserted to contain an inordinate number of gross misrepresentations and errors, all attempting to support their allegedly incorrect opinions about the Eastern Orthodox teaching on the toll-houses.