|
FROM A RECENT EMAIL:
“I believe purgatory does exist because I believe God will give somebody a second chance to repent. Am I right or wrong?”
The Bible says absolutely nothing about purgatory. All the teaching on purgatory as a doctrine is a fabrication made up solely by the Catholic Church. It has no validation in Scripture whatsoever. In essence, the teaching of purgatory says that what Christ did at the cross is insufficient; consequently, there must be something added to His work in order for salvation to be procured. This has to be one of the greatest insults to Christ that could ever be perpetrated by any individual or so-called church doctrine.
Purgatory is strictly a teaching of the Catholic Church that it is the state or condition in which those who have died in a state of grace, but with some attachment to sin, suffer for a time before they are admitted to the glory and happiness of heaven.
The Catholic Church also teaches that Christians can indulge in two types of sin—mortal sins (which will damn the soul) and venial sins (which will not damn the soul but will consign the person to purgatory). All, therefore, who die in venial sins or with the temporal punishment of their sins still unpaid must atone for them in purgatory.
The Catholic Church also believes that the faithful on earth, the saints in heaven, and the souls in purgatory are united together in love and prayer. According to its doctrine, the faithful on earth —still struggling to win the victory of salvation—make up the church militant, while the saints in heaven are the church triumphant, and the souls in purgatory—still suffering in order to be perfectly purified from the effects of sin—constitute the church suffering.
All of these teachings are contradicted by the New Testament. The following verse gives the child of God full access to heaven: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Heb. 10:19-20). It is a grand conclusion to the doctrinal argument of the worthiness of every child of God to enter the portals of glory. In other words, all, by accepting the blood sacrifice paid for by our Savior, have instant citizenship in heaven (when God calls us home to be with Him).
Prayers for the dead go hand in hand with purgatory. In Catholic doctrine, prayer cannot be completely efficacious without the priests as intermediaries, and no priestly functions can be rendered unless there is special payment for them. Therefore, in every land, we find the priesthood of the Catholic Church devouring widows’ houses and making merchandise of the tender emotions of sorrowing relatives sensitive to the immortal destiny of their beloved dead.
The Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory is purely pagan and cannot for a moment stand in the light of Scripture. The Bible tells us, “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (I John 1:7). On the other hand, for those who die without personal union with Christ and consequently are unwashed, unjustified, and unsaved, there can be no other cleansing. I John 5:12 says, “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”
So the whole doctrine of purgatory is a system of purely pagan imposture, dishonoring God and deluding men who live in sin with the hope of atoning for it after death, thus cheating them out of their property and their salvation. As one of our SBN viewers put it, “People, they sometimes use that purgatory system to say, ‘Well, I’m bad now, but maybe I’ll get the chance to do this right in purgatory.’ So, it kind of gives you a license to misbehave so to speak, in this life.” But there are no second chances.
Nearly forty years ago, we ran an article in The Evangelist written by Sandy Carson and printed with his permission. Mr. Carson was a former Catholic priest who served in the Diocese of Alexandria, Louisiana, from 1955 to 1972, and what he wrote on the subject of purgatory is still enlightening and timely. The sidebar, at right, is an excerpt from that article.
Romans 3:21-26 clearly says that righteousness is totally from God as a gift, not as a result of any of our works (including suffering in an imagined purgatory). One would not have right standing (righteousness) before God if he still owed Him some debt of punishment. Again, righteousness is the result of faith in Jesus Christ alone, and never the result of works on our part. There is no place or necessity for any purgatory.
|
