Posted on 03/08/2006 7:22:57 PM PST by churchillbuff
Howard Storm, a former atheist whose brush with death turned him into a Protestant minister, says that he now believes in purgatory.
"It only makes sense," he says, "but I have trouble discussing this with my fellow ministers."
Featured here a couple months ago and also on MSNBC during Easter Week -- where he told his incredible story to a national audience -- Reverend Storm, considered by experts as one of the most convincing near-death cases, recounted his "dying" in Paris in 1985 from a perforated duodenum and after leaving his body finding himself with a group of hideous beings who attacked him as they led him to a foggy zone that descended toward "hell."
Storm says he was saved by Jesus after desperately pleading to God. After an extensive hospitalization he recovered -- and learned that a nun who had once been a student of his had been praying for him for years.
Storm credits that with saving him; after the episode he left his job as an professor at Northern Kentucky University and entered a seminary, becoming a minister.
He is now with the Zion United Church of Christ in Norwood, Ohio (near Cincinnati), and while some churches in that denomination can be ultra-liberal, he openly preaches against abortion and the New Age.
Still, we try to be careful with these cases, and we always issue the disclaimer that we can't endorse every view of such experiencers -- some of whom tend at times to put their own (and sometimes a nearly New Age) spin on what occurred. Like any form of mysticism, it is to be carefully discerned.
This is true in the case of Reverend Storm -- who himself acknowledges that some of his views have shifted since he became an active Christian ( including a few expressed in a book which was written before his faith was fully formed). These episodes are told through the filter of a person's framework.
But he is a man who exudes love (the single most important element of Christianity); many believe his experience was real; and he says he now believes not only in heaven and hell but also a state in-between where souls are "purged."
After his horrifying brush with death the concept of purgation was explained to him by a priest, says Reverend Storm, and "just rang so clear to me in my experience."
He says that when he "died" he was taken through a "foggy" region strikingly similar to what has been described in mystical literature [see An Unpublished Manuscript on Purgatory] -- and also similar to descriptions by modern visionaries who have told of a great "gray" area between hell and heaven.
Although a devout Protestant, Storm says that he considers Catholicism "the Mother Church" and is even interested in the Catholic apparition site of Medjugorje. He says God doesn't want division and that the main reason why he was on the road to hell was lack of love, pride, and disbelief.
Shirley MacLaine once had a Near Life experience.
I've been on FR since 1998. Have watched all the Peter in
Rome arguments. Not been debunked yet. The arguments to the contrary are quite compelling. The attempt to end debate by the "already been debunked" method is fooling and gets tiring.
I'm appalled, but not surprised, at the ignorance of Catholics about their own religion.
I used to be one, though by birth, not by choice. I, too, was ignorant of Catholicism and got all huffy when someone questioned it.
These false doctrines weren't believed even by Catholics for several centuries, but were added at long intervals and then made dogma. If any of you Catholics believe that these dogmas like infallibility and transubstantiation go back to the beginning you had better check your history. They came along much later.
Sources please... How do you explain the quotes from the early church listed on the linked site found below, ALL of which predate 593 AD?
There are many here on this thread already who have launched on the usual theme about Purgatory being "not found in Scripture." We've all been through this a number of times before.
First, it IS alluded to in Scripture, even if the name "Purgatory" is not specified. The situation is similar to the "Trinity," where the word itself is never used, but the concept is there in Scripture (although indistinctly) and extra-biblical clarification was provided by the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.
Second, this whole matter underscores yet again the point I find that I'm always making here: the witness of the early Church is powerful for illuminating all aspects of the Christian Faith. If the early Church believed in such things, by what authority do you or your spiritual ancestors (all of them flourishing post-1517) deny them now? How arrogant!
The problem here is that you have artificially excised the oral Tradition of the Church from your belief system. It's not so much a matter of "that's not scriptural" as it is a matter of "why have you jettisoned Tradition/oral teaching?" It's not our fault that you have renounced much of the source material for the Faith which comes down to us from the Apostles.
But you must ask yourself the question: if the Church of the martyrs, if the Church of the early Fathers, universally recognized the concept of Purgatory and the beneficial application of prayers for the dead (and various other beliefs that are "Catholic" in nature and denied by Protestants), how can you come along nearly 2000 years later and presume to deny them? How can the proto-Protestants of the 1500's have done the same thing nearly 1500 years after these beliefs were promulgated? Where's the authority for this? There is none. Yet an objective review of some of the pointed remarks on this thread alone indicates that, somehow, you believe that it is the Catholics who are the innovators and that their beliefs in this matter and others are tools of Satan!
If the early Church got this and so much else wrong, then Jesus was a liar and we are all wasting our time in any flavor of Christianity, for He could not preserve His Church from error as He promised in Matthew 28:20. If He could not do what He claimed, then He is not God. Either that, or it cannot mean much to you that God could not providentially guide His Church even from the get-go. You MUST, therefore, subscribe to a belief system similar to that of the Mormons, who believe that the Church apostatized immediately after the Apostolic Era. Some "safeguarding" on Christ's part *that* is!
If, on the other hand, the early Church was right, and such teachings were part of the Deposit of Faith, then you yourself err grievously, and likely fulfill the prophecy of St. Paul in 2Timothy 3:1-9, particularly verses 5-7. If you have cut yourselves off from the fullness of the Faith, and are, within yourselves, the source of endless Christian disunity that results in lack of effective witness to the secularists, the pagans and the ignorant, then you have no one but yourselves to blame when God takes you to task for it.
Pick an issue! Over and over, the witness of the early Church vindicates and ratifies current Catholic doctrine and teaching. We've treated to many of these over the last months on various threads here on FR. You cannot even come up with a rational explanation for the canon of the very Scriptures, yet you appeal to them without reference to the early Church's understanding of them! And, "perspicuous" though the Scriptures may be, according to your own fundamental theology, non-Catholics manage to twist them into a multiplicity of mutually contradictory passages of utterly no consequence to the world around us. The results are in every newspaper, every news broadcast, and nearly every piece of drivel coming from Hollywood!
The Church is the "pillar and ground of the Truth." (1Timothy 3:15) And the Truth is Christ. (John 14:6) His Truth is indivisible, since He is God and cannot be self-contradictory. He prayed hard that the Truth of His faith might not be divided (John 17, especially verses 20-21), so that it might be a proper and convincing witness to the world. And He promised to be with the Church "all days" till the end of time (Matthew 28:16-20), sending the Holy Spirit to guide it (John 16:13).
If the early Church didn't possess the Truth, and resorted to "fables" like Purgatory, again, you and I both are wasting our time. If they didn't possess the Truth, then neither do we! The same people who "invented" such "absurdities" also were responsible, for several hundred years, for handing-down the contents of Scripture, from one generation to the next. Their witness, if they were prone to lying and doctrinal invention, would be meaningless. Christianity is a sham in such a situation. I would urge you to chew on that for a bit, and then perhaps actually *read* the material from these links: http://www.catholic.com/library/Roots_of_Purgatory.asp
http://www.davidmacd.com/catholic/purgatory.htm
You should read all of the posts....
The passage in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 testifies to this ...
1 Corinthians 3:11 For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
12 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;
13 Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.
14 If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.
15 If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.
"if a book didn't specifically say a certain thing could be done, it can't be done"
You talk as though The Word Of God were just another book, to be argued with, taken with a grain of salt, even changed, as we see happening these days.
Not so. It's the only book God ever wrote, and He expects it to be taken more seriously. You eternity depends on it, not on the Pope. He won't be there when you die and stand before The Judge.
It's in the Catholic Encyclopedia. All you Catholics would do well to look into that book.
"You're letting the Catholic system put you back under the law.
What do you think sola-Scriptura is? Letter of the Law and nothing else is acceptable."
The spirit of The Word Of God is what I follow. Some scripture is literal, some parables, some symbolic.
"I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. (Psalm 119:99) That's close to the heart of Christianity and differs widely from Catholic teaching.
The evidence is overwhelming. The early Fathers treat to it often. The early Church had a small shrine built over Peter's remains within living memory of his burial, and Christian pilgrims went there from an early date. A book titled "The Bones of St. Peter," by John E Walsh (Image-Doubleday, 1982) gives a compelling yet readable account of this, with lots of sources. Read it for yourself.
Meantime, here is a smattering of the early Church's witness to St. Peter's ministry and martyrdom in Rome:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Peter_Roman_Residency.asp
well said!
Sorry Howard - it's not scriptural! (must be catholic)
So why are you here? If there is truly no need for men to "intersperse" themselves in another's relationship with God, what are you doing here?
SD
Whatever.
LOL. I'll mark you down in the "words mean things" category then.
SD
Infallibility and transubstantion, among many other doctrines, were not formally declared to be doctrines until it became necessary to do so, due to some challenge or other. That's how some beliefs that had been around since the Apostles were not explicitly declared to be doctrines until many centuries later, at which point they were not invented but declared to be doctrinal.
I'm surprised you didn't know that.
Are you really?
Most former Catholics (I once was found, but now I'm lost) have a deeply shallow understanding of their former religion.
SD
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