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he was taken through a "foggy" region strikingly similar to what has been described in mystical literature [see An Unpublished Manuscript on Purgatory] -- and also similar to descriptions by modern visionaries who have told of a great "gray" area between hell and heaven.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.
The origin of the doctrine of Purgatory was established in 593 AD by Gregory the Great. It was proclaimed dogma by The Council of Florence in 1439.
It's a lie.
"It's a lie."
Indeed it is. Still people prefer a lie over truth!
Hell is going ot be a VERY crowded place.
And heaven will be filled with some that you didn't think deserved to be there. Just remember that it's not your call, and the position of supreme being is filled.
CC
Now that made me spit coffee on the keyboard!
hahahaha, spewing coffee this morning. thanks.
SOmetimes, God does use experiences to help us realize we need the Savior. However, one should not rely on experience to trust in one's salvation. One should wholely trust in God's Word because experiences can be explained away. God's Word remains, no matter what experience we have.
And this is the great problem with exalting experiences above the Word of God. To a person like this, their experience - though in conflict with what the Bible teaches - trumphs everything. In fact, you can't have rational conversation with someone like this.
ampu
LOL. If you really step out of line, you will be consigned to debate color schemes for pews and carpet for the rest of eternity.
sounds interesting.
Pell and Teller on BS had very interesting and even scientific facts about NDE. Scientists have done some interesting experiments to recreate the conditions that cause the brain to shut down.
So you believe that these two people would be treated exactly the same:
1) A Mother Theresa type - spends their entire life helping others, sacrificing themselves for others, never hurting anyone and believes that Jesus is their saviour. This person dies and goes straight to heaven.
2) Adolph Hitler, seconds before his death, expresses his beleif that Jesus is his saviour. He dies and goes straight to heaven.
You really believe there is no difference between these two and they will both go directly to heaven.
Then why on earth should anyone be good? Why not be selfish and live only for pleasure - as long as you get "saved" ten seconds before you die?
That makes no sense to me at all.
"What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him?"
"If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."
Do you want to be shown, you shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, and the scripture was fulfilled which says, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness"; and he was called the friend of God."
"You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone."
"And in the same way was not also Rahab the harlot justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead."
So, how many times does the bible have to tell you - faith itself is not enough?
Protestant ministers usually can skip purgatory. They're allowed to marry...
During her first one, she was a Christian and saw the stereotypical light, warmth, etc.
At the time of her second one she was in a well known faith group. She relates going to hell. Interestingly, she is still in that pseudo-Christian faith group.
I don't know what you think that has to do with purgatory, since everyone in purgatory is already saved by the Blood of Christ. They are merely completing their sanctification so they can enter into the presence of an utterly righteous and perfect God, because (as Scripture says) nothing unclean can enter heaven.
Again, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
The verse doesn't say that, sorry. Souls in hell are "absent from the body" but are certainly not "present with the Lord". Paul writes that he wishes to be (a) absent from the body and (b) present with the Lord; not that (a) necessarily implies (b).
Scripture doesn't do you much good if you read it carelessly and shoehorn it into your preconceived ideas of what it ought to say. Protestants consistently accuse Catholics of doing that, but I find that Protestants do it every bit as much or more.
You mean according to your interpretation - which must, of course be correct because.......you say so. I'm glad that you know exactly what God meant when he inspired the bible. Too bad that billions of others are wrong and only you are right.
"Judge not lest ye be judged."
"New York is a hellhole! And you know how I feel about hellholes!"
-Homer Simpson
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