Is There A Purgatory?

The Bible never speaks of a place where one can go to be purified of his sin. Rather, it always speaks of a Person to whom we can go to be purified: Jesus Christ. God tells us that those who refuse to trust Christ to cleanse them from their sins are condemned: Whoever believes in Him avoids condemnation, but whoever does not believe is already condemned for not believing in the name of God's only Son (John 3:18). There are only two choices: Whoever believes in the Son has life eternal. Whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure the wrath of God (John 3:36; See also Revelation 20:15; Luke 16:19-31, especially verse 26). Anyone who accepts Christ is completely saved: There is no condemnation now for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Saying that there is no condemnation, certainly eliminates the flames of purgatory.

Another passage which clearly excludes the idea of purgatory is, their sins and transgressions I will remember no more (Hebrews 10:17). If, as the Bible says, God no longer remembers the sins of those who are in Christ, He does not punish them for these sins. To do so would be saying that Christ had not made full payment for them and that God the Father still remembered them. (See also Romans 5:8-11; Hebrews 10:14-18; Psalm 103:12).

Anyone who does not believe that Christ has completely saved him, has not completely trusted Christ to save him. That is, he does not believe that Christ's sacrifice has paid for all of his sins, and thinks he must pay for some of them himself. However, we are saved when we stop trusting what we can do, and start trusting Christ to save us.

The idea that Christ's sacrifice is not sufficient to cleanse us from all of our sins would condemn a great sinner such as the thief who was crucified with Jesus to suffer a long time in purgatory if not for all eternity in hell! Instead, there was nothing left over that Christ's death on the Cross did not cover. When the thief placed his trust in Christ, Jesus said to him, I assure you: this day you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43).

If purgatory existed, and the mass helped people to get out, the rich would have a tremendous advantage by being able to pay for masses to shorten their suffering. The poor instead, would be left to the mercy of the occasional priest who might say an unpaid mass for them. One ex-priest wrote, "If we really believed that the mass would save people from the flames of purgatory, would we make them pay for it? I would even save a dog if I saw one in a fire, and I would never even think of asking to be paid!"

Purgatory was evidently a pagan idea. Virgil, the pagan Latin poet who lived 70 - 19 B.C. divided the departed souls into three different places in his writings: One for the good, one for the damned, and a third where the less bad could pay for their sins. Since the idea of purgatory existed outside of the church before it came into the church, it is probable that it was brought in by contact with pagans like Virgil. There was a great influx of non-Biblical ideas into the church around 300 A.D. when the Roman Emperor Constantine took many unsaved people in as members of the church.

In any event, there is no mention of purgatory in the Bible. Some would try, however, to make the idea sound somewhat Biblical by referring to 2 Maccabees 12:41-45, a passage in one of the apocryphal books written between the times of the Old and New Testaments. These books were never accepted as part of the Hebrew Old Testament, nor quoted in the New Testament, but they are included in the Catholic Bible, though usually with an explanation that they are of a less inspired category. Apart from this passage in 2 Maccabees, the apocrypha is little used by the Catholic church to support a doctrinal position.

It is important to notice that this passage does not speak of purgatory at all, but actually condemns idolatry, particularly the practice of wearing little images on a necklace or such. Hebrew soldiers were found wearing this sort of thing after a battle, and their buddies, on making this discovery, realized that they had died in the sin of idolatry. They then counseled prayer for their souls. The Roman Catholic position is that prayer for them would have been unnecessary if they were in heaven and useless if they were in hell, so there must be another place. The logic seems good, but the result contradicts the clear teaching of the inspired Scripture. Contradicting inspired Scripture with a philosophical response based on an apparent inference from the Apocrypha is a very weak argument indeed. The very word "Apocrypha," which comes from the Greek word for hidden, has come to mean "false," or "of doubtful authorship."

How do I know this? Because I remember what happened to me. And time doesn’t work the same way it does up here. Everything is faster there. Which means 1 day here could be a month there. Some people get out via resuscitation(lucky) or reincarnation(because they screwed up before). Some people don’t. And when you get out, after realizing how you screwed the pooch, you get a choice. Either a clean slate, which is encouraged, or you can hold onto what you did for dear life and you have a chance to remember.

Thank you, JFoobar, for posting your personal testimony. That takes courage. You are not alone!. There are many stories that share your experience. One in particular, has remained with me since I first read it. It has been approved by several in positions of authority who scrutinize such testimonies to prevent it from being used to mislead faithful christians.

Gloria Polo died after being terribly burned by a lightning bolt on May 5, 1995 in Bogotá, Colombia; she was judged, and then came back to life. This is her testimony. It is an English translation from the original Portuguese; hence the stilted text.

THE TESTIMONY OF GLORIA POLO

That which I am about to recount to you happened May 5, 1995 at the National University of Bogotá, starting from 4:30 pm.
I am a dentist. I and my 23-year-old cousin, who is also a dentist, were studying in order to get the specialization. On that day, which was a Friday, about 4:30 pm, we were walking together with my husband toward the Faculty of Dentistry to find some books that we needed. With my cousin I walked under a small umbrella while my husband wore a rain coat and to shelter himself better he was walking near the wall of the General Library. We two were jumping from one side to the other in order to avoid the puddles while staying close to the trees. When we jumped over a rather large puddle we were hit by a lightning bolt which left us both carbonized.
My cousin died immediately. The lightning bolt entered from behind, burning him inside totally, and came out through his feet, leaving him intact externally. Not withstanding his young age, he was a very religious young man. He had a great devotion for Baby Jesus and he always carried around his neck His image, a quartz medal. The authorities said that it was the quartz that attracted the lightning bolt to my cousin, because it entered into the heart burning everything…
Remaining intact externally, he immediately had a cardiac arrest which did not respond to the attempts of reanimation by the doctors, and he died on the spot.
As for me, the lightning bolt entered from my shoulder, burning terribly the whole body, inside and out; in short my flesh disappeared including my breasts, especially the left one, leaving a hole. It caused to disappear the flesh of my abdomen, of my legs, of the ribs; it carbonized the liver, it gravely burned the kidneys, the lungs, the ovaries… and came out through the right foot.
For my contraceptive, I was using a spiral (an intrauterine devise in the form of a T), and because of the material with which it is made (copper) it is a good conductor of electricity; the lightning bolt carbonized and pulverized also the ovaries which became like two raisins.
I remained in cardiac arrest, just about without life, with the body that was jumping due to the electricity that was still present in that place.
This body that you see here, now, this reconstructed body, is the fruit of the mercy of Our Lord.

The Souls of Purgatory

Note that I was an atheist, but there I began to cry out: “Souls of Purgatory! Please, pull me out of here! I beg you, help me!”
While I was crying out, I began to hear crying thousands and thousands of persons, youth… Yes, above all youth, with so much suffering! I perceived that there, in that horrible place, in that quagmire of hate and of suffering, they were gnashing their teeth, with screams and laments that filled me with compassion and that I will never be able to forget… (Already 10 years have passed, but I still cry and suffer, when I remember the suffering of all those persons)… I was saying, I understood that in that place there were those persons who, in one moment of desperation, they committed suicide… Now they are in those torments, with those horrible beings near them, surrounded by demons that torment them. But the cruelest of these torments was the absence of God, because there one does not feel God. I understood that, those who in one moment of desperation took their lives, had to remain there, within those torments, until all the time that they might have spent on the earth had passed: because all those who kill themselves, go out of the Divine Order.
Those poor persons, above all so many youth, many, many… They cry and suffer much… If man might know the suffering that awaits him, never would anyone make the decision to take his life!
Do you know what the greatest torment is, there? It is to see how one’s own parents, or relatives, who are alive, are crying and suffering with a tremendous sense of guilt: if I would have punished, or if I would not have punished, if I had said to him, or if I had not said to him, if I had done this or that… In the end, these regrets so terrible, - a true hell for those who love them and remain in this life - , they are what makes them suffer the most. It is the greatest torment for them, and it is here that the demons rage, showing these scenes:
“Look how your mother cries, look how she suffers, look how your father suffers, look how they are desperate, how they are distressed, how they blame themselves and discuss, accusing each other reciprocally, look at all the suffering that you caused them. Look how they rebel against God. Look at your family… All this because of your fault!”
That which these poor souls need, is that those who remain down here might begin a walk of conversion, that they might change their life, that they might do works of charity, that they might visit the sick… And that they might offer Masses in suffrage for the soul of the dead. These souls benefit enormously from all of this. In fact, the souls who find themselves in Purgatory can no longer do anything for themselves. Nothing! But God yes, through the Mass. Also we must help them in this way.
I thus understood that those poor souls could not help me, and in this suffering, in this anguish, I began again to cry out: “But here there is an error! See I am a saint! I never stole! I never killed! I never did anything evil to anyone! On the contrary, before failing in my business, I imported the best products from Switzerland, I extracted and adjusted teeth, many times I did not require the clients to pay if they were unable. I bought things and I gave them to the poor! What am I doing here?!...”
I was vindicating my rights! I, who was so good, who would have to go straight to Heaven, what was I doing here?!
I went every Sunday to Mass, even though I considered myself an atheist and I did not pay attention to what the priest was saying, I never missed Mass. If I missed Mass five times in my whole life, it was a lot! What is it that I was doing there?!
“But what am I doing, here? Pull me out of here! Take me out of here!” I continued shouting terrified, with those horrible beings hanging on to me!
“I am Catholic! I am Catholic, please, get me out of here!”

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