As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
This Witness deals with the Vatican blasphemous teaching of "purgatory". I am not going to mince words in this about the propaganda, debating it, but instead will simply just lay out what it is and why.
When Jesus revealed the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, He taught of Heaven, Hell and Gehenna, which was a Lake of Fire. There never was a purgatory.
Purgatory is not Biblical, Old or New Testament. It is a creation of man or satan, akin to the rapture. It was seized upon by the Vatican as a means to gain donations to their religion. To understand this, Purgatory is something where sinners who are not going to hell, go to get sin burned out of them in being purified.
It is a bastardization of the idea of the Bible from God, that all Faithful are tried by fire, like precious metals in burning off the impurities. That is in this world trials, not any holding furnace, where people are held, unless they pay the Vatican a pile of cash to get out of there and into Heaven.
Christ told the thief on the cross, "TODAY YOU SHALL BE WITH ME IN PARADISE", and not "In 60 days, you will get the sin burned out of you, as my blood shed for you is not enough".
That is the blasphemy in this from the Vatican and the scare tactic to force people to donate. They come up with "states of holiness" which apparently is again something popes and cardinals have, and the rest of you get the dross out in purgatory.
No one has published the rates for sin and I have never run across anyone who was talking about how much the priest shook them down for paying their loved one out of purgatory.
The Bible teaches there is Heaven AKA Paradise, Sheol, Hades or Hell, as the abode of the dead where unrepentant sinners are held, until the final Judgment, where the betrayers who are spiritual will be tormented forever in Gehenna or the Lake of Fire, with satan and demons.
Not to confuse this, but in Olde English, the grave is also called hell, as that is where they kept their root crops, buried in the earth. No soul though remains in the ground, even if ghosts remain in this world who are afraid to go toward the Light of Christ.
Purgatory is based not on Hebrew or Christian teachings. The Vatican uses it as a scam to raise money, like they used to sell indulgences or icons. As Martin Luther once quipped, for all the splinters of cross and nails which were purchased as icons, one could build a city with the lumber and spikes.
The blood of Jesus Christ is all encompassing as a sin offering. Every person in the Old Testament who believed that God was going to send a way to redeem them, as Abraham was justified by Faith in believing God, then it was that Faith in a Jesus dying on the cross in the future is all that mattered to God. The Apostles believed because they witnessed it, and Christians today, believe that Jesus died, so that blood is payment for all. It paid for every sin.
Your sins are not forgiven in a confessional only, but your sins are perpetually forgiven as your heart or Spirit is repentant. So there is nothing necessary to burn things out of you or anyone else.
I desire you by God's Holy Spirit to understand something. Sin is rebellion. Sin is not an event, but a condition, because rebellion is a mindset, a way of existence, and not an act or a few acts. A sin is not completely what puts one in hell, but it is the person rebelling against God in His Laws, and rejecting submitting to Jesus to receive that payment of His Blood.
That is where the Pope and Vatican have it wrong in God does not send anyone to hell or condemn anyone. People choose to go to hell and condemn themselves, because hell is separation from God which is the most hopeless and tormenting condition any person could experience.
God does not reject anyone. It is people who reject God, and that is rebellion. Sins are simply the Law of God showing the individual actions that bring death in this life and eternal death in the next.
The Father had Jesus create life in this world. Jesus came not to condemn the world, but to offer to save every person who would believe and be baptized.
It blasphemy to deny the blood of Christ it's complete payment for all sin. One is either a saved Christian or one is an unrepentant sinner. Saved Christians do not require sin burned out of them and sinners are already in hell.
It would be a great scheme if Purgatory was employed to extort money from the rich to get them to donate to the Lame Cherry, but that is not the way it works. I am honest and I have to answer to God, so I post the Truth.
God lays down orders about His money. You are required to make a 10% tithe to God in however He moves you from churches to helping others. You can make special offerings. You just are required to enjoy you tithe before God. There is no buying people out of purgatory nor burning sins out of the dead.
Now go be liberated in the Lord and live the life He gave you to Glorify Him.
agtG
