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Replying to JehovahsWitness]
Some use passages that likens fire as a purifier to justify Catholic dogma such as that of "puragtory" claiming that the "souls" of dead people must suffer unspeakable agony to be purged of their sins and gain access to heaven. However such teaching is contrary to the fact that the bible identifies only the blood of Jesus as atoning for one's sins,never personal agony. indeed it says without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness.
It is not contrary to the Bible, rather right in line with Biblical teaching. Once again – know your history! Go back to the beginning to see what Sacred Scripture AND Sacred Tradition tell us.
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It is entirely correct to say that Christ accomplished all of our salvation for us on the cross. But that does not settle the question of how this redemption is applied to us. Scripture reveals that it is applied to us over the course of time through, among other things, the process of sanctification through which the Christian is made holy. Sanctification involves suffering (Rom. 5:3–5), and purgatory is the final stage of sanctification that some of us need to undergo before we enter heaven. Purgatory is the final phase of Christ’s applying to us the purifying redemption that he accomplished for us by his death on the cross.
It is no wonder, then, that those who deny the existence of purgatory tend to touch upon only briefly the history of the belief. They prefer to claim that the Bible speaks only of heaven and hell. Wrong. It speaks plainly of a third condition, commonly called the limbo of the Fathers, where the just who had died before the redemption were waiting for heaven to be opened to them. After his death and before his resurrection, Christ visited those experiencing the limbo of the Fathers and preached to them the good news that heaven would now be opened to them (1 Pet. 3:19). These people thus were not in heaven, but neither were they experiencing the torments of hell.
Some have speculated that the limbo of the Fathers is the same as purgatory. This may or may not be the case. However, even if the limbo of the Fathers is not purgatory, its existence shows that a temporary, intermediate state is not contrary to Scripture.
Christ refers to the sinner who “will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come� (Matt. 12:32), suggesting that one can be freed after death of the consequences of one’s sins. Similarly, Paul tells us that, when we are judged, each man’s work will be tried. And what happens if a righteous man’s work fails the test? “He will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire� (1 Cor 3:15). Now this loss, this penalty, can’t refer to consignment to hell, since no one is saved there; and heaven can’t be meant, since there is no suffering (“fire�) there. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory alone explains this passage.
Then, of course, there is the Bible’s approval of prayers for the dead: “In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin� (2 Macc. 12:43–45). Prayers are not needed by those in heaven, and no one can help those in hell. This verse so clearly illustrates the existence of purgatory that, at the time of the Reformation, Protestants had to cut the books of the Maccabees out of their Bibles in order to avoid accepting the doctrine.
Prayers for the dead and the consequent doctrine of purgatory have been part of the true religion since before the time of Christ. Not only can we show it was practiced by the Jews of the time of the Maccabees, but it has even been retained by Orthodox Jews today, who recite a prayer known as the Mourner’s Kaddish for eleven months after the death of a loved one so that the loved one may be purified. It was not the Catholic Church that added the doctrine of purgatory. Rather, the Protestant churches rejected a doctrine that had always been believed by Jews and Christians.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines purgatory as a “purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven,�
The purification is necessary because, as Scripture teaches, nothing unclean will enter the presence of God in heaven (Rev. 21:27)
the soul is purified of the remaining consequences of sin: “I tell you, you will never get out till you have paid the very last copper� (Luke 12:59).
. . . request of Monica, mother of Augustine, who asked her son, in the fourth century, to remember her soul in his Masses. This would make no sense if she thought her soul would not benefit from prayers, as would be the case if she were in hell or in the full glory of heaven.
. . . graffiti in the catacombs, where Christians during the persecutions of the first three centuries recorded prayers for the dead. Indeed, some of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament, like the Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity (both written during the second century), refer to the Christian practice of praying for the dead. Such prayers would have been offered only if Christians believed in purgatory, even if they did not use that name for it.
https://www.catholic.com/tract/purgatory
Looks like Christ’s Church gets it right again. How can that be? Probably because He established His Church and promised to remain with His Church. Hmmmm . . . . does it make sense that the first Church believed and taught these things from the beginning, but Christ remained dormant in His Church for 1000 years until He sent Charles Taze Russell to re interpret the Bible and start up a new denomination?
Why doesn’t the very notion of that bother more people? Who in the world was Charles Russell and why are you listening to him? How do you reconcile this? Yes, yes, I’ve heard some of you attempt to say the Bible describes some great apostasy, but you even misattribute that Biblical reference. And how does such an apostasy reconcile Christ’s words that He will remain with His Church (not go hiding and not create a new church) and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it? How would a person that believed the Church underwent some Great Apostasy then know who/where to find Christ’s actual Church? By what authority did Charles Russell act? This matters! Why would you accept the Bible from Christ’s established Church and then let some guy in the 1900’s re interpret it for you? I can’t wrap my head around this kind of illogic.
