***(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."****
Yes, the judgement seat. There will be many tears as people see that their livesa were wasted. Everything they built for God (but not at His command or by His direction) will vanish like straw in a flame. BUT THEY WILL BE SAVED - yet like someone saved from a burning building.
This is no description of "Purgatory" but of Judgement Day.
***2 Maccabees 12:42-46 42***
This is really the passage upon which the whole edifice rests. It is a shakey and slim foundation for such a potentially cosmologically important doctrine - that of the supposed existence of a sort of interium "hell" where one may go to finish unfinished business with God.
Thoughts:
1. These men were guilty of idolatry - to Catholics a mortal sin that puts one in HELL not Purgatory. You can't pay someone's way out of hell.
2. This passage is not even clear that his idea worked! It simply says that "Thus he made atonement for the dead that they MIGHT be freed from this sin." Were they or not? The (admittedly imperfect [see: 2 Maccabees 15:38,39]) book doesn't state.
Whether it worked in that specific case? Perhaps. But it is clear that It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.
As for the soldiers and their idolatry, they may have repented during the battle and before their deaths and so, while forgiven, still had an unexpiated debt of temporal punishment just like David before his son died.