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he was taken through a "foggy" region strikingly similar to what has been described in mystical literature [see An Unpublished Manuscript on Purgatory] -- and also similar to descriptions by modern visionaries who have told of a great "gray" area between hell and heaven.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 second part of the conjunction is adding more to waht is stated. Yes, not knowing whom is being served is rewarded, but not necessarily believing they were serving another person by mistake. The faith alone is a discerning element between the two scenarios.
I also agree that there might be some who do not know Christ by a particular name, yet know Him through faith, as He is also known by over some 350 names in Scripture.
I suspect there are many Muslims who might actually be saved, but would be reclassified as backslidden believers focusing on the soulish rather than returning to Him by faith in Him.
It is interesting to observe how many other religions attempt to counterfeit or synthesize the experience of the spirit by physical and soulish behavior. Acts that come to mind are whirling dirvishes, cutting the forehead in Islam, chanting mantras, and many of the figures that are depicted in other religious symbols that are from spiritual experience. A major difference between those religions and fellowship with God is that men attempt to bring God to them in those religions, while through Christ, we already have the Word available to us and indwelling in us while in fellowship with Him, yet experience isn't mandated, rather continuing sanctification is the immediate direct benefit.
We're still waiting. :-)
SD
Then why are you always so observant? :-)
SD
Most of these doctrines showed up (and were and are read-into previous Church father's writings) about the 12th Century.
Which doctrines?
Indulgences were given out all over the place in the 12th Century, so it's a safe bet that the doctrine which underlies them, purgatory, was widely believed long before that. It doesn't make much sense to promise someone a pardon from purgatory unless they actually believe in it.
Tertullian (2nd century) mentions Christians praying for the dead, which we know is just the continuation into Christianity of Jewish custom.
Prayer for the dead implies a state or condition other than heaven or hell, which the Latin fathers call "purgatory".
Most of the Catholic doctrines Protestants reject are much older than the 12th Century, and can be shown from patristic writings dated from before the time the NT canon was fixed.
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