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Locked on 04/24/2022 5:40:39 AM PDT by Religion Moderator, reason:
Childishness |
Posted on 03/06/2022 11:16:06 AM PST by CharlesOConnell
A man commits a serious crime, then he gets released. He has "paid his debt to society". But wait a minute, he's only ready for the half-way house. He's unlikely to get a prestigious job in his new prison suit coat, or any job at all; he has civil impediments, he can't vote or hold certain offices. His crime was serious enough that he won't be presumed to have been completely rehabilitated until he performs a notable service to society, or at least spends many years on the straight and narrow, so that his crime can be truly overlooked or forgotten.
In Catholic faith, your "debt to society" is paid by Jesus Christ on Calvary. It's called "eternal punishment", without Christ it keeps you from going to heaven. Supposing that you do take advantage of His sacrifice, you're truly sorry, have a firm purpose of amendment, if you relapse, you go again for forgiveness (to the Sacrament of Confession).
But your sin leaves a strong trace at another layer of impurity called "temporal punishment due to sin", like the civil impediments facing the half-way house prisoner. Because "nothing impure can enter heaven", there is a place or a state, a condition of purification to render you fit for heaven after Christ has finally saved you from hell. The Catholic Church calls it purgatory.
(Where is it in the bible? Where is the word Trinity in the bible? Where does it say that you only need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Many valid principles aren't stated explicitly in the bible, but it does say to "hold fast to the traditions you have learned, whether by word or by letter", because much of the Gospel wasn't written down, as Jesus only wrote in the sand, the majority of the Gospel was taught from word to ear to people who couldn't afford expensive books, the exceptions were what tended to get written down. But the implication that there is a purgatory, is contained in the bible--see the comments.)
The ex-con can receive a pardon or commutation of his probation from a Governor, if he performs some heroic deed, saving numerous lives, or, like Chuck Colson, performs a long-lasting, valuable community service helping numerous people who can't help themselves.
In the Catholic Church there are 2 ways for the residual, temporal effects due to sin to be expiated: suffering in this life, or after life, undergoing purifying suffering along with other people who will finally be saved, but have to suffer for long without the vision of God--that is what causes them their pain.
Their suffering isn't meritorious enough to grant their release, the saints in heaven and those on earth suffering and practicing virtue can pray for the suffering souls in purgatory. In no way is their release by slow transfer of suffering or practice of virtue, "buying heaven". It's a long, excruciating process.
How the misunderstanding arose that Catholics think they can buy their way into heaven, is involved with history more than 500 years old. For a millennium of Christendom between roughly 410 and 1410, there was a Medieval civilization with harmony between faith and government.
Many small farmers would cluster around the manor house of a military lord who would protect them, in exchange for a certain fixed obligation of labor and agricultural produce. In most cases, those "serfs" had much more leisure than factory workers of the industrial revolution; there were a large number of holy days without work, and except for planting and harvesting, there were long stretches of idle time.
Another large sector of the economy surrounded monasteries, where the monks developed most of the farming practices that stabilized the serfs and their manorial lords. The monks who worked those monastic lands were sworn to poverty, so that monasteries built up large accumulations of economic value over decades and centuries of labor.
At the beginning, when lands were being cleared and put into production there weren't prominent town fairs ruled by merchants and bankers. Money wasn't used for sustenance, not even much barter occurred, life was mostly agrarian.
Charity was woven into the economy of monasteries. It was estimated that you only need travel 12 miles in medieval England between monasteries, where you could get a meal and minimal lodging for free, based on need. And the charity was also spiritual, including the ancient Catholic principle of prayer for the dead, which is biblical. (See "prayer for the dead" in the original King James Bible in the comment.)
There were foundations and benefices for praying for the dead, that allowed a person of means to support monasteries' charitable works, and in proportional response the monks would pray for the souls of the donors.
It happened at the close of the middle ages, that militarily strong nobles cast their eyes on the labor value accumulated by the poverty-sworn monks of the monasteries, which those nobles perceived as monetary wealth, especially where gold and jewels had been donated by the devout to adorn churches.
(Protestant writer William Cobbett wrote in his 1824 "A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland", an anecdote, that an incredibly valuable, hand illustrated bible was stripped of it's bejeweled, gold cover, the much more valuable hand-illumined manuscript, thrown in the mud and trampled by horses hooves by raiders suppressing the monasteries in Henry VIII's England.)
A new religion growing up around this seizure of monastic lands and valuables, that sought to discredit the Catholic Church, spread the black legend that the "sale of indulgences" was abusive. But this was very exceptional. Today the stipend of a Mass said for the dead is $10.
bttt
Indeed. It doesn’t have to be that way. God provided the way.
No, it is a straight up claim that I never met him, let alone knew his heart. I simply do not know if Ravi did that.It is also a fact. Salvation depends on a person entrusting himself to Christ alone by faith.
IF he took that step, he WILL be there.
IF he never did that, he WON'T be there.
I am amazed that there are people who hear the Gospel of Grace, but reject it and prefer hell. But they do.
I disagree bro.
If I met someone, I would have a good sense of whether they were saved. But of course, I can not see inside their heart.
Truly, only God knows their hearts - and HE knows.
If saved, they are saved to an eternity with God in heaven.
If they reject the gospel of grace, and insist on their own righteousness through works, they are unsaved and go to an eternity of hell, very sadly.
It depends on whether a person RECEIVES what God did by faith alone.
He himself does no work to merit salvation. He simply believes.
Catholic, every living creature has a soul, which is a behavior mechanism. What God gave humans is a spirit. Only humans descended from Adam gave a spirit.
The term 'the flesh', as in 'the spirit is willing butthe flesh is weak' is referring to the behavior mechanism of body and soul. Until one is born again, born from above, they have a spirit encrusted with sin due to being captured in the behavior mechanism inherited from Adam.
Once someone is born again, born from above, they have a spirit that GOD has separated from the behavior mechanism inherited from Adam.
Try seeing the spirit where you use the soul. Your Catholicism religion is fixated on the soul, the flesh. Your religion even has a huge myth of a purgatory where the flesh is purified through suffering (works anyone?) so it can go to Heaven. News flash: Jesus did not go to that cross to redeem your flesh, your behavior mechanism. He went to that cross to redeem the spirits we have inherited from Adam. And e has promised to one day, in the twinkling of an eye, give us a new body and new soul, fit for eternal life and functioning physically on a higher reality plane than we now occupy.
That IS truly amazing bro. Why do some people hear the truth, but deliberately choose the lake of fire? 🔥 Everyone who is in Hell, will be there by choice. Just my opinion, but after trillions of eons have passed, these evil doers, would still choose to stay in hell, even if they were given another chance for Heaven. I think, they will become more evil, as the eons roll on. This is why they must remain in hell. They are still evil.
Are you seriously asking that? I mean you probably don’t and can’t realize you are asking the wrong question. ONLY humans descended from Adam have a spirit. All animlas have a soul. Try again
LOL, bro, I got the message. Typos are my thang dontchaknow. ... It is due to my very poor eyesight.
BTW, Matthew 25:34-46 was not said to the Church composed of all those born into the Body of Christ Believers church. Jesus was referring to the judgment at the end of the millennial age. Nice try though ...
HINT for Catholics: the soul is not capable of being saved because it is the flesh. The animal cannot sin because it has only a soul, otherwise known as the behavior mechanism, and that soul was devolved when Adam sinned, thus Jesus changes that in the Millennial Kingdom.
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