Catholics Don't Believe You Can Earn Your Way to Heaven

Tradition | 03-06-2022 | CharlesOconnell

[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.

[Mark17]

Worth repeating. 😀🤗

[Mark17]

It didn’t even take a day or two. 😀😂 OSAS dittos bro.

[Luircin]

Good plan, you do that.

I’m sure that your pastor will thank you profusely for telling him that he’s violating the Sabbath regulations, especially if you tell him in the same way you tell me.

After all, there are no exceptions; you HAVE to obey Ellen G. White’s interpretation of the Law or else you go right to Hell.

That IS what you’ve been telling us for weeks now.

And who cares what Jesus said about the Sabbath being made for man and not man for the Sabbath? We all know that what Jesus says doesn’t matter because what Ellen G. White says is what’s more important.

After all, if we listened to what Jesus said, we’d realize that the purpose of the Sabbath has been fulfilled and SDAs are wrong. And we can’t have that.

[Philsworld]

After all, there are no exceptions; you HAVE to obey Ellen G. White’s interpretation of the Law or else you go right to Hell.

---

What on earth are you babbling about? I follow and OBEY the bible.

[Philsworld]

The Spirit of Prophecy in the Seventh-day Adventist Church
The gift of prophecy was active in the ministry of Ellen G. White, one of the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. She has given inspired instruction for God’s people living during the time of the end. The world of the early nineteenth century, when Ellen White began to deliver God’s messages, was a man’s world. Her prophetic call put her under critical scrutiny. Passing the Biblical tests, she went on to minister through her spiritual gift for 70 years. From 1844, when she was 17, until 1915—the year of her death—she had more than 2, 000 visions. During that time she lived and worked in America, Europe, and Australia, counseling, establishing new work, preaching, and writing.

Ellen White never assumed the title of prophetess, but she did not object when others called her by that title. She explained, “Early in my youth I was asked several times, Are you a prophet? I have ever responded, I am the Lord’s messenger. I know that many have called me a prophet, but I have made no claim to this title. . . . Why have I not claimed to be a prophet?—Because in these days many who boldly claim that they are prophets are a reproach to the cause of Christ; and because my work includes much more than the word ‘prophet’ signifies. . . . To claim to be a prophetess is something that I have never done. If others call me by that name, I have no controversy with them. But my work has covered so many lines that I can not call myself other than a messenger.”13

https://www.scribd.com/document/325331719/Seventh-Day-Adventists-Believe-27-Fundamental-Beliefs

Anything you ever wanted to know about the SDA church is probably in there. And BTW, I’m no expert on EGW. A good book of hers to read would be “The Great Controversy” It just might change how you see Prophecy.

[imardmd1]

We’ll see how it works out when compared with the overall context, eh?

[imardmd1]

SDAs have made them, a sideline for funding their academies. I had afriend who had worked in one. They keep their kids out of public schools, and some ways to expose the older cildren to value industry was to let them make some mney by working this kind of easily-equipped business of making the brooms,

The school was pretty strict, though. Someone found him sneaking out tothe woods where he built a little campfire for some coffee. Hearing this, the administration booted him, and he went into being a truck driver, winding up with his own tractor.

He's the ome who told me this story.

[imardmd1]

think, however that people will still be saved during the tribulation, and since no one can be saved, unless the Spirit draws him, I am thinking the Holy Spirit must be here in some capacity, maybe like He was, in the Old Testament.

Well, there is a different way to look at that. It is my opinion that as the Spirit came from Heaven to Earth as Jesus had foretold at the Last Supper that He, Jesus, a Comforter, when He went to the Father in Heaven, that He would send another Comforter of the same kind, the Spirit of Truth (Jn. 14:16-17; 16:7-8) Who would be with them and in them forever. I believe that when they go away in the Rapture, so would He that came to be in them forever, when they go away with the Spirit that has been in them would stay in them and go away with and in them. It has been He that has been in saved humans that through them has restrained the Devil, and given them the Divine power to help Him do that.

So, keeping that in mind, here is where I get the concept, and so does MHGinTN. You might consult him for a more detailed discussion of the apostasia and what that means. But here's the Scripture passage, with my markups and corrections of it:

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 (AV):

¹Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, 
²That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. 
³Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away^{αποστασια = departure, the rapture} first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 
⁴Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. 
⁵Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? "
⁶And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. 
⁷For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he^{The Spirit} who now letteth restraineth will let restrain, until he^{The Spirit} be taken out of the way. 
⁸And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 
⁹Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 
¹⁰And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 
¹¹And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 
¹²That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness"

Note that today the meaning of "let" is opposite what it mant in the 1600s, so that change of te word had to be made, as noted. Also, the Greek word in this context means "to depart" rather thab the usual interpretation of the KJV interpreters of "falling away: from The Faith, which is not a correct interpretive bent which they brought into the translation, that it did not have before.

So there, when He that has for centuries, held back Satan from many of the works that he might done, except for the Spirit-filled Christians who called on God and His Spirit to stop the devilish activity. One of the things the Spirit has held back is the revelation of who the Antichist might be or is. So when He is gone out of this sphere with us, the Man of Sin, the Antichrist, then can make his presence known for certain to all the remaining humans on earth, that he could not do before the Rapture.

Another conclusion that I have from reading the above passage, in that context, I do not believe thaat anyone left behind after the Rapture will be convinced or able to exercise a saving faith. Some may possibly live through the Tribulation and be as they were, as unsaved persons under the Kingdom that Jesus establishes on earth after the tribulation, and thus have another chance to receive eternal life and fellowship with Hod through seadfast faith as before the time of Christ, but will not be a part of His Bride, but rather a Friend of Christ like Sanuel or David or John the Baptist, or old Adam and Eve, or Noah. But that state will still be because of one's faith in Jesus as the Master, and willingness to be His subject, not with the ones who after a millennial still rise up against Him.

But that is merely of my interpretation tat might be partially correct, but not necessarily all the way through.

[imardmd1]

A loss of steadfastness IN WHAT? WHICH LEADS TO WHAT?

The lifeguard blowing the whistle and commanding,"OK. out of the pool--come up here with me."

The Heavenly Father can chasten His Own, even unto physical death (which we must all experience anyway), but not a loss of the never-rescinded eternal life in the Spirit that the Savior has promised. If it ever quits, it's not eternal, and therefore He must be lying about it, right?

[imardmd1]

NO ONE is telling people they can freely live in sin because of God's grace!

BB, I think Philsworld has probably skipped over this counsel to the people at Rome, where he confirmed that once God saves, it is perfect salvation, and that when He imparts eternal absolute life. to be eternal never-ending it simply cannot end, or it won't be the eternal, would it?

Paul says:

Romans 5:19-21; 6:1-2
¹⁹For as by one man's^Adam's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one^{tje God Incarnate human Jesus} shall many be made righteous^{once for one person not to be removed}.  ²⁰Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:  ²¹That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.  ¹ What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?  ¹God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? 

It is impossible when one is "dead" to some idea or activity to be engaged in it, is it not?

I think it is pretty obvious that the Holy Spirit, speaking through Paul to the regenerated saved servant of the perfectly saving Savior and for the Father (who imparted eternal life to the person receiving His irrevocable gift of salvation unrescindable by the receiver, whose future is well-known by the omniscient LORD), has told us here that going forward, the servant is NOT NOR WILL BE walking in the sin which has been paid for and removed by the Shed Blood of Jesus. S there is nothing, not even a choice to draw back unto perdition, for the one who is experiencing the OSAS promise and knowledgeably living it.

What Philsworld is showing us that by claiming that OSAS does NOT exist not only does not have faith enough to BE saved by faith, but as long as he (she?) holds that opinion can never be given that gift which is far more precious than he values it.

That's the bottom line. If the true meaning of Scripture is to give saving faith to be germinated in the implanted sperma of God, His Word preached by a Sower(Mt. 13:3-8;Rom. 10:17; 1 Jn. 3:9), then neither you nor I, BB, can give mre of it it to him.

And there is a time when God Himself ceases to strive with his spirit(Gen. 6:3), and when that happens, the offer of the gift of salvation through His unbounded grace will be withdrawn.

What a shame. When the Scripture says "God forbid!" that is not merely a euphemism. That is exactly what God does, forbids, does not allow to happen, at all.

I fear very much that time may be past for Philsworld, and that neither you nor I can help him.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

—> I keep God’s 10 commandment

So powerful! I guess there was no red for the cross..

PS - there are none who keep even the greatest commandment.
It is a prideful lie, filled with self-righteousness.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

—> SDAs have made them [corn brooms], a sideline for funding their academies. I had afriend who had worked in one. They keep their kids out of public schools, and some ways to expose the older cildren to value industry was to let them make some mney by working this kind of easily-equipped business of making the brooms,

Have you or your theologian wife ever made corn brooms?
Do your children make corn brooms?

🌽

[Elsie]

Can we all agree that the BoL is the one item that determines whether we end up in Heavan for etermity or not?

No grading on a curve; but a Pass/Fail situation.

 

 

Revelation 20:11-15
"Then I saw a great White Throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and THE BOOKS WERE OPENED. Another book was opened WHICH IS THE BOOK OF LIFE. The dead were judged according to their works as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to their works.  Then death and Hades were thrown into the Lake of Fire. The Lake of Fire is the second death. If anyone's name was not found written IN THE BOOK OF LIFE, he was thrown into the lake of fire."

 

 

---

 

 

 

If so, How and When does a persons name become listed there?

 

Philippians 4:3
 And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life.

 

Exodus 32:32

 Yet now, if thou will forgive their sin—and if not, blot me , I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.” 

---

 

How and When does a persons name become 'blotted out'?

 

Exodus 32:33
  But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book.

Revelation 3:5
He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.

 

 

---

 

 

 I truly cannot see how OSAS can stand up against the Scriptures, that the angel had John to record for eternity, here.

 

 

 

 

[Elsie]

I keep God’s 10 commandment, moral, and dietary laws.

All of us Publicans are SO proud of you; for we wish we had such moral fiber.

---

1 John 1:8
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

[Elsie]

The world of the early nineteenth century, when Ellen White began to deliver God’s messages, was a man’s world.

[Elsie]

...but he tithes on everything and fasts twice a week.

Why are you so down on our Brother??

[Luircin]

The Exodus verse is not suitable for this discussion; eternal life is not a concept that is discussed in Exodus, and so it’s very unlikely that the book means the same as the Lamb’s Book of Life.

The parable of the sower is still probably the best argument against OSAS, or at least against a shallow interpretation of the concept, but IMO I think that among our group of witnesses our conflicts can really be best handled by discerning between human perspective and God’s perspective.

[Elsie]

Brian has!!

https://broomcornjohnnys.com/

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Unimpressed with his Falseworld claims!

Paul had far better credentials and needed a Savior and called himself the worst sinner.