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he was taken through a "foggy" region strikingly similar to what has been described in mystical literature [see An Unpublished Manuscript on Purgatory] -- and also similar to descriptions by modern visionaries who have told of a great "gray" area between hell and heaven.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.
"Show me the quote from the passage you claim to have read in the Catholic Encyclopedia that makes this claim..."
You read it. It's your religion, not mine.
"And you would do well to not presume to tell Catholics what they do and do not know."
That's not presumption. It's knowledge born of experience.
If you knew the truth you'd be set free from that web of superstition.
"First, Apostolic Succession is right in the book of Acts. After Judas commits suicide, do they decide to stay with 11 Apostles? No. They appoint a successor."
And we never hear from the man-appointed successor again. God appoints the twelfth apostle whom we all know as Paul from tarsus. That was aa good reference!
One who claims superior knowledge and understanding shouldn't shrink from providing citations to the material he supposedly has mastered.
SD
"Also, you contradict Christian history, once again. Could you provide documented evidence of the first ten Popes killing each other?"
I never said that.
Also, there's no documented evidence that anybody but Catholics and those whom they've convinced believe that Peter went to Rome. In all the epistles Paul wrote from Rome, he mentions endless (as it were) lists of people there, but no Peter.
Peter was the apostle to the circumcision. Paul was the apostle to the gentiles.
"But the Word is a two-edged sword."
Book, Chapter and Verse, please.
Arguments glorify men. Soul winning for the Lord glorifies God.
"you're doing the typical Protestant argument and refusing to finish an argument on one topic and instead move from doctrine to doctrine attacking whatever you can until something sticks."
I do that because the whole Roman construct is a web of lies, starting with Peter being called a "Pope", which office never existed for hundreds of years, to the hocus-pocus of transubstantiation, which is no miracle, because the bread never becomes anything but bread. The truth shall make ye free.
"Purgatory, as has been explained many, many, many times on this thread is supported by Scripture (which was codified by the CATHOLIC Church even though Christ told no one to write anything down) but if you choose to ignore the evidence, that is up to you. I will pray for you regardless."
What scripture? What evidence? Nobody has brought up a shred of either! God isn't impressed with "Codices", dogma, bulls or any other man-made concoction.
The Roman church left the narrow path over a thousand years ago.
You: You read it. It's your religion, not mine.
No, I did not read it. You haven't provided a reference yet. It's your allegation, not mine. Please show me *where* in the Catholic Encyclopedia it states that Catholics believe that Christ is "slaughtered" anew at Mass. You made the statement that such a teaching is in the Catholic Enclyclopedia. You back it up with a citation in context.
What an idiot.
Apparently he didn't go to hell because he rejected Christ. He went to hell because he did not believe.
Also, his idea he went to hell after purgatory does not mesh with Catholic ideas.
He is just a fake Christian.
Danger, you are right.
The doctrine of purgatory effectively means Jesus isn't good enough.
That is not Biblical, and this man is not a Protestant. He is a heretic.
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