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he was taken through a "foggy" region strikingly similar to what has been described in mystical literature [see An Unpublished Manuscript on Purgatory] -- and also similar to descriptions by modern visionaries who have told of a great "gray" area between hell and heaven.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.
Who says that Purgatory has anything to do with Jesus not being good enough? You obviously have no idea what Purgatory is all about. I would urge you to read several of the Catholic posts on this thread *specifically* dealing with the doctrine before you launch on it.
Meantime, defend your statement. Using *Catholic* sources on the doctrine of Purgatory (as opposed to other sources which misunderstand it as much as you do yourself), explain to us how it makes Jesus' sacrifice on the cross insufficient...
Coming to God out of fear of hell is pretty ridiculous and selfish in my opinion. He seems like a fake Christian to me as well.
"But the Word is a two-edged sword."
Book, Chapter and Verse, please.
Arguments glorify men. Soul winning for the Lord glorifies God.
Default is mine. :o)
Sorry about the double post. I was cleaning my keyboard.
Jonathan Edwards has a rep of a fire and brimstone preacher, but he is actually a model of a true conversion....based on the love of Christ, not of a fear of hell.
He did entire sermons on the loveliness and beauty of Christ. Seems like something this man should read.
Christ did it all on the Cross.
We don't need purification.
We will be given new glorified bodies, but purification will not be involved.
Christ died for all our sins, past, present, and future.
"Also a "near death experience" is NOT death."
No, but the stage III brain death of those in halting operations IS death.
Agreed and well stated:
http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/sirach/sirach34.htm
Sirach 34
6
Unless it be a vision specially sent by the Most High, fix not your heart on it;
7
For dreams have led many astray, and those who believed in them have perished.
You are seriously implying that no one on this thread has shown Scriptural references for Purgatory? Or are you syaing because it's not named as such, that it cannot be? If that is so, then there can be no Trinity nor any Incarnation.
As far as God being impressed with anything, I will not say what He is or is not impressed with, but I imagine He knew what He was doing when He founded His Church. A Church you accuse of being a "web of lies." An accusation you have not shown a single shred of proof of.
As for the narrow path, Christ instituted the Church, you accuse Him of abandoning it. I would not want to be in yoour shoes FRiend.
Well we all have our beliefs. You think your church is the only right one - and many would disagree. I don't remember that Christ was a Christian - that church was started by people - Christ had plenty of time to start a specific religion if he wanted to...
The Sunday Christian service, as opposed to the Saturday Sabbath, is also not in the Bible.
Indeed, Saturday Sabbath is one of the TEN COMMANDMENTS!
There's nothing in the Bible that says to move the Sabbath to Sunday.
But that's when almost all Christians celebrate.
Almost no Christians honor the Biblical Sabbath day and keep it holy. Almost all Christians disregard that Commandment of the 10 Commandments, and the hundred or more times the Sabbath is stressed in the Bible.
There's no BIBLICAL authority to stop celebrating the Saturday Sabbath, and no BIBLICAL authority, at all, for Christian worship on Sunday. That's pure Catholic tradition.
You should add that to your list.
Also, the Bible DOES say, explicitly, from the mouth of Jesus no less, NO DIVORCE. Do most Christian denominations follow that EXPLICIT rule?
No, the Church was instituted by Christ: "...and on this Rock I will build my Church..." Words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 16:18. The Church is founded by Christ, and it is He who is its head (Ephesians 5:23)and its body (same verse). He who identifies Himself as "the Truth" (John 14:06) and the Holy Spirit, speaking through St. Paul, calls the Church the "pillar and ground of the Truth" (1Timothy 3:15). Jesus is the Rock upon which the Church rests, and many times in Scripture the allusion to a "rock" is an allusion to Christ.
Even so, He established an earthly authority for the Church upon the shoulders of Peter, whom He deliberately names Rock (Kepha in Aramaic) to signify that, although Peter is only a man, he is to be vested with the power of Christ in leading His Church here on earth after Jesus' ascension. Lest Peter, the other Apostles or their successors take the credit (and lest you misinterpret what I'm saying!), it is clear from Scripture that Peter, the Apostles and their successors are to guide the Church through the power of the Holy Spirit, who will lead the Church into "all the Truth" (John 16:12-15). And Jesus promised that He would be with the Church "all days" even unto the end of time (Matthew 28:20), thus indicating that, though the men leading the Church are only men, they are guided by God, and cannot fail in their transmission of the true Faith. It is thus a false charge to say that the Church is merely led by men and therefore is of no account. It is led visibly by men who, in turn, are spiritually led by God in matters of the Faith, and are exercising their ministries by the authority of God and according to His express wish.
Their authority pertains to many things, including the ability, guided by the Holy Spirit, to determine the canon of Scripture and to interpret Scripture. You unwittingly acknowledge their authority every time you cite the New Testament as authoritative, even while you implicitly reject their equal authority to determine the Old Testament canon by using a text that is seven books short of what they determined the canonical list to be. You can't even demonstrate *why* you hold to the New Testament canon you use, and must resort to circumlocutions to defend it, because you dare not acknowledge the true authority behind its legitimacy: the Catholic bishops and popes of the fourth and fifth Centuries, successors, respectively, of the Apostles and their earthly head, Simon Peter.
Therefore, you assert that the Church doesn't matter, because it was only started by mere people. I urge you to read this thread again, carefully, all the way through the posts, and "pull on the string" of its implications. Then, read the early history of the Church, especially the writings of the Fathers. Test them against Scripture, and juxtapose their testimony against *both* the modern Catholic Church's teachings and the teachings of your own denomination. You'll be amazed at what you discover, and, if you have the courage to see Truth as Christ Himself presented it, you will soon have a different opinion of things than you do at present. Accept the Truth, for in so doing, you are accepting Christ Himself!
But it's all so confusing. I have people telling me different things all the time... How do i know who's right?
"How do i know who's right?"
I go through similar anxiety. Prayer and fasting helps. I also ask for the gift of Hope which I know that the Holy Spirit would never deny.
You and I are His sheep, and we shall know Him by the sound of His voice. I know this because He told us so. In humility we accept Him.
John 10:27
"Just because they were doing it in the first century doesn't make it right. There were a lot of things being done wrong by Christians and Paul addressed some of them but I don't think it would have been possible for him to have addressed them all."
The point is that such beliefs are NOT, as is laughably claimed, inventions of the 15th or 5th century church, but rather how the church INITIALLY understood the teachings of the apostles EVEN WHILE the apostles were still around to correct them.
Consider the sequence of events:
1. From its inception, the church believed in concepts such as atonement, prayers for the dead, and an intermediate, temporal place between Heaven and Hell.
2. The church assembles the bible, using as the primary criteria for what constitutes the bible that which corresponds to its traditions.
3. Martin Luther preaches against such doctrines as contrary to HIS understanding of the mercy of Christ.
4. Martin Luther is shown explicit passages from the bible which very plainly disprove his theories, and concedes that those passages irrefutable prove the correctness of the doctrines that he hates.
5. Martin Luther removes from the bible 14 books, including Revelations, James, 1-2-3 Peter, Hebrews, Maccabees and Wisdom, arguing that they couldn't POSSIBLY be authentic scripture, because their teachings are inconsistent with HIS interpretation of the remaining scripture.
6. This is the truly hysterical part: After having REMOVED parts of the bible which he disagrees with, Martin Luther THEN claims that any doctrine not found in what remains of the bible must be a false doctrine.
7. Unfortunately for Luther's plans, the Catholic Church finds plenty in the remaining scripture to establish the truthfulness of the doctrines which Luther so hated.
8. Luther's followers then claim that the Catholic Church is MISINTERPRETING scripture, claiming that the early church did not understand the bible to say what the post-reformation church proclaims it to say.
9. Archaeological and textual evidence prove that the Catholic Church's doctrines were, roughly, practiced since the time of the apostles.
10. Those unwilling to heed what the church founded by Jesus proclaims now assert that it doesn't matter first-century Christians did; just because they did doesn't make it right.
The bible proclaims it to be true. History proclaims it has always been held as true. The Protestant bible, despite efforts to purge it of testimony that it is true, still proclaims it to be true. But RoadTest knows it to be false?
Either that, or he had an experience of the world beyond that gives him insight neither you or I have.
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