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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.
—> You don’t have an answer to my question
Did. The answer was that the Scripture doesn’t say anything about gentiles attending Torah Kindergarten.
I also explained what was meant in the passage.
Any additional idea you brought to the passage. It isnt there.
He answered your arrogant question, twisted as it was because you are not an honest person. Not one yot or tittle in the Acts fifteen council letter or the conclusion of their discussion commends the gentiles to go to ‘torah kindergarten. In fact, if the gentiles had been attending synagogue they would have to have been observing all Jewish restrictions. You are a false teacher and a hypocrite. It is typical of the self-righteous to couch their phrases with double meanings, so they can dodge direct questions. You’re exhibiting such behavior here.
Telling reaction to say the least.
You got the number!!
Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.
I hope you have better luck.
Someone had to sanctify it with truth!
pergatory => purgatory
Nah. No purgatory in Scripture.
How is this supposed to work?
Unless one finds that purge also means to vomit.
I think there may be a few places about this action to be found in Scripture.
Yes, there certainly is purging.
unless => if
Not scoffing at Christ.
Denying that His parable has anything to do with the made up purgatory
There is no such mythical place as purgatory. That is yet another heresy invented by Catholicism as a means to empower the ORG and priesthood. It also devalues the work Jesus accomplished on the cross, as if he didn't quite do enough to cover all your sins and needs you to add soemthing. That is stealing Glory from the ONLY ONE due the glory.
Remember what Paul said?... "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." And you don't understand why that is so sure. So I am going to tell you: when a person gets born again / born from above, GOD By HIS WORD separates the soul and spirit and He via the Holy Spirit comes to abide in the newborn spirit which is no longer under the capture of the soul, the behavior mechanism. He says He will never leave or forsake you. GOD DOES NOT SEND HIS ABIDING SPIRIT INTO A TORMENT GRINDER. Jesus did not go to that horrific cross in order that your soul could be cleansed sufficiently to enter Heaven. He went to that cross to redeem spirits, your spirit, my spirit, the spirit of ANYONE who believes God and accepts God's Grace in Christ. Instead He brings the born again spirit to abide with Him after the body is no longer a fit residence for a righteousness-of-Christ newborn spirit.
And just so you know, that's why Paul told (1 Thess 4:13-18) you that when Jesus descends from Heaven with a shout He is bringing those spirits who have been birthed from above, with Him when He raptures away the Body of Christ Believers in the new glorified bodies and behavior mechanisms He will give them in that instant of transformation (1 Cor 15:53-58) then rising up to meet the Lord int he Air and return to the Father's House in our new glorified bodies.
Finally, once saved the spirit of me is no longer sequestered to the soul of me, the behavior mechanism of me. The Word of God is more powerful than any two edged sword, able to separate soul and spirit. With salvation the spirit is separated sufficiently from the soul such that the Righteousness of Christ imputed to the newborn is in force by the Holy Spirit abiding in that newborn and separated spirit *1John3:9).
Thanks be to God my newborn spirit CANNOT sin even as the behavior mechanism does sin, is drawn to sin, is unregenerate and destined for dissolution when I die or God transforms me at the Rapture.
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