Hi guys! How is everyone? Well I wanted to ask where in the bible does it talk about purgatory? I have not be educated on this. My friends keep telling me stop believing in purgatory its not in the bible. :( All I wanna know is where it is in the bible and how we get there. Thank you for your time J

-- Alicia (Aliciastar11@yahoo.com), November 07, 2002

Answers

Response to purgatory??

I run a website called www.catholicbychoice.com and there I have answers to your inquiries related to the purgatory.

This is the direct link to the definition of it and where you can find it in the bible:

http://www.catholicbychoice.com/modules.php? name=Encyclopedia&op=content&tid=2

This is the link related to the context of the purgatory: http://www.catholicbychoice.com/modules.php? name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=12

This link contains the top ten questions we catholics are asked: http://www.catholicbychoice.com/modules.php? name=News&file=article&sid=5

I hope these have served as a helpful resource for you. Feel free to make use of the website and join! I will keep working on it. Let me know if it helped you. Thanks!

-- Katerina Cabello (katerina@catholicbychoice.com), November 08, 2002.

Response to purgatory??

Dear Katerina,
I visited your site and I love it. Thanks for inviting everybody to see it. Sooner or later, I'll figure out the sign-up, log-in steps. I might contribute sometimes, if it's OK. You're doing a great work of spiritual mercy for good people in cyberspace. God help you with His grace, and always bless you!

-- eugene c. chavez (chavezec@pacbell.net), November 08, 2002.

Response to purgatory??

I think the main thing to keep in mind, Alicia, is that Catholics don't just pick a verse out of the Bible and build a doctrine around it. Even if there were NOTHING in the Bible to support the doctrine of Purgatory (and there is, as others have pointed out), we would still believe it, because it is part of the teaching handed down to us from the Apostles. :-)

-- Christine L. (chris_tinelehman@hotmail.com), November 08, 2002.

Response to purgatory??

Hi, Alicia. It's nice to see you have returned with a new question!

In the four years of the forum, we have discussed this several times, so I think that it would be best for me to give you a couple of links, where you can see what I and others here have written.

First, here is a thread that has many Bible verses listed (and some explained).

Second, here is a list of threads about the "afterlife" including purgatory.

Please know in advance that, just as the word "Trinity" does not appear in the Bible -- though all Christians believe in the Trinity -- the word "Purgatory" does not appear in the Bible -- though Catholics believe in Purgatory. We believe in it because Jesus taught its existence, and this teaching has been handed down to us through 20 centuries. The concept of Purgatory, without that actual theological name, is found in the Bible.

God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@hotmail.com), November 09, 2002.

Response to purgatory??

Hi Alicia,

The word 'Purgatory' is not found in the Bible but the 'place' or existence is taught in the Bible in the book of 2Maccabees chapter12 verse 44 where praying for the dead is written. So at that time when people still praying for the dead, it shows there is still hope for them and there must be a place which is NOT hell. We Catholic called it Purgatory. When the dead is in Hell then it is of no use praying for them for Hell is eternal and cannot be redeem.

During the Baptism of Jesus in Jordan, the Holy Spirit came down on Him and Heaven was 'open'. In another words, heaven was 'closed' since the downfall of Adam and no one goes to Heaven until the comming of our Saviour. Right? Now what happens to all those good and holy people before Christ, like Abraham and all the prophets? Do God send them to hell? Ofcoure NOT! At that time heaven wasn't open yet and where do all these people go?

God Bless

-- (vincentkoh@pd.jaring.my), November 10, 2002.

Response to purgatory??

Hello, Vincent, my friend.

You gave Alicia excellent advice in encouraging her to look at 2 Maccabees 12 for the Christian Church's strongest biblical support for the doctrine of Purgatory. In case Alicia does not have a Bible handy, I want to provide this link for her and to suggest that she read at least verses 36 to 45. (I should mention to her that the "Judas" who is mentioned is Judas Maccabaeus, a Jewish hero of the Jewish struggle against their Greek conquerors during the final centuries before the birth of Jesus.)

But, Alicia, when you show this passage to your non-Catholic friends, they may say, "But 2 Maccabees is not in my Bible!" Then you will be able to inform them that some of the first Protestants (in the 1500s) removed 2 Maccabees from the Bible, even though they had no right to do so. They did not want to believe in Purgatory, so they tore the two book of Maccabees out (along with five other books) and threw them away.

God bless you.
John

-- (jfgecik@hotmail.com), November 10, 2002.

Response to purgatory??

We know what the basis was for protestants having rejected the books of 1st --2nd Machabees.

Luther's agenda was anti- indulgence trafficking, in the Church of his era. He knew without a valid reason for indulgences (no purgatory) the Catholic Church would be open to charges of fraudulent indulgences.

He and other protestant leaders simply declared purgatory a fraud. To make a better case they tried to say the Machabees books weren't inspired by God. They disputed the Church's canon and Sacred Tradition as well.

The Church is authorized to canonize holy Scripture, and only the Church. But-- even if the original books of Machabees had NOT been inspired by the Holy Spirit, they nevertheless are historical documents which date back to around 124 B.C., and are taken from letters written to the people of Jerusalem.

That alone makes them trustworthy as far as purgatory is concerned; because it clearly tells of the Jewish custom of prayers for the dead who died in sin.

Everybody knows that whatever faithful Hebrews were taught, Jesus Christ also supported. It would hardly have been something odd to Him, to pray for departed souls ''that they be loosed from sin.''

So, although the canon of the Holy Bible actually declares 2nd Machabees inspired, this is incidental, and historically we know anyway what Jesus knew for a fact. There is a purifying state after death. Our prayers ARE needed for the departed.

-- eugene c. chavez (chavezec@pacbell.net), November 10, 2002.

Response to purgatory??

Just one more thing, too, you might add, is that the Scripture text (or Bible) used at the time of Jesus and the disciples was the Greek Septuigint, which of course, contained the apochrypha. Hence, when Timothy says "ALL scripture is God breathed," he most certainly would have been referring to the Greek Septuigint, which was, at the time THE BIBLE.

Gail

-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), November 10, 2002.

Response to purgatory??

Jmj

Hi, Gail. I need to make a correction to something in your last post.

The Septuagint did not contain the "apocrypha." It did contain the "deuterocanonical" books, which are wrongly termed "apocrypha" by some non-Catholic Christians.

I believe that I explained this on another thread for you recently -- after you had accidentally misused the term "apocrypha." You must not have seen that post, and I cannot find it now. However, I was able to find a much older post of mine, so I will copy part of it here:

When the Catholic bishops first made a judgment about which ancient books were truly inspired by God, they set aside many works (written before and after the time of Jesus) that they called "apocrypha" (Greek for "secrets" or "obscure things"). ... [O]nly those "rejected" works should carry that somewhat disreputable tag.

The label, "apocrypha," was assigned, by certain separated brethren of the 16th century, to the seven books that they decided not to consider divinely inspired. [I believe that they then began to call the actual apocrypha the "pseudepigrapha" (Greek for "false writings").]

In order to have a convenient term by which people could refer to the seven special books of the Alexandrian canon [as found in the Septuagint], some began to call them the "deuterocanonical" ("second-canon") books. This is the term that Catholics now use for them -- never "apocrypha." Besides the seven full books, the books of Daniel and Esther are longer in their Catholic/Orthodox versions (as used by the Alexandrians).

God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@hotmail.com), November 11, 2002.