The scriptures teach that death is sleep and that there is no immediate life after death. But that does not stop the Catholic Church from teaching the doctrine of purgatory, a state in which God supposedly cleanses the sinner to purge away any sin and “entanglement with darkness” before admitting them to heaven.
November is the month for Catholics to offer prayers for the repose of the souls of their dead, says Father Jeffery Kirby, a Catholic priest.
“The practice of praying for deceased loved ones has always been seen in the Christian tradition as consistent with a belief in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” wrote Kirby. Paul taught “that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then…our preaching is useless and so is your faith…Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost…we are of all people most to be pitied,” he continued.
The confounding of the resurrection with immediate life after death is contradictory. There is no need of a resurrection if the soul lives on through eternity. The misuse of Paul’s statement is one of the foundations of the false papal doctrine of purgatory. By claiming a connection to the resurrection of Jesus, the idea gets credibility. “Death is not the end of life,” Kirby added.
While it is true that death is not the end of life, life after death is not immediate according to the Bible. “The dead know not anything.” Ecclesiastes 9:5.
But the Catholic Church teaches that human life does not end, it just changes. “Indeed for your faithful, Lord, life is changed not ended,” continued Kirby.
Through prayers for the dead, the living remains connected to them through the Resurrection, according to the Catholic Church. This communion among believers is defined as an “exchange of spiritual goods,” wrote Kirby. “In Christian truth, therefore, as a believer dies, it does not mean that this communion with other believers is ended.”
In other words, the dead communicate with the living. This confusing doctrine is spiritualism at its core. It leads to the deceptions of Satan concerning the spirit world.
Why purgatory? “Some souls aren’t quite ready” for their eternal destiny, wrote Kirby. “They need some additional purgation, or purifying work by God’s grace, in order to make them fit for paradise.” And believers are obligated to help free souls from purgatory by their prayers… “And so, Christians offer supplication for the dead because they love them and are still a part of them. Their prayers work and are a sign of the service and fellowship they hold with them in the Resurrection.”
This most unbiblical and blasphemous doctrine is still being taught by the Catholic Church. It is one of those doctrines devised to deceive people into accepting Satan’s deception of immediate life after death.
“Upon the fundamental error of natural immortality rests the doctrine of consciousness in death–a doctrine, like eternal torment, opposed to the teachings of the Scriptures, to the dictates of reason, and to our feelings of humanity…What say the Scriptures concerning these things? David declares that man is not conscious in death. ‘His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.’” Psalm 146:4… Great Controversy, pages 545 and 546.
“Every principle of popery that existed in past ages exists today. The doctrines devised in the darkest ages are still held. Let none deceive themselves. The popery that Protestants are now so ready to honor is the same that ruled the world in the days of the Reformation, when men of God stood up, at the peril of their lives, to expose her iniquity.” Great Controversy, page 571.
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