PRAY FOR THE HOLY SOULS IN PURGATORY!
Why is there so much “controversy” over the place called Purgatory, when it is such a huge Act of Mercy on God’s Part?
First of all, where is the concept of Purgatory found in the Bible, God’s Inerrant Word?
Sidenote: From the beginning, The Catholic Church has husbanded all of the books, which the Jewish People, God’s First Chosen People, kept as The Word of God. Martin Luther, who left The Catholic Church, to make up his own religion, decided, with no authority whatsoever, to take out seven books from the inspired Old Testament. Since he did not believe in Purgatory, one of those books was 2 Maccabees, in which it reads:
It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins. (12:46)
Why pray for the dead if they are in Heaven — will it help them in anyway? The answer is, obviously, “No.”
Why pray for the dead if they are in hell — will it help them in anyway? The answer is, obviously, “No.”
Then, these dead have to be somewhere other than in Heaven or in hell — they are in a place between these two places. But, the Jews would not be praying for them to help them to get to hell, so they must have been praying for these dead, so that they could reach Heaven. Therefore, these dead must have died in some type of friendship with God, even though they were not pure of sin or of the temporal punishment due to sin when they died.
Does the concept of Purgatory exist in the New Testament? (Sidebar — do all of the terms, which we use today to explain our faith exist in the Bible? Is the word “Bible” found anywhere in that Good Book? No. Does the word “Trinity” exist anywhere in the Bible? No. Does The Most Blessed Trinity exist? “Yes.” Therefore, the fact that the word “Purgatory” does not appear in the Bible does not invalidate its reality.) Yes, the concept of Purgatory is mentioned 27 times in the Bible:
. [18] Because Christ also died once for our sins, the just for the unjust: that he might offer us to God, being put to death indeed in the flesh, but enlivened in the spirit, [19] In which also coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison: [20] Which had been some time incredulous, when they waited for the patience of God in the days of Noe, when the ark was a building: wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water.
[19] Spirits that were in prison: See here a proof of a third place, or middle state of souls: for these spirits in prison, to whom Christ went to preach, after his death, were not in heaven; nor yet in the hell of the damned: because heaven is no prison: and Christ did not go to preach to the damned. (From St. Peter 3:18–20)