Is the Roman Catholic idea of Purgatory more accurate than the simplistic heaven vs hell doctrine???

[Dennis Tate]

This is a question that I began asking myself in 1989 or 1990 when I began to read near death experience accounts.  

Technically... back in 1989 I would be termed a "Protestant" due to my not being Roman Catholic.  Back then I was a member of The Worldwide Church of God and I feel that we were significantly guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit in our doctrines regarding who had received and was led by the Holy Spirit?

I believe that my mentor who got me out of Atheism would at this time like for me to pass on my apologies for our slander and exaggerated accusations against most Roman Catholics and frankly other Christians of all denominations because we taught back in those days that we had something of a monopoly on the Holy Spirit and that our Pastor General Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong had greater wisdom, understanding and authority than any of the Roman Catholic Popes of history, (with the possible exception of Cephas - Peter).

As I studied near death experience accounts I was reminded more and more and more and more of the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory which apparently has its beginning in Jewish teachings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 1943 near death experience of Dr. George Ritchie was one of the first ones to get me asking that question.

 

https://near-death.com/george-ritchie-nde/

George Ritchie’s Near-Death Experience

BY KEVIN WILLIAMSPOSTED ON SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

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5. A Brief Summary of George Ritchie’s NDE

The following is a brief summary of Dr. George Ritchie’s near-death experience. You can read his entire NDE testimony in his book, Return From Tomorrow.

a. His Out-of-Body Experience and Life Review with Jesus

The following is the testimony of George Ritchie’s OBE: George Ritchie dies of pneumonia in a Texas Army hospital and leaves his body unaware he is dead. He wanders around the hospital ward and wonders why people cannot see or hear him. Wanting eagerly to travel to Richmond, Virginia, to finish college, the thought instantly sends him flying through the door of the hospital and into the air – traveling thousands of miles toward Richmond. He is bewildered about these sudden supernatural powers of flight and transparency he has attained. He then arrives at a city with a bar and discovers the people there cannot see or hear him either. He also has no solidness there either. He flies back to the Army hospital where he sees his lifeless body in the morgue and realizes he is dead..

Suddenly, a being of tremendous light and love appeared before him. Ritchie realizes this light is like “a million welders’ lamps all blazing at once.” Human eyes would be destroyed in a second if they saw it. The being tells Ritchie to stand up. Ritchie is astonished to learn he is standing before Jesus Christ. More than anything emanating from Jesus was the unbelievable amount of unconditional love shining from him – a love that knew everything about Ritchie and loved him just the same. Simultaneously, as Jesus appeared to him, Ritchie watches his entire life displayed before him. Jesus asks him, “What have you done with your life?” Ritchie tries to come up with several examples but realizes he has fallen short. Ritchie eventually realizes Jesus is not judging him at all; but rather, Ritchie was judging himself. And the question “What have you done with your life?” had more to do with “How much unconditional love have you given others.”

b. His Guided Tour of the Earthbound Realm with Jesus

 

 

Edited November 21, 2021 by Dennis Tate
grammar

[Dennis Tate]

Near death experiencer and former Atheist Howard Storm's Life Review sure reminds me of the doctrine of Purgatory as well.....


https://near-death.com/howard-storm-nde/

 

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3. The Life Review of Howard Storm

Next, they wanted to talk about my life. To my surprise my life played out before me, maybe six or eight feet in front of me, from beginning to end.

The life review was very much in their control, and they showed me my life, but not from my point of view. I saw me in my life and this whole thing was a lesson, even though I didn’t know it at the time. They were trying to teach me something, but I didn’t know it was a teaching experience, because I didn’t know that I would be coming back. We just watched my life from beginning to the end. Some things they slowed down on, and zoomed in on and other things they went right through.

My life was shown in a way that I had never thought of before. All of the things that I had worked to achieve, the recognition that I had worked for, in elementary school, in high school, in college, and in my career, they meant nothing in this setting.

I could feel their feelings of sorrow and suffering, or joy, as my life’s review unfolded. They didn’t say that something was bad or good, but I could feel it. And I could sense all those things they were indifferent to. They didn’t, for example, look down on my high school shot-put record. They just didn’t feel anything towards it, nor towards other things which I had taken so much pride in.

What they responded to was how I had interacted with other people. That was the long and short of it. Unfortunately, most of my interactions with other people didn’t measure up with how I should have interacted, which was in a loving way. Whenever I did react during my life in a loving way they rejoiced.

Most of the time I found that my interactions with other people had been manipulative. During my professional career, for example, I saw myself sitting in my office, playing the college professor, while a student came to me with a personal problem. I sat there looking compassionate, and patient, and loving, while inside I was bored to death. I would check my watch under my desk as I anxiously waited for the student to finish.

I got to go through all those kinds of experiences in the company of these magnificent beings.

When I was a teenager my father’s career put him into a high-stress, twelve-hour-a-day job. Out of my resentment because of his neglect of me, when he came home from work, I would be cold and indifferent toward him. This made him angry, and it gave me further excuse to feel hatred toward him. He and I fought, and my mother would get upset. Most of my life I had felt that my father was the villain and I was the victim. When we reviewed my life I got to see how I had precipitated so much of that, myself. Instead of greeting him happily at the end of a day, I was continually putting thorns in him in order to justify my hurt.

I got to see when my sister had a bad night one night, how I went into her bedroom and put my arms around her. Not saying anything, I just lay there with my arms around her. As it turned out that experience was one of the biggest triumphs of my life.

The entire life’s review would have been emotionally destructive, and would have left me a psychotic person, if it hadn’t been for the fact that my friend, and my friend’s friends, were loving me during the unfolding of my life. I could feel that love.

 

 

[Didacus]

On 11/29/2021 at 1:05 PM, Dennis Tate said:

Near death experiencer and former Atheist Howard Storm's Life Review sure reminds me of the doctrine of Purgatory as well.....


https://near-death.com/howard-storm-nde/

 

 

Whoa!  Read the whole link.  What a beautiful testimony - thank you for posting!

 

PS - if the USA blew it, where can Canada apply for the vacancy??

Edited November 30, 2021 by Didacus

[Dennis Tate]

41 minutes ago, Didacus said:

Whoa!  Read the whole link.  What a beautiful testimony - thank you for posting!

 

PS - if the USA blew it, where can Canada apply for the vacancy??

Yes I read his book My Descent Into Death about a decade ago and loved it.....

That is an excellent question about Canada attempting to fill in the gap that the USA had missed at the time of his brush with death, (1985)???  I do believe that there is a lot that we can do and I also think that the USA may be turning over a new leaf as well.  

I think that many Roman Catholic theologians will be encouraged by what Howard Storm was shown was going on in the invisible dimensions during The Holocaust.

 

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"I asked how God could let the Holocaust of World War II happen. We were transported to a railway station as a long train of freight cars was being unloaded of its human cargo. The guards were screaming and beating the people into submission. The people were Jewish men, women, and children. Exhausted from hunger and thirst, they were totally disoriented from the ordeal of being rounded up and sent on a long journey to an unknown destination. They believed that they were going to work camps, and that their submission to the brutality of the guards was the only way to survive.

We went to the area where the selection process was taking place and heard the guards talking about "the Angel Maker." We went to the place the guards were referring to as "the Angel Maker," which was a series of ovens. I saw piles of naked corpses being loaded into the ovens, and I began to cry. Jesus said to me, "These are the people God loves." Then he said, "Look up." Rising out of the smoke of the chimneys, I saw hundreds of people being met by thousands of angels taking them up into the sky. There was great joy in the faces of the people, and there appeared to be no trace of a memory of the horrendous suffering they had just endured. How ironic that the guards sarcastically called the ovens "the Angel Maker."

I asked how God could allow this to happen. They told me that this was not God's will. This was an abomination to God. God wants this never to happen again. This was the sacrifice of an innocent people to whom God had given the law to be an example, a light, to the rest of the world. This Holocaust was breaking God's heart. The anguish that Jesus was suffering at the slaughter of his people was too much for me to bear and I begged that we leave this place. I will never forget this: his anguish at this horror and what it represents. This was one of the low points in human history."

I asked, Why does God let things like this happen? They told me that God was very unhappy with the course of human history and was going to intervene to change the world. God had watched us sink to depths of depravity and cruelty at the very time that he was giving us the instruments to make the world a godlier world. God had intervened in the world many times before, but this time God was going to change the course of human events." (Howard Storm, My Descent Into Death, page 42,43)