Purgatory And Prayers For The Dead.

eleos1954 said:

The punishment is the forfeiting of eternal life (this is the punishment).... God is not a torturing monster. He is merciful.

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That's why He poured His wrath on His Son, that's why He crushed Him on the cross. But that was onlu for the elect of God. The wicked will receive the same wrath Jesus did.

Xeno.of.athens said:

Why do you think that?

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Romans 12 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

Paul says in verse 19, “Leave it to the wrath of God.” Then the wrath of God is defined further as God’s vengeance, “Vengeance is mine.” So wrath is connected with God’s response to something that deserves vengeance. And then it says, “I will repay.” So God’s wrath is treated as a repayment to man for something man has done.

So just taking this verse alone with its pieces, we could venture a definition of the wrath of God like this: the wrath of God is God’s settled anger toward sin expressed in the repayment of suitable vengeance on the guilty sinner.

Psalm 6:1: “O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.” Psalm 90:7: “We are brought to an end by your anger; by your wrath we are dismayed.” Hosea 13:11: “I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.” Romans 2:8: “For those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury [anger].”

Look at the OT. Look at what He done to Egypt in Exodus. Look what He done to the unfaithul in Israel and Jerusalem, how much they suffered.

If Christ suffered so much as a punishment for our sins, it is clear to me, the unrepentent will suffer the same wrath.

Ivan Hlavanda said:

That's why He poured His wrath on His Son, that's why He crushed Him on the cross. But that was onlu for the elect of God. The wicked will receive the same wrath Jesus did.

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One person of God cannot crush another person of God on the cross, as it would contradict the divine nature, which is a union of perfect love between three persons. Your interpretation of the Passion of our Lord is derived from the over the top Western ideas of penal substitution which originated with a misreading of Anselm of Canterbury’s equally flawed Satisfaction soteriology.

It is much better to follow the beliefs of the early church, that our Lord’s passion was at once an atoning sacrifice, but not to anyone, but rather a self-sacrifice, a victory over death and the supreme act of love.

Also the reason why Christ went to Hell was not to be punished therein, God forbid, but to extract from it the souls of the righteous and anyone else who would follow him trapped there from before his arrival, when there was no means of salvation available.

The Liturgist said:

One person of God cannot crush another person of God on the cross, as it would contradict the divine nature, which is a union of perfect love between three persons. Your interpretation of the Passion of our Lord is derived from the over the top Western ideas of penal substitution which originated with a misreading of Anselm of Canterbury’s equally flawed Satisfaction soteriology.

It is much better to follow the beliefs of the early church, that our Lord’s passion was at once an atoning sacrifice, but not to anyone, but rather a self-sacrifice, a victory over death and the supreme act of love.

Also the reason why Christ went to Hell was not to be punished therein, God forbid, but to extract from it the souls of the righteous and anyone else who would follow him trapped there from before his arrival, when there was no means of salvation available.

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The Harrowing of Hell

Ordinary Christian said:

The Harrowing of Hell

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Exactly!

The Liturgist said:

Exactly!

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I've posted this video a few times.

Ordinary Christian said:

I've posted this video a few times.

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I love Fr. Trenham.

The Liturgist said:

I love Fr. Trenham.

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Me too. Here's a short that just popped up:


I like listening to Fr. Spyridon too.

RileyG said:

You believe Jesus endured wrath from the Father? I do not agree at all.

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Isaiah 53 4-6 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.


Isaiah 53 10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;

Romans 5 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. (God is angry at us sinners, and we deserve wrath. But God, in order to save His people, poured the wrath on His Son)

In Matthew 20:20–28, the mother of James and John, in typical motherly fashion, asks Jesus whether her nice, upstanding sons can sit beside Jesus in his kingdom. James and John, through their mother, are seeking prominence. They want to be great.

Jesus answers, in atypical fashion, with a question: “Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?” (Matthew 20:22). This is not a rebuke as we might expect. It’s a simple question to which the brothers reply, “Yes, we are able to drink the cup.”

They don’t understand what Jesus is saying. He then turns to his other disciples, who are angered by James’s and John’s request because they themselves desired the same prime placement at Jesus’s right hand. But Jesus sets them straight, and us. Greatness in the kingdom of God is obtained along the path of love — the path of sacrifice, service, suffering.


Key passages in the Bible connect God’s wrath with the imagery of a cup. Jeremiah 25:15 tells us, “Thus the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: ‘Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it.’” Then Isaiah 51:17 says, “O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.” In Revelation 14, an angel speaks, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger” (verses 9–10).

Jesus confirms this connection in Gethsemane when he prayed, the cross looming just ahead, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).

The disciples will drink a cup, too — a cup of suffering (Matthew 20:23). But Jesus’s cup of suffering is different from theirs because Jesus’s suffering is under God’s anger. Jesus drinks the cup of God’s wrath, a cup that has accumulated the fury of God against sins of all types. Heinous crimes, adultery, careless words, dishonoring thoughts, lies — all of it will be punished by God.

This is the cup Jesus drinks on the cross

There, at Golgotha, our Savior drained God’s cup of burning anger down to the dregs. God poured out his wrath, full strength, undiluted, onto his Son. Paul summarizes the meaning of this great event, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath for us so that he could extend the cup of God’s fellowship to us.

Xeno.of.athens said:

This thread is about prayers for the dead and purgatory; not so much about theories of the atonement.

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And we do know that there in NO GREEK word for PURGATORY in the KJV , PERIOD .

THEORIES about ATONEMENT is found in found in Ex 29:36 and 37 , Eze 43:20 , 2 Cor 5:18 and 19 and many more in the OT and the DEAD are DEAD .

dan p

sandman said:

You do realize that purgatory and its dogma implies that Jesus Christ was an incomplete savior, yet mans mediation can complete it.

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Not at all. Only the saved of Christ go to purgatory.

Ivan Hlavanda said:

Jesus never spoke against pedophilia either, that doesn't mean we should practice it.

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What a loathesome comparison.

Ivan Hlavanda said:

It's too late to pray for the dead.

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Yeah, God being bound in time as we are, right? Rubbish.

d taylor said:

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God does not need a purgatory

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God doesn't "need" anything.

d taylor said:

, something like a purgatory is a man created idea. When a person believes in Jesus they immediately cross over from death to life.

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Muddy boots and the smell of smoke and all?

sandman said:

I spent the first 14 years of my life as a catholic, and I remember even as a young teen not being able to wrap my head around this …and several other things.

I had an uncle who was a priest... who also tried to explain this to me…

Like I said it may not be impressed upon today like it was then…The roots of this was a systematic money making deception that was imposed upon parishioners.

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Sounds like you got yuour church history from Chick tracts.

Jipsah said:

Not at all. Only the saved of Christ go to purgatory.

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Just out of curiosity, are you among the High Church / Anglo Catholics who believe in it?

Either way, whether one accepts purgatory or another soteriology, prayers for the dead are very important, and I love the Western All Souls Day and the Eastern Orthodox “Soul Saturdays.”

@dzheremi , aside from the “general funeral” held on the afternoon of Palm Sunday for anyone who reposes in Holy Week, does Coptic Orthodoxy have any equivalent to these solemnities? Also, is there an All Saints Day in the Coptic Rite like in the Byzantine and Western rites?

I like how the Byzantine Rite All Saints Day, like Pentecost and Palm Sunday, is one of the three occasions when green vestments and paraments are normal in the Byzantine Rite, symbolizing new life (the default liturgical color in Byzantine Rite churches such as the Eastern Orthodox and Ukrainian Greek Catholics is actually gold, and not green, but the liturgical calendar is such that the liturgical color can change two or more times in a week, for example, if the Feast of the Annunciation falls on a Tuesday or Thursday in Lent, most Orthodox churches will switch from black vestments and paraments to blue, then back to black, and then on the weekends to purple or dark red, or the reddish-purplish color called Morello, I think, used also on Saturdays and Sundays in Lent in the Ambrosian Rite celebrated around Milan.