Scriptural references to Purgatory - Old and New Testament

[Erose]

According to the catholic catechism the doctrine of purgatory was formulated in the councils of Florence and Trent. The council of Florence was held in 1439AD and the council of Trent was held in 1563AD. I might add that this was during a very dark time in the catholic church's history. During the time of the inquisitions and the selling of indulgences. I believe that the selling of indulgences could've played a huge part of why the doctrine of purgatory was instituted.

Nope not even close. The doctrine predates those two councils by over a 1000 years.

 

[mark46]

I don't see Orthodox teaching as rejecting what Catholics call Purgatory.

Purgatory - OrthodoxWiki

As with so many things, Catholics have a tendency of wanting to explain details of mysteries. IMHO, it is often on these details on which we and Orthodox differ.

Many Orthodox have their own details, the idea of toll houses, certainly a kind of purgatory.

You have yet to demonstrate this 'fact'. You've quoted a bunch of scriptures which Catholics claim support this so called purgatory, however I don't recall any Church Fathers supporting such an idea.

We refer to those few as Saints (with capital 'S')
They have purified themselves (with God's grace) through violent struggle against the old man of sin.

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.​

 

[mark46]

Over the years, I have seen at least two very different ideas of Purgatory in the Western Church. The first, the gospel according to dante, details purgatory as punishment. Many believe that this interpretation is consistent with Scripture, certainly the Latin Church at the time.

Over the centuries, many have developed a different understanding of purgatory, "the mud room of heaven". This is the place that believers go before heaven, to learn and be made ready.

 

[~Anastasia~]

I'm trying to remember what I was told by an Orthodox priest exactly ...

I'm afraid I will miss points. But I think it was offered for Catholics who wished to convert to Orthodoxy. I believe I was told something along the lines of - Orthodox are allowed to believe in purgatory WITH THE CAVEAT that it is not a created place of suffering demanded by God as punishment for sins. I think there may have also been the point that we do not measure time there, nor can we purchase time off. Now, this may have been broken down in particular ways such that each separate point needs to be rejected. It's been a few years, and wasn't something I needed to remember. But basically, I think it also sums up what we believe. Or rather, what we don't believe.

In fact, there is often taught the expectation that any remaining passions that attach the soul must be dealt with before the sound can enjoy fellowship with God or progresss in theosis. We just don't really dogmatize how this happens. I have heard a few things, but I don't remember who said them so I can't be sure how much weight to give them. And they may both/all be true.

The soul may be stripped of these fairly immediately, by death or by a holy encounter after death. The soul may have to encounter demonic temptation based on these passions and may have to choose or incline one way or another. The soul may endure a period of sorrow for remaining passions and be cleansed by this. Any or all of these could be unpleasant, or painful, or possibly even not. But they are in no way punishment exacted by God. They would be the sort of natural consequence and/or path of healing. Again - I do not know who introduced any of these, so they may be from a trusted Saint or a minor monk no one really knows. I don't know how much weight to give them. I have to regard it all as speculation, and am not sure if we can know more, or not.


I leave off toll houses. The problem with them is in how they are understood. They are a part of the Liturgy from fairly early on, so they are certainly a belief of the Church. But as far as I can track down, what people usually think if when they hear "toll houses" was a story originally traced to a Latinzed area of the Russian Church centuries later and was a revelation supposed to be received by an obscure monk who was never canonized. So all of it has to be held at arm's length. The usual advice is to reply, "yes, we believe in toll houses, but as a METAPHOR and NOT a literal process". Usually distilled to the important point being that the soul can still be tested/tempted at the moment of death by demons, before we are safely with the Lord. So in reality, it seems to have not much in common with purgatory.

 

[mark46]

I'm trying to remember what I was told by an Orthodox priest exactly ...

I'm afraid I will miss points. But I think it was offered for Catholics who wished to convert to Orthodoxy. I believe I was told something along the lines of - Orthodox are allowed to believe in purgatory WITH THE CAVEAT that it is not a created place of suffering demanded by God as punishment for sins. I think there may have also been the point that we do not measure time there, nor can we purchase time off. Now, this may have been broken down in particular ways such that each separate point needs to be rejected. It's been a few years, and wasn't something I needed to remember. But basically, I think it also sums up what we believe.

I also believe this.

 

[~Anastasia~]

I also believe this.

See, you could be Orthodox.

(I'm teasing you - no insult of any kind intended)

 

[~Anastasia~]

So ... do Catholics believe in penal substitution?

 

[BNR32FAN]

Nope not even close. The doctrine predates those two councils by over a 1000 years.

Wow really? Can you provide some evidence of that please? According to the catechism that's not the case. According to Wikipedia purgatory doesn't appear in Christian writings until 1160-1180AD.

 

[Erose]

I know I have asked Catholics before and it explained many things about what Catholics believe when I finally understood (I may not say this right) ... you believe there are two kinds of consequences of sin? The eternal consequence is what Christ removed through the cross (do Catholics affirm penal substitution? I didn't think you exactly did from what I've heard Catholics say. But I'm not sure on what basis you might object to it, or what you believe instead, in that case?). And Catholics likewise believe in temporal consequences, which must be removed by good works, or some kind of merit-based grace, or suffering, etc?

The doctrine of temporal punishment due to sin, is one of those doctrines that I am curious why the Orthodox ceased to accept this revealed truth. It is explicitly taught in the Fathers and is explicitly taught in Scripture as well. There are reasons why the early Church even in the Ecumenical Councils assigned "penances" upon those who committed grievous sins, and some of these penances were quite long.

As for temporal consequences, there often simply ARE consequences of sin, because all sin is an injury of some sort, to the individual, to the community, to humanity at large, or whatever. But these are more like natural consequences to us, not something imposed by God requiring punishment? I guess what I don't understand is, Catholics believe they can (and must) atone for these temporal consequences? And that satisfaction is required for God's forgiveness, even in an eternal sense?

We also believe that there are natural consequences to sinful acts that one would consider punishment for sin, but we also believe that God does at times impose punishment upon us, for our sins even when we are forgiven. David loosing his son, due to adultery is one example; Moses and Aaron not being allowed to enter the Promise Land is another example. In both cases they were forgiven for their sins against God and in both cases they still received punishment for their sins.

I think examples are easier. Yes, if the boy breaks a window, he may be forgiven, but still expected to pay. Good enough. But what if he can't pay? Can't even work it off, and no one can pay for him? Would God in that situation not forgive a person (salvation/eternal consequences) if they can't "pay" the temporal consequences? And I suppose I don't understand how the suffering of purgatory in that case is supposed to be payment? Does God exact payment in the form of suffering if reparations are not made to other persons to whom they might be due? And how does that actually undo the wrong that was done - someone still has a broken, unpaid-for window?

Its not necessarily payment, but rather satisfaction. St. John Cassius said: You see then what great means of obtaining mercy the compassion of our Saviour has laid open to us, so that no one when longing for salvation need be crushed by despair, as he sees himself called to life by so many remedies. For if you plead that owing to weakness of the flesh you cannot get rid of your sins by fasting, and you cannot say: My knees are weak from fasting, and my flesh is changed for oil; for I have eaten ashes for my bread, and mingled my drink with weeping, then atone for them by profuse almsgiving. If you have nothing that you can give to the needy (although the claims of want and poverty exclude none from this office, since the two mites of the widow are ranked higher than the splendid gifts of the rich, and the Lord promises that He will give a reward for a cup of cold water), at least you can purge them away by amendment of life. But if you cannot secure perfection in goodness by the eradication of all your faults, you can show a pious anxiety for the good and salvation of another. But if you complain that you are not equal to this service, you can cover your sins by the affection of love. And if in this also some sluggishness of mind makes you weak, at least you should submissively with a feeling of humility entreat for remedies for your wounds by the prayers and intercession of the saints. (St. John Cassius, Conferences XX, Ch VIII)

So what St. John Cassius writes is that God gives us many means by which we can make satisfaction for the sins which we commit, so no one is can claim that they cannot do so. If you are interested in knowing more about this he wrote a very interesting document on the subject of Repentance and Satisfaction that you may want to read. It is his Conference XX. Let us not forget that he learned at the feet of the Egyptian Desert Fathers.

I think from our (Orthodox) point of view, it matters not so much if we actually pay for the window. If we can make up for our wrongs, we should. If we can't ... well, we can't. We would not say God is going to punish us and call that payment. HOWEVER ... if we despise the person whose window we broke, don't care that they are lacking a window and it's all because if our action - then we have a problem. In that case, there is a sickness in the soul of such a person that needs to be fixed, and he is not suitable for the presence of God until that happens. We also hope to addresss such things in life, in submission to and cooperation with the grace of God, and hope to be made in the likeness of Christ before we die. In whatever ways we fall short, if God yet judges us "saved" ... then He must deal with those, and it likely won't be pleasant for us. But we stop short of a developed purgatory doctrine to explain it, and we really must reject it being established fact.

Here I make a few comments.

1) I will give you an example: If I stole a bike from a neighbor, and later felt remorse for doing so, confess my sins to my priest, but decide to keep the bike instead of giving it back to my neighbor, am I forgiven?

2) Much of what you wrote about what happens after death is the doctrine of purgatory. Purgatory (and it seems that we do this frequently) is not very complicated.

3) Either believe that the prayers for the dead do something for them or you don't. We know that prayers for the damned do not help them, because they are beyond our help, and this is what the Fathers also taught. We know that prayers for the Saints do not help them, because they don't need our prayers, and this also is taught by the Fathers. Then why do we believe our prayers help the rest? The Fathers did teach on this if that help you.

If Catholics do hold to penal substitution, perhaps that might explain to me how suffering in purgatory can equal payment for wrongs done in your theology (forgive me if I'm getting that wrong).

Here is why we believe that one suffers in Purgatory, and I will quote St. Gregory of Nyssa here for he says it so much more elegantly than I can:
But while He for a noble end is attracting the soul to Himself, the Fountain of all Blessedness, it is the occasion necessarily to the being so attracted of a state of torture. Just as those who refinegold from the dross which it contains not only get this base alloy to melt in the fire, but are obliged to melt the pure gold along with the alloy, and then while this last is being consumed the gold remains, so, while evil is being consumed in the purgatorial fire, the soul that is welded to this evil must inevitably be in the fire too, until the spurious material alloy is consumed and annihilated by this fire. If a clay of the more tenacious kind is deeply plastered round a rope, and then the end of the rope is put through a narrow hole, and then some one on the further side violently pulls it by that end, the result must be that, while the rope itself obeys the force exerted, the clay that has been plastered upon it is scraped off it with this violent pulling and is left outside the hole, and, moreover, is the cause why the rope does not run easily through the passage, but has to undergo a violent tension at the hands of the puller. In such a manner, I think, we may figure to ourselves the agonized struggle of that soul which has wrapped itself up in earthy material passions, when God is drawing it, His own one, to Himself, and the foreign matter, which has somehow grown into its substance, has to be scraped from it by main force, and so occasions it that keen intolerable anguish.

Then it seems, I said, that it is not punishment chiefly and principally that the Deity, as Judge, afflicts sinners with; but He operates, as your argument has shown, only to get the good separated from the evil and to attract it into the communion of blessedness.

That, said the Teacher, is my meaning; and also that the agony will be measured by the amount of evil there is in each individual. For it would not be reasonable to think that the man who has remained so long as we have supposed in evil known to be forbidden, and the man who has fallen only into moderate sins, should be tortured to the same amount in the judgment upon their vicious habit; but according to the quantity of material will be the longer or shorter time that that agonizing flame will be burning; that is, as long as there is fuel to feed it. In the case of the man who has acquired a heavy weight of material, the consuming fire must necessarily be very searching; but where that which the fire has to feed upon has spread less far, there the penetrating fierceness of the punishment is mitigated, so far as the subject itself, in the amount of its evil, is diminished. In any and every case evil must be removed out of existence, so that, as we said above, the absolutely non-existent should cease to be at all. Since it is not in its nature that evil should exist outside the will, does it not follow that when it shall be that every will rests in God, evil will be reduced to complete annihilation, owing to no receptacle being left for it? (St. Gregory of Nyssa On the Soul and Resurrection)

In my opinion it just makes sense anyway. The sins which are our predominate faults are hard for us to get rid of because quite frankly there is a part of us that loves those faults. Loosing something that we love to do is extremely hard and painful is it not? For an extreme example of this think about the pain that a drug addict normally goes through when trying to get clean. Look at how difficult it is for an alcoholic to quit drinking. The deeper one falls into a predominate fault the harder it is for that person to pull out of it even with help.

Then you throw in the fact that one in the state of purgation knows that what they have done has pushed them further away from God, and it is going to take them longer to get to see God face to face. The pain of guilt and shame that we chose something over our Creator, should be overwhelming. So yes I can see purgatory being very painful. As sinful creatures we are, knowing what we know right now about the crucifixion, if we where shot back into time to that day of Redemption and were allowed to stand before our Lord on the cross, realizing that He is upon that cross because of me and what I have done....yes there is great pain and anguish, and should be by those in purgatory, as there should be among us before going to purgatory.

And I do know it's tied to the idea of merits, etc, which I try to keep in mind when asking these questions. We absolutely don't share that with Catholics at all, since we don't believe in created grace, but view it as the very energy of God and how He interacts with humankind.

This is another doctrine of the faith that it seems that you guys have lost. The ECF definitely taught it, and Scripture also teaches it. Does it not say that Alms-giving covers a multitude of sins?

I know these questions are a bit scattered and confused. I really was able to understand what Catholicism teaches a lot better when I understood the two kinds of punishment/atonement for sin, but even now a few years later it is difficult for me to completely make sense of all of it.

I'm really confused by this. This doctrine to me was the easiest to understand because it is based upon Justice. We cannot forget that God is a just God, not just a merciful one.

 

[Erose]

So ... do Catholics believe in penal substitution?

No. To not go into detail which I'm not really sure that I could give it the honor that it is due I would recommend if you want to learn more about what we believe you can go here: CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Redemption and here: Catechism of the Catholic Church - IntraText

 

[Erose]

Wow really? Can you provide some evidence of that please? According to the catechism that's not the case. According to Wikipedia purgatory doesn't appear in Christian writings until 1160-1180AD.

Maybe the word "purgatory" doesn't appear until the 12th century; but the doctrine was taught much earlier than that. Tertullian, Origen, St Gregory of Nyssa, St. Augustine, St. Clement of Alexandria are some of the ECF that I found who taught the doctrine.

One thing that confuses people at times is understanding how and why some teaching becomes formulated or defined as dogma. This isn't when that doctrine can into existence, rather when the church formulates or defines a doctrine as dogma, they are clarifying what is taught by the Church and has always been taught by the Church to safeguard it against heresy.

Considering that the passage on purgatory in the Catechism quotes passages from the Fathers EARLIER than the 12th century, there is some things you are confused about, and hopefully that clears it up for you.

 

[Erose]

Your reference is from the Old Testament before Jesus died for our sins. It is obsolete.

Who taught you that the Old Testament is obsolete?

 

[BNR32FAN]

The doctrine of temporal punishment due to sin, is one of those doctrines that I am curious why the Orthodox ceased to accept this revealed truth. It is explicitly taught in the Fathers and is explicitly taught in Scripture as well. There are reasons why the early Church even in the Ecumenical Councils assigned "penances" upon those who committed grievous sins, and some of these penances were quite long.

We also believe that there are natural consequences to sinful acts that one would consider punishment for sin, but we also believe that God does at times impose punishment upon us, for our sins even when we are forgiven. David loosing his son, due to adultery is one example; Moses and Aaron not being allowed to enter the Promise Land is another example. In both cases they were forgiven for their sins against God and in both cases they still received punishment for their sins.

Its not necessarily payment, but rather satisfaction. St. John Cassius said: You see then what great means of obtaining mercy the compassion of our Saviour has laid open to us, so that no one when longing for salvation need be crushed by despair, as he sees himself called to life by so many remedies. For if you plead that owing to weakness of the flesh you cannot get rid of your sins by fasting, and you cannot say: My knees are weak from fasting, and my flesh is changed for oil; for I have eaten ashes for my bread, and mingled my drink with weeping, then atone for them by profuse almsgiving. If you have nothing that you can give to the needy (although the claims of want and poverty exclude none from this office, since the two mites of the widow are ranked higher than the splendid gifts of the rich, and the Lord promises that He will give a reward for a cup of cold water), at least you can purge them away by amendment of life. But if you cannot secure perfection in goodness by the eradication of all your faults, you can show a pious anxiety for the good and salvation of another. But if you complain that you are not equal to this service, you can cover your sins by the affection of love. And if in this also some sluggishness of mind makes you weak, at least you should submissively with a feeling of humility entreat for remedies for your wounds by the prayers and intercession of the saints. (St. John Cassius, Conferences XX, Ch VIII)

So what St. John Cassius writes is that God gives us many means by which we can make satisfaction for the sins which we commit, so no one is can claim that they cannot do so. If you are interested in knowing more about this he wrote a very interesting document on the subject of Repentance and Satisfaction that you may want to read. It is his Conference XX. Let us not forget that he learned at the feet of the Egyptian Desert Fathers.

Here I make a few comments.

1) I will give you an example: If I stole a bike from a neighbor, and later felt remorse for doing so, confess my sins to my priest, but decide to keep the bike instead of giving it back to my neighbor, am I forgiven?

2) Much of what you wrote about what happens after death is the doctrine of purgatory. Purgatory (and it seems that we do this frequently) is not very complicated.

3) Either believe that the prayers for the dead do something for them or you don't. We know that prayers for the damned do not help them, because they are beyond our help, and this is what the Fathers also taught. We know that prayers for the Saints do not help them, because they don't need our prayers, and this also is taught by the Fathers. Then why do we believe our prayers help the rest? The Fathers did teach on this if that help you.


Here is why we believe that one suffers in Purgatory, and I will quote St. Gregory of Nyssa here for he says it so much more elegantly than I can:
But while He for a noble end is attracting the soul to Himself, the Fountain of all Blessedness, it is the occasion necessarily to the being so attracted of a state of torture. Just as those who refinegold from the dross which it contains not only get this base alloy to melt in the fire, but are obliged to melt the pure gold along with the alloy, and then while this last is being consumed the gold remains, so, while evil is being consumed in the purgatorial fire, the soul that is welded to this evil must inevitably be in the fire too, until the spurious material alloy is consumed and annihilated by this fire. If a clay of the more tenacious kind is deeply plastered round a rope, and then the end of the rope is put through a narrow hole, and then some one on the further side violently pulls it by that end, the result must be that, while the rope itself obeys the force exerted, the clay that has been plastered upon it is scraped off it with this violent pulling and is left outside the hole, and, moreover, is the cause why the rope does not run easily through the passage, but has to undergo a violent tension at the hands of the puller. In such a manner, I think, we may figure to ourselves the agonized struggle of that soul which has wrapped itself up in earthy material passions, when God is drawing it, His own one, to Himself, and the foreign matter, which has somehow grown into its substance, has to be scraped from it by main force, and so occasions it that keen intolerable anguish.

Then it seems, I said, that it is not punishment chiefly and principally that the Deity, as Judge, afflicts sinners with; but He operates, as your argument has shown, only to get the good separated from the evil and to attract it into the communion of blessedness.

That, said the Teacher, is my meaning; and also that the agony will be measured by the amount of evil there is in each individual. For it would not be reasonable to think that the man who has remained so long as we have supposed in evil known to be forbidden, and the man who has fallen only into moderate sins, should be tortured to the same amount in the judgment upon their vicious habit; but according to the quantity of material will be the longer or shorter time that that agonizing flame will be burning; that is, as long as there is fuel to feed it. In the case of the man who has acquired a heavy weight of material, the consuming fire must necessarily be very searching; but where that which the fire has to feed upon has spread less far, there the penetrating fierceness of the punishment is mitigated, so far as the subject itself, in the amount of its evil, is diminished. In any and every case evil must be removed out of existence, so that, as we said above, the absolutely non-existent should cease to be at all. Since it is not in its nature that evil should exist outside the will, does it not follow that when it shall be that every will rests in God, evil will be reduced to complete annihilation, owing to no receptacle being left for it? (St. Gregory of Nyssa On the Soul and Resurrection)

In my opinion it just makes sense anyway. The sins which are our predominate faults are hard for us to get rid of because quite frankly there is a part of us that loves those faults. Loosing something that we love to do is extremely hard and painful is it not? For an extreme example of this think about the pain that a drug addict normally goes through when trying to get clean. Look at how difficult it is for an alcoholic to quit drinking. The deeper one falls into a predominate fault the harder it is for that person to pull out of it even with help.

Then you throw in the fact that one in the state of purgation knows that what they have done has pushed them further away from God, and it is going to take them longer to get to see God face to face. The pain of guilt and shame that we chose something over our Creator, should be overwhelming. So yes I can see purgatory being very painful. As sinful creatures we are, knowing what we know right now about the crucifixion, if we where shot back into time to that day of Redemption and were allowed to stand before our Lord on the cross, realizing that He is upon that cross because of me and what I have done....yes there is great pain and anguish, and should be by those in purgatory, as there should be among us before going to purgatory.
This is another doctrine of the faith that it seems that you guys have lost. The ECF definitely taught it, and Scripture also teaches it. Does it not say that Alms-giving covers a multitude of sins?

I'm really confused by this. This doctrine to me was the easiest to understand because it is based upon Justice. We cannot forget that God is a just God, not just a merciful one.

A lot of this is based on assumptions. We don't know why God chose to punish those who were forgiven. And we shouldn't make assumptions about God's decisions. Would you forgive me for stealing your bike if Jesus returned the bike that was stolen?

 

[Erose]

A lot of this is based on assumptions. We don't know why God chose to punish those who were forgiven. And we shouldn't make assumptions about God's decisions. Would you forgive me for stealing your bike if Jesus returned the bike that was stolen?

Nope not based upon assumptions, based upon fact. In Scripture sin always requires some form of Satisfaction. If it didn't, then Jesus wouldn't have died upon the cross. It is as simple as that.

Concerning the Bike scenario. In all intents and purposes, that is very similar to Redemption of Christ,...just on a much smaller scale.

 

[Phil 1:21]

Nope not based upon assumptions, based upon fact. In Scripture sin always requires some form of Satisfaction. If it didn't, then Jesus wouldn't have died upon the cross.

So then what's the point of purgatory? Unless you somehow feel Calvary was insufficient.

 

[Erose]

So then what's the point of purgatory? Unless you somehow feel Calvary was insufficient.

Jay, are you sinless? After initial justification can and does an average Christian sin?

 

[Phil 1:21]

Jay, are you sinless? After initial justification can and does an average Christian sin?

No, and yes. Now what exactly do you think happened at Calvary?

 

[BNR32FAN]

Nope not based upon assumptions, based upon fact. In Scripture sin always requires some form of Satisfaction. If it didn't, then Jesus wouldn't have died upon the cross. It is as simple as that.

Concerning the Bike scenario. In all intents and purposes, that is very similar to Redemption of Christ,...just on a much smaller scale.

Yup I agree there is always a consequence for sin. Luckily for us Jesus already returned the bike and suffered the consequences for us. So are we saved by paying or suffering for our sins or are we saved by God's grace? The teaching of purgatory says that Revelations 21:27 is the reason why we must be purified in purgatory.

“and there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie: but only they that are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”
‭‭Revelation‬ ‭21:27‬ ‭ASV‬‬

Now let's look at what Paul has to say about this in Colossians 1:21-22

“And you, being in time past alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without blemish and unreproveable before him:”
‭‭Colossians‬ ‭1:21-22‬ ‭ASV‬‬
Colossians 1:21-22; And you, being in time past alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without blemish and unreproveable before him:

We are made holy and without blemish and unreproveable before God by Jesus' sacrifice. Absolutely nothing mentioned about purgatory. We are reconciled past tense meaning this has already happened. Again in Hebrews 10:17-20

“And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;”
‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭10:17-20‬ ‭ASV‬‬

By Jesus' sacrifice we can enter the most holy place and God will not remember our sins. Hence the vail was torn top to bottom and it is finished. The examples you gave of Moses and David, Jesus had not sacrificed himself yet. At that time they were still under the old covenant. Oh by the way I did mean to reply earlier about what I said about the Old Testament. I did not convey that correctly. What I meant was that the old covenant was obsolete. Not the Old Testament. Sorry about the mistake there. I'd like to continue but my lunch break is over. Have a blessed day

 

[Erose]

No, and yes. Now what exactly do you think happened at Calvary?

Explain to me the no first.

 

[Phil 1:21]

Explain to me the no first.

Which part of it is unclear?