Better idea, just get by your self and read the bible. Wack! The Holy Spirit will address the concerns of your heart.
Knowledge has been gathering for thousands of years, and each generation contributes new knowledge to the other. Always progressing to that perfect state.
Peace>>>AJ:love9:
If you believe, as many Protestants do, that man is totally corrupt and depraved, no purification is possible. However if you believe, as Catholics do, that we can be perfected and cleansed of our selfishness, then a purgation (Purgatory) is necessary.
It started with Martin Luther when he was ordained a priest in 1507. As a young man he struggled with sin, becoming convinced that his own sinfulness and guilt were so depraved that he was about to be struck down and cast into hell. We don't know what his sin was. If I had to guess I would speculate it was something sexual. The harder he tried to live a holy life by force of will, the further away he seemed to be from his heavenly goal.
In about 1513 he felt he had a mystical illumination which resolved his crisis. He could indeed have assurance of salvation despite his sinful depravity, because God would justify him by his faith in spite of his sin. The Sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation with confession of sin and absolution were pointless. Having proclaimed his faith God no longer looked at his sin.
Luther began with the idea of God's justice, His saving righteousness, the gracious gift of salvation extended to us in Christ. Human merit pays no role. Man is, in fact, totally corrupt as is evident from concupiscence, the fermenting, restless egotism that vitiates human decisions at every level.
According to Luther, there is no Free Will. The human will is totally enslaved to sin and totally rebellious to God. It is only through faith that we appropriate the salvation that God has effected for us in Christ. For God does not impute to us this sinfulness once we confess it by faith, hate it, and seek to be healed of it.
Whatever righteousness we have then, according to Luther, is the righteousness of Christ imputed to us because of our faith. We are still, and will always remain, filthy rags.
It didn't help matters that Luther's time was one of the low points for the papacy, when prayers on behalf of the dead, to hasten their purification in Purgatory, were being sold to the highest bidder as a way of raising funds for temporal projects (the selling of indulgences). So Luther had two reasons to reject Purgatory: he believed that because humans were totally depraved no purification was possible, and he objected to the fund-raising methods of corrupt church officials.
You may not have known it, but Luther was responsible for the Dueterocanonical (Apocryphal) books being removed from the Old Testament. Luther objected to 2nd Maccabees 12:44-46, where prayers and a temple offering were made on behalf of Israelite soldiers who were killed in battle, then discovered to have been wearing amulets of Baal. Since this book specifically justified a doctrine he rejected, he reasoned that the book itself was to be rejected.
Something that significantly aided Luther's cause was the newly-invented printing press. Luther exploited it to its fullest potential to have his voice heard in every village and hamlet. __________________
