Today, I received a pamphlet in the mail from Catholics. I do not know if it was a church or just an organization. Nonetheless, I noticed that the pamphlet had a paragraph on purgatory. It surprised me because I thought they gave up on that hoax. The scam had been uncovered ever since Bibles were readily available and people could read the scripture for themselves.

Nonetheless, this is the hoax. When a person dies, they go to purgatory during which time they pay for all the wrong they did. If someone, usually a relative provided things of value to the church, then it could be used to lessen the time the person spends in purgatory. Hence, wealth was used to help relatives into heaven.

There is one thing that the wealth accomplishes to this day. It makes the Catholic church rich. It was the whole purpose of the hoax. The Catholic church needed money. So, one of the clerics came up with this idea.

Firstly, there was no talk of purgatory until centuries after Jesus’ resurrection.

Second, if you have a word processor and you were to load the entire Bible into it; then did a word search on purgatory, you would not find it. It is not there. There is nothing there that resembles it. Certainly, Jesus did not use the term. He used the term hell and He used the term Heaven. On at least one occasion, He used the term paradise, but not purgatory. If there were such a place, don’t you think He would have said something about it?

Third, Jesus made it quite clear. There are those who will go to heaven and there are those who will go to hell. There was no mention of purgatory.

Finally, a word about wealth. No one, but no one can purchase salvation. If there was a purgatory, God would not want anyone’s wealth. If God wanted it, he could make more wealth than what is on earth. However, wealth serves Him no purpose. For what is He going to use it?

Moreover, if you stack all your good works on top of each other, it would not begin to reach to heaven for just one person. God is not impressed by anything you do in your pride. The only thing he respects are the things you do in the name of Jesus. That which is done without faith in Jesus is as filthy rags.

It is one of the biggest lies that Satan teaches, that we can impress God with what we do with our hands or what we give him without faith. Certainly faith in the Catholic church will gain you nothing. On the contrary. In God’s eyes it is idolatry. God’s word should be the foundation for our faith, not some edict from Rome.