Recap After we had looked into prayers for the sainted dead in 2 Maccabees, one person in class wanted to explore the verse that followed. Your teacher tactfully avoided doing so to keep the Lesson on task. Today, to honor this person’s august wishes (it is August, after all!), we delve deeper in to what […]
Our Take on Purgatory, Pt. 2
This is the concluding article on the Lutheran view of the Roman-Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Continuing our look into the Roman-Catholic doctrine of purgatory, Rome teaches: All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death, they undergo purification, so as to achieve […]
The Lutheran Church and Purgatory, Pt. 1
This is our pastor’s newsletter article for the June 2016 issue of our congregational newsletter. Last month, we looked the body’s resurrection and the intermediate state of our souls being in heaven until Jesus calls forth our bodies on the Last Day. The Roman-Catholic Church also believes in an intermediate state of existence for heaven-bound […]
1 Corinthians, Lesson 4: What God Gives, How He Gives It, and What Will Remain
After 1 Corinthians mentioned what God had called Paul and Sosthenes to do, to preach and teach the wisdom of God, Paul then again got personal. He said the Corinthian Christians had not grown in the Faith as they should have. They were still “fleshly infants”: they haven’t grown in stature and lost their “baby […]