Purgatory Is Based On A Real Place In The Bible – Part 3 of 7

If you have not seen the others, please check them out in a card right up here. You can see the sermon series playlist or find it on our website by searching for it on our YouTube channel to find all of them.

Now today, we are talking about Purgatory. Over the last two weeks, we have discussed Hell as a place and then also Hell as it is right now, the state of Hell and how it sits empty. Yes, empty. Do not believe me? Check out the sermon, it will be in a card right here. This sermon on how Hell is empty, at least right now at this point.

Today we are talking about Purgatory. Well, Purgatory of course does not exist, but it is not entirely fictional. Now for you Catholics that are watching, where you believe in a Purgatory or a place like that, or other faiths that believe in a Purgatory, you are not completely wrong. It is something that has some truth. It has just been twisted, or it is a distorted version of the truth.

That is what we are going to do in today’s message, unpack this. What is Purgatory? What does it look like? Some people believe it is complete fiction, it does not exist at all. Some believe in it completely. Both of these are kind of right, they are half-truths.

We are going to find this middle ground and show you guys exactly what Purgatory is, or what it might be as a place, what the Bible says about it. Yes, the Bible could say something about this, where at least we get this idea.

So stay tuned. This is going to be a good sermon, and it is also going to be something that can help you out when talking to other people, or when their question becomes “What happens when we die? Where is this place of waiting?”

Can we pray them into the afterlife, into Heaven? Or are they damned to Hell if no one prays or things like that? I mean, we will dive into this. We will unpack this a little bit more, stay tuned, it is going to be a great sermon series. This is again part three. We have got a few more left, so continue.

Now although the word Purgatory is never mentioned in the Bible, many faiths or religions believe it is a real place. It is very true, people believe that this is a place where when you die, you go there. Now whether they call it Purgatory as a term, that is the most widely known term for this kind of a holding cell or maybe a bus stop on the way.

The famous book called “A Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis kind of depicts it as a bus stop where these spirits that have died are just waiting to get on this bus to transport them to their next journey.

They kind of engage in whatever the next transformation is, and there are a few stops along the way, and if they get off, maybe they decide this is their heaven and they stay there, but maybe they are really not in Heaven yet, maybe they are just thinking they are.

It is a deep book. I encourage you to read it if you have the bandwidth up top to do so. If you do not, feel free to read it anyway and think about what might be going on. You can comment for any further discussion because it is a good book. But it kind of depicts Purgatory as this bus stop, so we are going to piggyback on that.

Some faiths or religions believe that when you die, your body is of course cremated or placed in the ground, and your soul or spirit goes to a place where it is there waiting in the afterlife. The people here that are still on Earth, start praying for you and praying for your soul or praying for your spirit, that you may be let into the Kingdom of Heaven rather than being sent down to Hell.

It is a strange concept, but it is not entirely false, it is not completely mentioned in the Bible, and again we are going to use the term Purgatory because it is universally pretty much understood as a waiting place after death.

Many Christians believe this is not even a place at all. They say “No, when people die they go right to Heaven or right to Hell,” and that is true somewhat. You say, “Wait a minute, what do you mean somewhat?” It is true, somewhat. Seriously, the Bible says this and that is what this whole sermon series has been about.

Remember Hell is empty, if you have been with us through this sermon series, that means if someone dies and they are an unbeliever, they are not in Hell. Where are they? Well, they are in a waiting place. What is a waiting place? Well, if they are dead and in a waiting place, in a way that could be Purgatory.

Yes, depending on your definition of the term, you see what I mean here, we are getting very technical and could be very confusing and it could be one of those things where everyone says “We agree to disagree because we are all right and we are all wrong, and no one knows what is going on.”

Well, guess what, we know what is going on because it says so in the Bible, and that is what we are getting at. A lot of people again, couple beliefs, Catholics, we are going to say there is a lot, some of them believe in a Purgatory.

Some others, like Buddhists or Hindus, believe in a place of Purgatory where you go and you wait, and then you get led into whatever paradise, the afterlife, Heaven, whatever that religion or faith calls it.

A lot of Christians believe, nope, it is Heaven or Hell. Some people, many people, I would say most of the people, whether they are Christian, Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant, you name it, if you went out and asked 100 people of different faiths many of them do not even know what they believe, they just hope, they take it in faith, it is not a bad thing but let’s know what we believe.

Let’s take an active stance in our faith and say, “Hey I am a Christian, I follow Jesus Christ and I believe exactly what the Bible tells me because that is the truth.” If you do not know what the Bible is telling you, this is going to help.

Both of these, all three of these, are completely acceptable, they are not a salvation issue. What does that mean? Well for you to get into Heaven, you need to believe that Jesus died for your sins and He paid the price for you to get into Heaven.

You are not good enough, no matter what you do, you are not good enough. As long as you have the blood of Jesus covering you, you are saved. Now, we still want to know more about this, so let’s unpack it.

Before Jesus died on the cross, this means BC, so all those people in the Old Testament, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, remember there was a part in the Bible in the New Testament that says even that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. He could not believe in Jesus Christ like we do today.

Well did he still get to Heaven? Yes, his faith was credited, because he believed in a future promise. He believed that a Messiah would come. He believed what God was saying. He believed, his faith was credited to him as righteousness and he was let in. But he could not get into Heaven yet. We are going to talk more about that later.

He went into a place that is called “Abraham’s bosom” or “Paradise.” Before Jesus died on the cross, all of those believers, all of these people when they died went to a place called “Abraham’s bosom” also known as “Paradise.”

Noah’s Ark, when God put Noah and his family on the ark and all the rest of the people died, where did they go? They went to a place of torment. Now we talked about this last week. This place is not Hell, but it is a place before Hell, it is an impending doom because Hell is empty.

All of these people are waiting in something we chose to call Hades. Now this is called Hades because at the time this was written, the New Testament had a largely Greek population, they were trying to reach the Greeks or the Gentiles and they knew Greek Mythology, so they understood Zeus, they understood Poseidon, and they understood Hades.

They knew Hades was the underworld place. People said, “Hey, when you die, you do not want to go to Hades.” Meaning we do not want to go to, not a place, but the god of Hades. We do not want to be in with him, with Hades. That is how they understood it.

We also talked about Gehenna, which was a literal place, and Jesus spoke of that a lot, and this was a nasty place where you would go to die. There were fires, trash dumps, and burning bodies where the worms could be eating your flesh, lame animals were just sent there.

So literally you could be alive, it was hotter than blazes, because of all the fires around you, and worms were probably eating your body, bugs were all over you; it is a nasty place of torment and torture. You did not want to go there.

The unbelievers who died in the flood and throughout the Old Testament, before Jesus, are all in this place. Now Jesus at the time talked about a physical literal place; you can see it on a map today. We talked about it last week, so again, check it out.

This was a real place, and He was using that as a reference to the eternal place. Now, of course, they are not there right now; you cannot just travel there and see all these people. Jesus used this as a reference. “Hey, this is what it is like, you do not want to be there on this earth. In the internal realm, it is even worse.”

They called it Hades because they kind of understood that as the underworld. So they match those two together. It is a place of torment, a stop before Hell. Now the believers, again, were in a spot of paradise.

Remember how Jesus and the thief next to Him on the cross, He said, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise.” You will be with Me in Heaven because they were going to paradise first, where the guy had to wait, and then Jesus ferried them all into Heaven. We are going to talk more about that in a couple of weeks.

Let’s dive into some Scripture here. Luke 16:22-23. If you remember, we have talked about this verse before, but let’s read it again. We are going to dive into it. Luke 16:22-23; this is the parable of the “Rich Man and Lazarus.” “The time came when the beggar died, and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried in Hell.”

Now there is a footnote, it depends, it says, “The Greek: Hades.” So when this was written, the original word was Hades. So the rich man died and was buried in Hades. Again, this is not the final place of Hell, the Tartarus that could be mentioned that was reserved for satan and all the spirits that rejected God.

All these people will eventually be there, but not until the final judgment. Now this rich man was buried in Hades, where he was in torment. This is not just like a nice place where you are waiting. You are waiting in literal torture, just like Jesus said in Gehenna.

They are waiting there to die because they are sent there. They are burning piles of trash. They are burning dead bodies, the lame, the bugs eating their flesh; they are waiting to die in the same way you will be waiting in Hades to die and go to your place of final torture. It is still torture.

“He was in torment, and he looked up and saw Abraham far away.” This chasm was not so great they could not see. In a paradigm, we have Heaven, Abraham’s bosom, Hades, and Hell. Hell is empty at this time. In the Old Testament, Heaven would have just been where God and His angels were.

All of the believers would have been here at Abraham’s side, and all the unbelievers would have been here in this place of torment called Hades. Jesus died. This place is gone now. We all go straight to Heaven when we die, the believers. Unbelievers still go here, and then in the final judgment, they will all be sentenced to Hell.

“Now the time came where he was in torment, and he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.” How do we know it is torment? “He called to him, ‘Father Abraham, pity me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because I am in agony in this fire’’”

Just the tip. That is how much agony he was in. One little drop of water would have been enough to help satisfy him because he was in so much pain, so much agony. So you do not want to go there. Abraham’s bosom or Abraham’s side was part of the realm of the dead. The other half of the realm of the dead is Hades.

Let’s talk more about that realm of the dead. Isaiah 14:9. In the Old Testament, this was also known as the grave, the pit, Sheol—many different terms. The grave below, Hebrew is Sheol. “The grave below is all a stir to meet you at your coming.”

Who is this talking about? First of all, is the grave meaning the bad side or the good side? This is simply the Purgatory place. Could be the torment, could be the paradise, but it is the afterlife.

“The grave below is all astir to meet you at your coming. It rouses the spirits of the departed to greet you. All those who are leaders in the world. It makes them rise from their thrones. All those who were kings over the nations.”

Verse four, is a proverb against the king of Babylon, so this is referring to satan, not Jesus. They are rising to greet the coming Messiah—that is what is going on. The underworld was all a stir coming to me. Why?

Because Jesus was going there. How do we know Jesus was going there? We are going to dive more into that later. Jesus had a mission when He died on the cross and the apostles’ creed talks about it, but no one understands what it means.

We are going to dive into that. The apostle Paul talks about it a little bit. I am getting ahead of myself. Stay tuned; next week is going to be a heck of a sermon. We are going to dive deep. It is going to blow your mind away.

But right now, believers at this point, they went to a paradise place. Unbelievers are a tormented place. Purgatory—well, they were waiting to go into Heaven or waiting to go into Hell. That is where we get Purgatory, so it is somewhat of a true place, but it is no longer—at least the paradise side is not there—because Jesus did away with it.

So it is gone, which means that is why Christians say we do not believe in Purgatory because we die and go straight to Heaven. Yes, that is true—an old belief. Purgatory was there, so you are both technically right. You just need to understand what it is now so you can speak on it and know exactly what you believe.

If you ask me, “Hey Spencer, do you believe in Purgatory?” I am going to say, “It is a complicated question.” Guess what? Before Jesus, Purgatory was there, whether you choose to call it Purgatory or the realm of the dead is up to you.

It was a place, but now that Jesus died, the paradise side is gone. We die, we go straight to Heaven. Unbelievers still go to that place of torment, the realm of the dead. They are waiting to get into Hell.

So you could say unbelievers are still in a place called Purgatory, but Abraham’s bosom side of the realm of the dead was paradise. Believers could not go straight to Heaven yet because Christ had not yet paid for their sins.

You say, “Wait a minute! In the Old Testament, that is why they sacrificed all these animals—millions of sheep and lambs and goats and doves and all this stuff were killed to pay for their sins.”

Yes, but do you think that any one person—look at the sins in your life, imagine you are in the Old Testament—do you think that you could slaughter enough animals to cover every single sin in your life?

When you read the Old Testament you say, “If you do this, it is two goats; if you did this, it is a lamb; if you do this, have a priest do one goat and send the other out for the sins of the people as escape goes…” Where we get the term, “Oh…” If it says to do a dove, if this, it is a paradise—break one, next, set one free.

Do you think you could do enough to make sure you were 100 percent good? There is no way. There is no way. We are humans. We are so lost and confused. We have a hard time remembering where we put something yesterday, what we had for breakfast last week—you only know if you had the same thing every day.

Most people can hardly remember all this stuff. How are you going to remember every single sin you ever committed and sacrifice the proper animal within the appropriate time to cover those sins, and then get to eternity and be 100 percent certain that you did not forget about one? Oh, you forgot about one 80 years ago? Guess what? Hell, it is. Eh, down the chute. No.

That is why they were in this place of holding. They…they did not have everything 100 percent. Then, when Jesus went to the cross, paid it all—everything—we no longer have to worry about all these sheep, go ram this, that, slaughter all the blood, sprinkle it five times, make sure it was not eaten or sacrificed or this or that.

No. Jesus covered it. So then, He paid for the sins of the world. Then, the believers could go into Heaven. So Jesus ferried them into Heaven after He died on the cross. Again, remember that thief on the cross?

Jesus told him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Let’s go to that. We only see it once in the Bible. The only Gospel that talks about it is the Gospel of Luke, and it is in Chapter 23, Verse 43. So let’s go there—23:43.

Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” He did not say Heaven. Why did not he say Heaven? And he said today, he did not say, “Hey, today, let’s just feel with me.”

Today is, uh… if it is Friday when Jesus was dying because we typically celebrate Good Friday as the…the Friday, then we say, “It’s three days later Jesus rose from the dead.” Jesus did not say to him, “Hey, three days from now you will be with me and my Father in Heaven.”

He said, “No, today you will be with me in paradise,” meaning “We die on this cross, we are going to paradise. Then I will do my business. I will accomplish my mission.” We are going to talk about that next week and after, uh, the week after we will talk about the first ascension, and then and on. So, in the…in the three weeks to come, we are going to talk more about this.

So stay tuned, because it is very important. Jesus had a job to do, so He said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” However, what that thief did not realize was that three days later he would be with the Father and Jesus and all the saints in Heaven.

Amazing! So today, when we die as a believer, we will go straight to Heaven. Jesus did not say “Heaven” then because they were not going to Heaven. They were going to the realm of the dead. They were going to Abraham’s bosom.

This is where the Catholics get their Purgatory, and other faiths get their Purgatory, that has read the Bible, but now that Jesus has died, this place of waiting, as I said, has been done away with. It is gone. There is no more paradise side of the realm of the dead.

There is no more Abraham’s side or Abraham’s bosom—that is gone. Today, when someone who believes in Jesus dies, we will go straight to Heaven because Jesus paid for our sins. The unbelievers still go to a place of torment and wait for that final day of judgment.

When they have that final day of judgment, they will be sent into Hell with all of those angels and demons that have rejected Jesus and rebelled. They will be there for 1000 years—well, the 1000-year reign happens on Earth. It will be a complete paradise.

We will love being here for 1000 years. Everything will be awesome. Then, Jesus will say, “All right, 1000 years is over. Let’s go into Heaven forever. Shut the gates.” Boom. All those people in the… Hell will then be released.

They will reign over the Earth. They will cause utter chaos and torment. They will do their thing. Then, eventually, Jesus will destroy everything and send them into Hell forever, never to be released again.

So right now, where is someone who does not believe in Jesus? That person is, unfortunately, in the half of the realm of the dead that still exists, the Hades, or the place of torment. And they are waiting for their impending doom of Hell.

It is horrible where they are now, but it is only going to get worse. So they do not have any hope. The only hope they have is the knowledge that it is going to get worse. It is kind of like the opposite of hope. It is just like they are living in complete despair.

We talked about it. It is just horrible. It is so bad—misery, complete and utter misery. You do not want to go there. So how do you avoid that? Believe in Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. If you do not know where you are going, you need to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior.

It is very simple. Just say, “Jesus, thank you for dying for me on the cross. Thank you for paying for my sins. I want You to come into my life. I want to live my life for You. Please forgive me of my sins.” That is it. It is very simple. Use your own words.

When you die and God says to you, “Why should I let you into Heaven?” Your answer is, “Because Jesus died and saved me from my sins.” That is it. That is why you are worthy of Heaven. There is nothing you can do. Nothing that you can do to get into Heaven.

The only thing is what Jesus did for you. You just need to accept it. He is knocking, He is waiting, He wants to come into your life. Open the door, and let Jesus in. Accept Him as your Lord. Accept Him as your Savior, and be with Him in Heaven when you die.

Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for this great message, for giving us the clarity to unmuddy the waters here about these terms that people struggle with, that we struggle with. Thank you for this great sermon series on Heaven and Hell and Purgatory and what it all is.

Lord, most of all, thank you so much for dying for us, thank you for saving us from the fate of our actions. We deserve to be in those places of torment with all of the sins that we commit every day.

Whether we know we did them or not, we are sinful people, God, and we thank you for providing us a way out of our misery. Thank you, Jesus, for taking our place, for taking that punishment.

What a horrible thing You had to go through. But we love You so much, and we cannot thank You enough. There is nothing we can do to ever repay You, and we thank you so much for your grace. That You will allow us to be with you in Heaven. Amen.

Make the choice. You can choose. You can choose Heaven, or you can choose Hell. God is not damning you to Hell; you are making the choice. Choose Jesus. Choose Heaven. Choose to stay with us. Come through the rest of this sermon series and learn more, and then choose to share Jesus with other people so they, too, can choose to live in Heaven forever. God bless.