Protestants sometimes imagine purgatory as a dreary prison, where believers have to pay for sins before they can get into heaven.

And they say that Catholics ignore this allegedly traditional teaching on the matter to make purgatory more palatable to potential converts.

So in today's episode, we're going to talk about what the church does and does not teach about the nature of purgatory and why this is a doctrine

every Christian should embrace. So when it comes to official church teaching, a good place to start

is the catechism of the Catholic Church, which says this about purgatory. 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 holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

The church gives the name purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely

different from the punishment of the damned.

Purgatory is not an alternate fate to heaven or hell,

and it's also not a second chance at salvation.

Purgatory is just the final process of our sanctification.

Revelation 2127 says,

Nothing unclean will enter heaven,

which means that if a person dies in a state of friendship with God,

but with an attachment to certain sins,

then those sinful attachments will be purged and removed from their soul before he enters into heaven.

And everyone who undergoes this process of purification will go to heaven.

One of the worst misunderstandings about purgatory I've ever encountered is in the documentary American

Gospel, which said this. And if, in the end, if they have enough people praying for them,

and if they do enough time in purgatory, they might possibly get to heaven. But once again,

purgatory is not a place where you get a second chance at salvation or you might get to heaven.

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