Indulgences

18.  INDULGENCES

QUESTION?  Can you apply penance and good works for those who are dead in order to help remove the sin of the dead.

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The Catholic church teaches that an indulgence is received by good works and penances and can be applied to the sins of the living and the dead (1471-79).  The Catholic church condemns under anathema (damns) those who say they are useless or who maintain that the Church has not the power to confer them.

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What does the Bible say?

There are only two places that one will end up in after death: either in heaven with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8; Philippians 1:21-23; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18) or in hell in torment (Luke 16:23-24; Revelation. 20:10-15). The Bible does not say that after death comes "further purification"; it says,

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"It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:28).

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Nowhere in scripture are indulgences mentioned.  Actually, any concept of PAYING for ones sins is in complete opposition to all of scripture. 

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Scripture says..

"8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.  Ephesians 2:8-9

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