This place where men must go after death to purge their sins is an invention of religion. The wordΒ purgatoryΒ comes from the wordΒ purge, and the Bible says that Christ βby HimselfΒ purged our sinsβ without any help from us (Heb. 1:3).
The Lord told the dying thief, βTo day shalt thou be with Me in paradiseβ (LukeΒ 23:43). This is significant, since the inspired Word of God calls this man a thief, and it was his own testimony to the other thief that βwe receive the due reward of our deedsβ (LukeΒ 23:41). That is, he was admitting he had not been framed or misjudged, but had indeed committed crimes worthy of the death penalty. If there was a Purgatory, this man would have gone there, yet we have the Lordβs word on it that he did not.
If anyone needed to go to Purgatory, it was the carnal Corinthians! Yet Paul told even these sinful believers that they could be βconfidentβ that βto be absent from the bodyβ is βto be present with the Lordβ (II Cor. 5:8). source
