Is there any mention of purgatory in the bible?

Question

I know the actual word purgatory is not mentioned in the bible, but is there any indirect mention of it?

Answer 1

No. None at all. Purgatory, limbo and the seven layers of heaven and hell (but not Taco Bell's delicious seven-layer burrito) were invented by folklore and popularized by "The Divine Comedy" written in the 1300's by Dante Alghieri.
This statement has NOT been evaluated or approved by Taco Bell.

Answer 2

The word purgatory is not in the Bible but the doctrine is there. The words Holy Trinity and sacrament are also not there but the doctrines are.

I want to correct the brother above me.

The early Church Fathers taught the doctrine. They called it limbo then.
Whenever a date is set for the "invention" of purgatory, you can point to historical evidence to show the doctrine was in existence before that date. Besides, if at some point the doctrine was pulled out of a clerical hat, why does ecclesiastical history record no protest against it?

A study of the history of doctrines indicates that Christians in the first centuries were up in arms (sometimes quite literally) if anyone suggested the least change in beliefs. They were extremely conservative people who tested a doctrine’s truth by asking, Was this believed by our ancestors? Was it handed on from the apostles? Surely belief in purgatory would be considered a great change, if it had not been believed from the first—so where are the records of protests? They don’t exist. There is no hint at all, in the oldest writings available to us (or in later ones, for that matter), that "true believers" in the immediate post-apostolic years spoke of purgatory as a novel doctrine. They must have understood that the oral teaching of the apostles, what Catholics call tradition, and the Bible not only failed to contradict the doctrine, but, in fact, confirmed it. It is no wonder, then, that those who deny the existence of purgatory tend to touch upon only briefly the history of the belief. They prefer to claim that the Bible speaks only of heaven and hell. Wrong. It speaks plainly of a third condition, commonly called the limbo of the Fathers, where the just who had died before the redemption were waiting for heaven to be opened to them. After his death and before his resurrection, Christ visited those experiencing the limbo of the Fathers and preached to them the good news that heaven would now be opened to them (1 Pet. 3:19).

These people thus were not in heaven, but neither were they experiencing the torments of hell. Some have speculated that the limbo of the Fathers is the same as purgatory. This may or may not be the case. However, even if the limbo of the Fathers is not purgatory, its existence shows that a temporary, intermediate state is not contrary to Scripture. Look at it this way. If the limbo of the Fathers was purgatory, then this one verse directly teaches the existence of purgatory. If the limbo of the Fathers was a different temporary state, then the Bible at least says such a state can exist. It proves there can be more than just heaven and hell.May the Lord's peace be with you!catholic.com/library

Answer 3

No is the short answer... Lloyd Geering however supplies a much more detailed answer.

"During the Middle Ages any interest in the theological debates of the first five centuries was confined, when it existed at ll, to a very few intellectuals. The Christian stream spread and flourished very much at the level of folk religion, woth on or another of the Saints along with the Virgin Mary commonly the focal point of devotion; God was regarded as being all together too distant to be of help to the ordinary person. Another dominant interest was the concept of Purgatory. Although this did not figure at all in the early centuries, by the late Middle Ages it had become one of the most important doctrines, since that was where most Christians expected to go when the died."

Answer 4

Purgatory is the condition or process of purification in which the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for heaven. This is an idea that has ancient roots and is well-attested in early Christian literature, while the conception of purgatory as a geographically situated place is largely the achievement of medieval Christian piety and imagination. The notion of purgatory is associated particularly with the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church, but some other Christian denominations, which may or may not use the locution "purgatory", such as the Methodist Church, also assert the possibility of an improvement in the soul's spiritual situation following death. Anglo-Catholic Anglicans generally hold to the belief. The Eastern Orthodox Church believes in the possibility of a change of situation for the souls of the dead through the prayers of the living and the offering of the Divine Liturgy, and many Orthodox, especially among ascetics, hope and pray for a general apocatastasis. A similar belief in at least the possibility of a final salvation for all is held by Mormonism. Judaism also believes in the possibility of after-death purification and may even use the word "purgatory" to present its understanding of the meaning of Gehenna. However, the concept of soul "purification" may be explicitly denied in these other faith traditions. The word "purgatory" has come to refer also to a wide range of historical and modern conceptions of postmortem suffering short of everlasting damnation, and is used, in a non-specific sense, to mean any place or condition of suffering or torment, especially one that is temporary.

Answer 5

Catholics get the idea of purgatory from several places.

1: prior to Jesus' death and resurrection, humans where not permitted to enter Heaven. Those who would go to Heaven eventually went to a temporary paradise (known as Abraham's Bosom). After Jesus' actions on earth, Heaven's gates where opened and Abraham's Bosom is no longer in use.

2: The second area where they get the idea is from the matter that there are 2 Hells. The first is just called 'Hell' and is a temporary holding cell for those awaiting judgement in the final days. The second is called "Gahenna". It is the eternal version of Hell, which will not be opened until the battle of Armageddon.

Abraham's Bosom and Hell are both sources used by Catholics to support the concept of purgatory.

The concept actually came from a Pope in the middle ages who sold indugences in order to shorten one's time in purgatory (a place which was completely unheard-of before then).

Answer 6

This is a question that can only be answered by a Roman Catholics since Pope Gregory I initiated the teaching of purgatory in 593 A.D.

It is not in my Bible nor the Apostles teachings.

Answer 7

There is no purgatory in the bible. Not event the concept of it. Maybe in the catholic Apocrypha but not the canonized scripture.

Answer 8

No. This is one more example of Catholic dogma. I say Catholic, because Protestants and Jews do not teach or believe about purgatory.

Answer 9

Acually I'm pretty sure the word purgatory comes from the bible. LOL

Answer 10

No there is not.
The Bible says, "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord", meaning, as soon as you take your last breath you are in the presence of God....
God does not say there are levels you have to hang out in until people pray (and pay) you in to Heaven.
No suburb of Heaven you hang out in either...