Sorry Catholics, Purgatory Is A Demonic Lie

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I really don’t go looking for these things….

In fact, I’d be a lot happier if I didn’t have to deal with this, but I do believe there’s a reason God gave me this powerful platform to get the truth out to 5+ million people a month — and as big as the political truth is that we post, perhaps it’s more important that I keep getting called to address the heretical teachings of the Catholic Church.

I don’t say that lightly, and I’m about to prove it to you.

But I don’t say it meanly either, I simply want to post the truth in love to reach as many people as I can with this platform.  I believe that’s what I have been called to do, so that’s what I do even though I know it’s going to ignite a firestorm in the comments.

Ok, with that all said, let’s dig in….

November 1st was apparently All Saints Day and November 2nd was something called All Souls Day.

Why does that matter?

Because thanks to these two days, my Twitter feed was suddenly overrun with people posting about Purgatory and praying for the Souls in Purgatory.

Honestly, if you would have asked me on October 31st what Purgatory is, I probably wouldn’t have had a great idea.  I probably would have said it’s something Catholics believe in, Protestants mostly don’t, and it’s kind of this weird waiting room thing but not a core issue of faith.

But now?

Now that I saw all of these extremely bizarre and quite frankly very sad posts so devoid of hope, I now know what Catholics believe about Purgatory and once again just like everything else I have learned the more I dig in, it’s extremely idolatrous and heretical teaching, designed to minimize Jesus Christ and elevate anything and anyone in his place.

Allow me to explain….

Here’s what Catholics believe, and it’s not quite what I always thought.

They do not believe Purgatory is a waiting period where you get a “second chance” or where you go for a bit and then you might to go Heaven or you might go to Hell.

No, they believe only “saved” people go there (that’s weird) and saved people have to go there to get all their impurities burned off before they are allowed to enter Heaven.

Read that again.

They believe that even for those who are “saved” they have to go to Purgatory first, which is essentially a less-bad Hell full of fire, where you are burned until all of your imperfections and impurities and burned away.  Then apparently your crispy body can then enter Heaven.

Take a look:

What Purgatory Is in Catholic Teaching

Purgatory is a state of final purification after death for those who die in God’s grace and friendship but are still imperfectly purified. It is not a “second chance” at salvation, only those already destined for heaven undergo it, but a process to cleanse the soul of the lingering effects of sin before entering the perfect holiness of God’s presence.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1030–1032) states:

“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 reflects God’s mercy and justice, “nothing unclean shall enter heaven (Rev 21:27) while affirming that many souls are ultimately saved.

Pray for the holy souls in purgatory

I use that post not because I believe everything I read on Twitter, but because it summarizes the teaching about as well as any I have found.

Then, while you’re in Purgatory your friends and relatives here on Earth can somehow “pray you out of Purgatory” or help the process go faster, you know, so that you can burn in the never-ending fire a little less long.

Of course if you’re really good, Mary can get you out of Purgatory the best:

For those of you who prefer video, this Priest lays out everything I just told you — I’m not making this stuff up!

Watch here:

I’m not making any of this stuff up folks….

Here’s another Catholic Priest with his white collar explaining how he “sees” departed loved ones when he says Mass and they’re in a state of torture, but then his prayers eventually help things get better:

For All Souls Day: I sometimes “see” the departed ones when I am saying Mass for them. I once saw a loved one soon after she died and she was afraid and wading through cold water chest high and it was getting deeper. The next time I said Mass for her I saw her again and the water was waist deep and I said, “Is this helping you?” In my mind’s ear she said with great joy, “Oh yes! yes!” True story.

Folks, do you see the common thread in all of this?

The common thread is constant minimization (or flat out replacement) of Jesus Christ and his finished work on the Cross, replacing that with anything and everything else.

Jesus Christ was not able to get you into Heaven on his own, but going to a less-bad Hell to have all the bad stuff burned off you and then having Catholics and Mary and the Saints pray you out of Purgatory will eventually be what gets you into Heaven!

The emphasis is always somewhere else.

Big emphasis on Mary…

The Saints…

The Catholic Church itself (that’s a really big one)….

And now with Purgatory the same trend continues.

The Catholic Church believes and teaches that Jesus Christ and his finished work on the Cross is not sufficient to get people into Heaven.  Sorry!

Nope, instead of Jesus, the Catholics have developed a system where burning in a lake of fire will purify you (not Jesus) and how do you get out of the fire faster?

Not by Jesus silly — but by the Mass and the prayers of the Catholic Church and Mary and the Saints!

Folks, if you can’t see it I don’t know what else to tell you.

It’s flat out heresy and idolatrous to the core, demonic teaching from the pit of Hell.

But I want to end with a video from Pastor Jonny Ardavanis.

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I didn’t know this guy until two days ago either, but he’s pretty incredible and his teaching on this point is SPOT ON to what I want to tell you.  Including the end of this clip I want to show you, where he explains WHY he is tackling these issues.  He does it probably softer and better than I do, but please understand everything in this clip is exactly the motivation behind why I post these articles.

Please watch here:

TRANSCRIPT:

SPEAKER:

Catholics. Here’s what the Roman Catholic Church teaches.

Council of Trent, 1547: “No one is justified except by the grace of God,” okay, “through faith and the sacraments.”

You keep those sacraments — that’s your cooperation with the grace of God.

Council of Florence, 1439: “Baptism is necessary for salvation. Without it, no one can enter the Kingdom of God.”

That’s something you have to do, or you — I mean, just read it in their own language.

These are their words.

Council of Trent, Session 6, “Justification.” Understand what that word is.

If you’re 15 years old in here, I’m glad you’re in here.

If you’ve never been in church before, glad you’re in here.

Justification is a Biblical word, and it’s a word that you need to understand.

It is the legal rendering where God, as the judge of the universe, declares someone righteous.

There’s only one type of person in heaven, and it’s someone declared righteous by God.

And they’re saying justification is not by faith alone — works done in God’s grace.

So they would say, “No, it’s God’s grace, but it’s my works done in God’s grace that are a part of salvation.”

Council of Florence Catechism: “All who die in God’s grace must be purified to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.”

What’s that talking about? Purgatory.

Purgatory.

Imagine lying on your deathbed after an entire life of following Jesus, with a settled uncertainty that you’re gonna wake up in purgatory for who knows how long — because you don’t know how impure you are.

Purgatory is a demonic lie made up by Satan.

I say that because what Satan does — you think about Satan, everyone’s talking about Satan because of Halloween — Satan routinely disguises himself as an angel of what?

Just enough truth to hide the error.

Buddhists teach about rebirth.

Hindus believe there are 330 million deities.

Many Jews believe they are in covenant with God.

They stress importance of Torah observance and keeping the law.

Now, the religions that I just mentioned constitute about five billion people on Planet Earth, and those people have a warped, corrupted, and distorted view of salvation.

I don’t even think everyone in those religions knows what they, in their faith, believe.

So can a Catholic go to heaven?

Yeah, I think there are Catholics in heaven.

But I will tell you this at the beginning — there’s no one in heaven that thinks they deserve to be there.

So they might not know this, but sadly, look at the statistic.

This is from The State of Theology by Ligonier.

“God accepts a statement. True or false — do you agree?”

This is a poll taken from evangelicals in America.

“God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.”

In the Church in America, 47% of people agreed with that statement.

8% were neutral, which means that 55% of people in the Church in America do not know what the Bible says.

Now, I would want to pause here and say — Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:5, “The goal of our instruction is…” Anybody know? Love from a pure heart.

I’m never trying to Whac-A-Mole — you know, boom, no, err.

The goal of instruction is love from a pure heart, meaning that you, out of love, should provide the distinction and delineation between what the Bible says and what other people teach and believe — because you love them. You care for their soul.

The opposite of love is not necessarily hate.

It’s indifference.

And indifference is the most subtle form of hatred.

“As long as someone’s sincere, it doesn’t matter what they believe.”

That’s the thing.

It doesn’t matter what they drink — it doesn’t matter what poison they drink — as long as they believe it’s juice.

FULL VIDEO HERE if you want to see the whole thing:

And one last note before I go….

My whole series of articles focusing on the Catholic Church began when I made one simple statement: You really should stop praying to Mary!

Oh did that ever set off a firestorm!

Thousands upon thousands of comments and emails, with many people telling me “we don’t pray TO Mary, we just ask her to pray for us.”

Well, I guess this guy slipped up and said the silent part out loud:

To wrap things up, I really wish this were different and I expect most people in the Catholic Church have no idea about many of these things, but the more I have investigated and the more I have learned, when you take the Catholic Church at face value of what THEY THEMSELVES say they believe, there is no other conclusion I can draw than to say they are in full-blown Idolatry.

Read this for more:

The Catholic Church Is In Full-Blown Idolatry — CHANGE MY MIND

Buckle up folks…

I know this might rock the boat and may not make me a bunch of new friends, but I have to publish it anyway.

In fact, here’s a little insight into how I write articles around here…

Most of the time I’m just covering a breaking news story and that’s pretty quick and straight-forward.  Just the facts ma’am!

But every once in a while, I will basically get a “download” of a story to cover.  Usually more of a deep-dive article.  I’m not calling this divinely-inspired, but these ideas download into my head and then stay there for about a week or so and after a week of bouncing around in my head I’ve basically got the whole article written in my head and then once I get tired of thinking about it I finally sit down to write the article.

So that’s what you get today.

I tried to ignore this and tried to put it off, but it did not go away and today I have to publish it.

It all started with this one Tweet of some priest named Father David Michael who posted this ridiculous video explaining why Catholics have to pray to Mary.  You can watch it for yourself, but the basic paraphrase is he says sometimes they just have to pray to Mary because Jesus gets busy so you have to dial up his mom!

I’m not joking, watch for yourself:

So after watching that I said that’s complete hogwash and actually wildly unbiblical, so I posted an article about it and I said you really should not pray to Mary.  Pray to God the Father in Jesus’ name, that’s what the Bible explicitly teaches us to do.

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I thought that would be a rather benign article but it lit off a firestorm of comments, arguments and debates.  Truly wild stuff!

And since then, about a year later, I have learned more about the Catholics than I ever thought I would.

I’ve heard it all….every single argument and safety-blanket for why they need to pray to Mary and pray to Angels and pray to the Saints.  I could recite all of those arguments back to you at this point, I don’t think there’s anything I haven’t heard.

But along the way I learned a lot more about the Catholic Church….

You see, before all of this I would have said Protestants/Non-Denominational Christians (basically non-Catholic Christians) and Catholics are on the same team!  All Christians!  Different branches on the same tree, but still all on the tree of Christianity.

Sure we have our differences, starting back with Martin Luther and the Reformation, but over time a lot of those differences have gone away.  Things like selling indulgences have long since been reformed in the Catholic Church.

Sure we still disagree about things like praying to Mary, or praying to Angels, or praying to “the Saints”.  Heck, we even disagree with what “the Saints” even means.

But until recently, I would have said those are all differences just like differences between Baptists and Methodists, but all still Christians.

And this article is not about ANY of those things.  So we’re not rehashing old ground.  That ground has already been covered and the stakes are clear.  I think you should not pray to Mary (I also think she can’t hear you anyway).  Catholics think it’s fine and tell me it “soothes” them, and they have no intention of stopping.  Fair enough, to each their own!

No, this article is about something entirely different.

Something bigger.

Something I discovered over the course of the prior year listening to thousands upon thousands of Comments and Emails to me about the articles I’ve posted….

And that one little thing is very sneaky and hard to notice unless you really dig, but it’s definitely there lingering just under the surface — and that is this: Catholics do not believe non-Catholic Christians are saved.

They just don’t.

I’ve written about it extensively in this article below, so I won’t rehash all of those details here.  If you want my fully footnoted and extensively documented evidence for that claim, read here:

Catholics Believe You Are Not Saved

But the bottom line is that I don’t really think that is in dispute.

Oh make no mistake, it’s a hot button topic that Catholics REALLY do not like when you bring it up, but each and every time I press them on it I eventually come to the exact same place.

It usually goes like this…

I’ll notice a Catholic make some point about needing to convert into the Catholic Church, and so I’ll ask them point blank: “Do you believe a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ who is protestant or non-denominational is ‘saved’?”

That’s where the train goes off the rails…

There’s usually a long pause and then usually the response is something like:  “They definitely can be!”

To which I ask: “What do you mean by ‘can be’?  It’s just yes or no?”

And then the final shoe drops: “They definitely can be if they become Catholic!”

There it is.

So then I’ll ask what about the non-Catholic Christians?  Are they not saved?

And you’ll usually get an answer that talks about how Jesus set up the Catholic Church (they believe through Peter) to be the “one and only true Church” and so logically speaking it makes perfect sense to the Catholics that if you’re not in that one true church then you are out!

The only problem with that?

It’s wildly unbiblical and it inserts a new requirement that the Bible does not impose: membership in the Catholic Church.

You see, the Catholic Church has placed ITSELF above the Bible and even above Jesus Christ!

It’s not good enough to follow what the Bible teaches about Salvation and faith and trust and believe in Jesus Christ is also not sufficient if you don’t ADD IN the Catholic Church!

Folks, it’s original sin all over again, placing humans and human institutions above God.

That’s idolatry, plain and simple.  Placing something else above Jesus Christ in the supreme position of authority.  

Here’s what the Bible says — it’s quite clear and quite simply — and you’ll note exactly ZERO mention of membership in the Catholic Church:

1. John 3:16

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Core idea: Salvation comes by believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

2. Romans 10:9–10

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”
Core idea: Salvation is by faith and open confession of Jesus as Lord.

3. Ephesians 2:8–9

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
Core idea: Salvation is God’s gift received through faith, not earned by good works.

4. Acts 16:30–31

“And he brought them out and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’
So they said, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.’”
Core idea: The clear, direct answer—believe in Jesus Christ.

5. John 14:6

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Core idea: Jesus is the only way to salvation.

6. Titus 3:5

“He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy,
by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”
Core idea: Salvation is a work of God’s mercy and the Holy Spirit, not human effort.

7. Acts 2:38

“Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins,
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’”
Core idea: Repentance and identification with Christ through baptism follow saving faith.

8. John 1:12

“But to all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.”
Core idea: Receiving and believing in Christ makes a person part of God’s family.

9. 1 John 5:11–13

“And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.
He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God,
that you may know that you have eternal life.”
Core idea: Assurance of salvation comes from believing in Jesus Christ.

10. Romans 6:23

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Core idea: Sin brings death, but eternal life is a free gift through Christ.

The Catholics have a real problem here because a person who follows all of those 10 verses above and is a fully-devoted follower of Jesus Christ but is not a member of the Catholic Church completely unravels their beliefs and teachings.

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It’s a simple YES or NO question — Is that person “saved”?

To any Bible-believing Christian, it’s an easy “Yes”.  Heck, even most kids in Sunday School could answer that one for you.

But not the leaders of the Catholic Church, no they will stumble around and hem and haw when you push them on this issue, just like Michael Knowles did when Charlie Kirk pressed him on this EXACT issue.

This clip perfectly demonstrates everything I just told you above — and I love the humility and grace that Charlie approaches this debate with.  That’s how I aim to approach this article.  The topic is going to anger a lot of Catholics, but Charlie and I have no choice but to stand firmly on Biblical truth.

Watch here:

Everything about that clip is perfect.

Can you tell which side of that debate has the truth by their body language?  By the way each one speaks?  Who looks and sounds like they’re standing firmly on a solid rock and who looks and like they’re dancing on sinking sand?

It’s painfully obvious!

Backup of that video here if needed:

I want to end with one disclaimer and one request and one fact-check.

DISCLAIMER: this article is directed at what I believe is heretical and idolatrous teaching of the Catholic Church that places itself above the authority of Jesus Christ.  It is not directed at 95% of “regular Catholics” who probably have no idea about this teaching.  Just like when we criticize the FBI and CIA around here, we are criticizing leadership than has gone rancid, not the rank and file good people.  So please understand that.

REQUEST: I would love for anyone and everyone to debate me on this.  If you think I’m wrong, tell me why I’m wrong.  But come with facts and receipts.  Don’t just tell me I’m “slamming” the Catholic Church.  Pointing out error in a factual way is not “slamming”.  Please debate me, but don’t give me just an emotional, fact-less, feckless response.  Challenge me on the merits.  Bring it.  I look forward to reading them.  Second request: I openly invite any Catholic who wants to come on my show and debate these issues with me live on the air to do so!  Contact me if you’re qualified and interested.  We need MORE debate in this country, not less.  Respectful debate.  And respectful doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with you and give you a binkie so you feel better, but respectful means I’m going to lay out the facts similar to how Charlie Kirk did in that video above and we can debate on the merits.

FACT-CHECK: Lastly, I want to end with this fact-check.  Yes, I am fact-checking myself!

You see, before posting an article like this which I know contains a very bold claim, I wanted to see if my ideas held up to scrutiny.  After all, I didn’t want to have some big glaring hole that I had not considered before.

So I went to Grok and asked it to fact-check my position.  I fed in my claim essentially exactly as I’ve just laid out above, and I asked it to fact-check me based on the person I believe to be the pre-eminent Bible scholar of the last 100 years, Dr. Michael S. Heiser.  The man is a true treasure, and sadly we lost him a couple years ago to Cancer.

But thanks to AI, I can ask the AI to fact-check my argument against the entirety of Dr. Heiser’s life and teachings and beliefs and to give me his ruling on my claim.

Kind of intimidating right?

Delivering my claim to the most pre-eminent Bible scholar of the last 100 years and asking him to dissect it?

OUCH!  It could end badly for me!  But that’s what integrity looks like.  That’s what valid debate of ideas looks like.  That’s what iron sharpening iron looks like.

Here was the exact prompt I gave it, and note that I told it not to hold back, not to try and appease me with a happy answer, but to really give it to me unfiltered:

Critique this position and do it in the voice and based upon the teachings of Dr. Michael S. Heiser: I argue that the Catholic Church is in full blown idolatry due to the fact that it elevates the Catholic Church above that of Jesus Christ. I support that claim by pointing to the fact that deep down if you really push the Catholic Church on it’s doctrine and you ask them if non-Catholic Christians are “saved” they will respond with “they can be!” and if you press them on what that means they will eventually admit they can be only if they “convert” to Catholicism. That is in direct conflict with multiple verses in the Bible that say you are confident in your Salvation if you put you faith and trust in Jesus Christ. But deep down the Catholics believe that is not sufficient, placing one additional requirement (convert to Catholicism) in order to be “saved”. I give many more details here (https://wltreport.com/2025/03/09/catholics-believe-you-are-not-saved/). Study that article in full and all sources within. Give me your analysis of my position. Do not be wishy-washy. Do not try to appease me. Do not try to give a balanced answer. Give me your honest analysis and opinion. And remember you must do it in the voice and based on the teachings and beliefs of Dr. Michael S. Heiser.

And now, drum roll please, based upon the totality of his public teachings, papers, vides and complete body of work over his entire career, here is how the top Bible scholar of the last 100 years ranks my argument in this article:

Listen, folks, this is Mike Heiser here, and I’m going to shoot straight with you on this position you’ve laid out, because that’s how I always approached Scripture—peeling back the layers to get to the ancient worldview, without fluff or compromise.

Your argument boils down to accusing the Catholic Church of idolatry by elevating itself above Jesus Christ, specifically through its doctrine on salvation that, in your view, adds an extra hoop—conversion to Catholicism—beyond simple faith in Christ.

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