If animal ghosts really exist, would that refute the theory by some Catholics that some ghosts are souls in Purgatory?

[Bob_Crowley]

Well, I said Catholics might not like the concept (one name for it apparently is soul sleep).

There’s a wide range of views in the world about life after death, from none through to reincarnation and so on. If spirits are believed in, their form appears to depend on the prevailing culture. This indicates, to me at least, that they are imagined and not real, otherwise they would be similar everywhere. Personally I wouldn’t know which kind of ghost to believe in - the ectoplasm in old spirit photographs, the walking dead with bits falling off them, specters with clunking chains, or whatever.

Then how is it possible to see or hear them – how can a ghost without physical lungs, throat and tongue make pressure waves in the air which we could hear as intelligible speech? (You could say they don’t and instead talk telepathically, but by doing so you’d kind of be proving my point that they’re imaginary and it’s all in the mind ).

And with seven billion people on the planet, why aren’t we awash with ghosts, how come we have to rely on anecdotes instead of seeing them every week on late night chat shows? It’s not a matter of being literal so much as never finding a single reason to believe in ghosts and loads of reasons not to. I can understand folk who have a different take, but there are so many (often contradictory) things various people would have us believe, and for me ghosts don’t cut the mustard. Sorry and all.

I don’t know how my father was communicating with me, but he was. Obviously his body was dead, but to all intents and purposes he could see, hear, talk and think. He could even see certain aspects of the future. But the fact is that spirits communicate somehow. And if God can create a universe out of nothing, He’s not going to have much trouble providing a spiritual-worldly interface when it’s needed. We do this all the time ourselves with our technology, when we change electronic signals to mechanical movements, optoelectronic signals, and all the rest. If we can do that, God’s not going to have much trouble doing something similar.

One of the things he definitely said was “You’ll meet a pastor. You’ll think he’s great, but all he’ll do is discourage you even more!” I met the pastor about 4 years later, and about 8 or 9 years after that I sat in his office to hear him say, “I owe you an apology. You needed encouragement, but all I’ve done is to discourage you even more!” Now I’d told him a number of times about the business of my father appearing to me, and I think he was always concerned about where it came from.

But when I pointed out he’d just repeated my “dead” father back to me word for word, he was quite shaken, and blurted out, “You really did see your father than night!”

Incidentally I did think he was great, and I’ve pointed out elsewhere how accurate he was with his own predictions.

You can go on believing what you want, but I’ll guarantee you that within a couple of minutes of your own death, you’ll find yourself standing in front of the divine Judge. My father thought he hadn’t been seen. He’d been seen all right, and I still remember the scream nearly 33 years later.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Bob, you had another story about someone meeting an aboriginal woman, but I forget the ending. Whatever happened in the end of that, was there a result of any kind?

I go to a Catholic psychiatrist. I’ve attached his website link below, in case you want to read his articles on spirituality etc.

williamwilkie.com/spiritual.htm

In one of our sessions, I was telling him about a couple of times a voice had cut clearly across my mind. In one instance it said, “Bob, what’s WRONG with being a writer?” and it didn’t come from me. The other instance was when I was belly aching about a young lady, and the voice said, “Bob, is (she - girls name given at the time) SUITED to you??!!”

In other words, “NO!” (I’ve since married another lady, and it’s a good match, apart from the usual little irritations of marriage - “Bob, you’re off in la-la land again!”):hypno:

I told Dr. Wilkie about this, and he replied “That’s interesting. Did I tell you my story?”

He’d been working in his office, when a voice just said out of the blue, “Go to Maclean!” And that was it. No context, no time, nothing. So he just noted it.

Maclean is small town in northern NSW in Australia. Dr. Wilkie gets involved in “family healing masses” (he addresses this in one of the articles on his website), which is based on the premise your ancestors’ actions can have lasting repercussions on the family tree.

Anyway about two months after the voice, he was involved in a family healing mass in Lismore, another town in northern NSW. When he’d finished, an aboriginal woman came up to him and said, “I don’t want to interfere, or make trouble, or a nuisance of myself, but I seem to be getting told you should go to Maclean.”

Since he’d been primed by the voice in the office two months before, he went. He ended up on some island in one of the rivers down there which was once used as a “lock up” for Aboriginals in the early days of settlement. He told me there was some “unfinished spiritual business” there. I only see him a couple of times a year (residual business due to depression in the first place - I was on Prozac for about ten years, and it helped), and I haven’t really brought up this topic much with him, so I don’t know where things stand at the moment.

But the point is that he he was primed by the voice in the office two months before.

It’s handy when your psychiatrist shares some of the spiritual experiences you do.

At the least you should find his articles interesting.

 

[Dymphna82]

And IF gravity only applied to left-handed people…

Can gravity only apply to right-handed people, please? I’m getting really tired of having to wear bras.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Given the number of people who have reported seeing large man-like upright hominids tromping through the backwoods of rural America and the mountains of Tibet, does this refute the Darwinist theories of human evolution?

I doubt reports of either ghosts or Bigfoot affect Catholic theology or current anthropological paradigms.

I haven’t seen any hard evidence for ghosts, but it is certainly possible that some such reports could be accurate. Once you allow for the instances of misunderstood non-supernatural phenomena, mental pathology, and hoaxes, one could posit any number of alternative explanations that don’t require “ghosts” to be human souls on the lam from Purgatory.

Ghosts could be a residual psychic energy that remains at a residence from the people who lived there. Such manifestations would not have a human soul, any more than a hologram would.

I’m not saying I believe that to be the case, but it is as reasonable an explanation theologically as saying that they are a sending from purgatory.

The same could be true of supposed animal ghosts.

Such sendings could also be demonic.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

The Protestant concept is, “Absent from the body, present with the Lord.” There are no ghosts because your soul at death is IMMEDIATELY with God, no waiting rooms or holding pens.

To people who think the “Ghost Hunter” shows on television actually show the presence of ghosts, I have a great piece of coastal property for sale in Colorado.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Given the number of people who have reported seeing large man-like upright hominids tromping through the backwoods of rural America and the mountains of Tibet, does this refute the Darwinist theories of human evolution?

I doubt reports of either ghosts or Bigfoot affect Catholic theology or current anthropological paradigms.

I haven’t seen any hard evidence for ghosts, but it is certainly possible that some such reports could be accurate. Once you allow for the instances of misunderstood non-supernatural phenomena, mental pathology, and hoaxes, one could posit any number of alternative explanations that don’t require “ghosts” to be human souls on the lam from Purgatory.

Ghosts could be a residual psychic energy that remains at a residence from the people who lived there. Such manifestations would not have a human soul, any more than a hologram would.

I’m not saying I believe that to be the case, but it is as reasonable an explanation theologically as saying that they are a sending from purgatory.

The same could be true of supposed animal ghosts.

Such sendings could also be demonic.

I doubt if you’ve seen any hard evidence for the human soul either, but it exists.

We’re expected to use our brains. In addition when we say that we’ve experienced something eg. my father turning up in my bedroom the night he died, a trio of “double whammies”; heavy gripping pressures at night etc., then we expect to at least have people give us the credit for knowing our own minds. This is one of the things that really irritates me about the arrogance of atheists - they think they know our minds better than we do. If I say that my father turned up the night he died, and that he screamed just before he disappeared, they’ll tell me that I’m off my meds.

That’s why I haven’t got much sympathy for the likes of Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens might be dying, or he might pull through, but these people help to destroy the faith of millions.

When Padre Pio was known to have the stigmata and bear bruises from being hurled around his room at night, then there’s something there.

I think ghosts exist. Exactly what they are I do not know. But I had the peculiar experience of my old pastor saying “I think you’ll be doing some clearning. You won’t be doing it for long, and you won’t like it much, but I think the Lord will just want you to hear about a ghost.”

For that prediction to have it’s full meaning, the following had to happen -

1. I had to lose the job I had at that time, which he also predicted, partly due to the machinations of other people, and he predicted that as well. That happened about 4 years later.
2. I had to become Catholic, as the reason the “Lord wanted me to hear about a ghost” was to have a mass said for him. If I’d still been Protestant, and all else had happened, I would have thought, “Well, so what if there’s a ghost from a suicide? What’s that to me?” He also predicted I’d become Catholic.
3. I had to reluctantly take on a cleaning job, partly due to the frustration I was having with low income during day shift while cab driving (he also predicted I’d be driving a cab for a while).
4. I had to be told a particular store was haunted by the young bloke who was showing me the round, and given a couple of personal examples of things that had happened.
5. Finally, and this is probably the most peculiar, I had to happen to read a post by a priest located within a kilometer of the store in question, on this very forum. Through him, via email, I was able to make a (second) request for a mass to be said, which finally put my mind at ease. In other words, to bring my old pastor’s prediction to full completion, I had to also join Catholic Answers Forum.

Now you go ahead and tell me that’s coincidence.

 

[Ahimsa]

IHe also predicted I’d become Catholic.

Did you become Catholic due to a ‘ghostly’ experience?

 

[Arizona_Mike]

I doubt if you’ve seen any hard evidence for the human soul either, but it exists.

We’re expected to use our brains. In addition when we say that we’ve experienced something eg. my father turning up in my bedroom the night he died, a trio of “double whammies”; heavy gripping pressures at night etc., then we expect to at least have people give us the credit for knowing our own minds. This is one of the things that really irritates me about the arrogance of atheists - they think they know our minds better than we do. If I say that my father turned up the night he died, and that he screamed just before he disappeared, they’ll tell me that I’m off my meds.

That’s why I haven’t got much sympathy for the likes of Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens might be dying, or he might pull through, but these people help to destroy the faith of millions.

When Padre Pio was known to have the stigmata and bear bruises from being hurled around his room at night, then there’s something there.

I think ghosts exist. Exactly what they are I do not know. But I had the peculiar experience of my old pastor saying “I think you’ll be doing some clearning. You won’t be doing it for long, and you won’t like it much, but I think the Lord will just want you to hear about a ghost.”

For that prediction to have it’s full meaning, the following had to happen -

1. I had to lose the job I had at that time, which he also predicted, partly due to the machinations of other people, and he predicted that as well. That happened about 4 years later.
2. I had to become Catholic, as the reason the “Lord wanted me to hear about a ghost” was to have a mass said for him. If I’d still been Protestant, and all else had happened, I would have thought, “Well, so what if there’s a ghost from a suicide? What’s that to me?” He also predicted I’d become Catholic.
3. I had to reluctantly take on a cleaning job, partly due to the frustration I was having with low income during day shift while cab driving (he also predicted I’d be driving a cab for a while).
4. I had to be told a particular store was haunted by the young bloke who was showing me the round, and given a couple of personal examples of things that had happened.
5. Finally, and this is probably the most peculiar, I had to happen to read a post by a priest located within a kilometer of the store in question, on this very forum. Through him, via email, I was able to make a (second) request for a mass to be said, which finally put my mind at ease. In other words, to bring my old pastor’s prediction to full completion, I had to also join Catholic Answers Forum.

Now you go ahead and tell me that’s coincidence.

Not me, brother. I have had too many unusual experiences in my own life to discount anyone else’s. Yet such experiences as yours remain unique to you and deeply personal, so I can’t base my beliefs in ghosts on another’s.

It’s interesting that Catholics tend to be among the most hard-headed rationalists about reports of psychic phenomena, ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, etc. We believe in a lot of things at which materialists scoff, but many of us draw the line pretty sharply at things that are outside our theological parameters.

I tend to be the same way. When I was younger, and had fallen away from the Church, I spent a lot of time reading up on such things, and would regularly visit any site which was reputed to be haunted, a UFO flap area, a “ghost lights” locale, etc. I spent a fair amount of time tromping through lonely swamps and pine barrens and deserts and peering up into the night sky, but saw nothing I couldn’t explain. I realize now I was probably searching for the transcendent that my soul desperately needed and desired, but like a woman hanging out in a smoke-filled singles bar hoping to find Prince Charming, I was looking in all the wrong places. A lot of us were doing that in the 1970s. While spending decades reading through the works of dreary Asian mystics and their reinterpretation by western “Human Potential” hacks, I overlooked the incredibly rich, subtle, and resonant teachings of my own Christian tradition, which waited patiently for me with 2,000 years of practice until I, by the Grace of God, stumbled back to it.

I still remain skeptical about most beliefs outside the Christian tradition. The tenets of my faith are supported by a web of reasoned belief, historical evidence, the examination of the relevant issues for a couple of millennia by minds far superior to mine, personal experiences, and revelation. Those support my belief in the soul, it doesn’t really support belief in ghosts as described in most modern accounts. It’s possible, and I won’t say it’s categorically impossible.

One can be a skeptic about such things and still be a theist. Harry Houdini was the best-known spokesman for a skeptical outlook on spiritualism. Many atheists have tried to claim him as one of their own, partly because everyone thinks he was such a cool guy and, like Einstein, we all want him on Our Side. Yet, despite the claims of Internet atheists, he was an observant Jew throughout his life, the son of a rabbi, and a firm believer in God and the afterlife, based on his sworn testimony before Congress.

 

[Ahimsa]

While spending decades reading through the works of dreary Asian mystics…

Like who?

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Did you become Catholic due to a ‘ghostly’ experience?

No. I had been getting this sort of spiritual push to start going to a Catholic church, but I resisted it for some time, like any wary Protestant.

However I’d been getting a bit disillusioned with the Protestant scene. None of the pastors, with all due respect, measured up to my original pastor once I moved away after getting married (and he died about four months later anyway).

I also was irritated with the divisions. We initially went to a Baptist Church as my wife is Baptist, and her pastor had married us; then moved to Wesleyan Methodist for a while, then back to Baptist. Meanwhile I was getting a bit chary of “It’s all in the Bible” and at the same time this spiritual push kept nagging me. To be honest, it was pretty much the same sort of push that directed me towards my old pastor’s church years earlier.

The deciding factor was an argument I had with a Protestant pastor. “Push became shove”, so I made the move.

I had also recently met the Catholic psychiatrist and I lost a job at around the same time. I can’t prove it, but I suspect a particular Presbyterian pastor had a hand in that as well. In fact, my old pastor said he’d be involved. As usual he was dead accurate with his predictions stating - “When you’re about 40, all this anger you’ve been bottling up due to your father will start coming out. I think you’ll make a silly mistake at work, and they’ll use that to get rid of you. I think Bugalug (the pastor I mentioned above) will be involved in it too”.

To cut a long story short, I lost my temper a couple of times when I was about 40, wrote a story and put another bloke’s name on it for a joke, with the intention that it would get back to him, and he’d see the “funny” side of it, but he didn’t. The boss, who was Dutch Reformed, but I think attending a Presbyterian church, “got rid of me”. However I also think there’d been some collusion between him and this pastor. In addition, almost as soon as I started going to this psychiatrist, he told me he’d treated about 8 Presbyterian pastors for stress related breakdown, and in every case, the same pastor whom I suspect had a role in my job loss, was also instrumental in their stress related breakdown.

I haven’t got much time for the Presbyterian Church in Queensland I’m afraid. It may only have been one mongrel of a pastor who was doing all the damage, but the rest of the assembly were too gutless to do anything about it. And they knew.

So that was another contributing factor.

What I haven’t said was my old pastor’s reasons. He said, “I think the Lord might use you to bring the churches together somehow.” But then he added, “It will probably destroy you. There’s still a lot of tension between the Protestants and Catholics.”

At this point I’m still waiting for God to start making a move in that direction. I think I know one method He’ll use, but so far nothing much has happened. On the other hand, I suspect my career sabotage very shortly before I joined the Catholic Church was the devil getting in first. I know this much - it will be God’s timing and not mine. I wish He’d get a move on sometimes. I wonder how Moses felt stuffing around in the backside of the desert for 40 years as a shepherd after being in Pharaoh’s court as a prince, and then stuffing around for another 40 years in the desert (again) dragging his unruly people all around the countryside.

There must have been times when he wondered if the Almighty knew what the hell He was doing? Even my old pastor felt that way at times - he once said to me, “I sit here and I look out a church with maybe 150 people. I’ve listened to Billy Graham’s sermons, and I’m not trying to boast, but I think I can speak just as well as he can. Yet he gets the millions, and I get 150 people” (or words to that effect).

But then he shrugged, and said, “Well, maybe he knows it would go to my head or destroy me.” And he left it at that.

And he’d been very faithful, caring for a wife and bringing up 6 sons on a wage below the poverty line, suffering years of pain from a dislocated hip, managing an orphanage at one stage, and losing his superannuation when he left the liberal Uniting Church for the Presbyterian, while building up an inner city church from a membership of about five people to 150, which is as much as a single pastor can handle.

Who knows how God thinks?

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Ahsima: Like who?

No offense intended to our Buddhist brethren there, Ahimsa. And I should have qualified that by including the many western popularizers of Asian mystical traditions (as well as the many absolute falsifiers and total rip-off artists) as well as the legitimate traditions I read that were popular in the 1970s, including Lobsong Rampa, Madame Blavatsky, Carlos Castaneda, Carl Jung, Werher Erhardt, the I Ching, Morihei Uyeshiba, George Oshawa, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, B.K.S. Iyengar, Alan Watts, Sachindra Kumar Majundar, Miyamoto Mushashi, George Leonard, the Tibetan Book of the Dead…all those books. Some good, others bad.

 

[inocente]

The term for what you describe is soul-sleep, although that is inaccurate and should really be soul-death, since sleep is a body state of aliveness and alternate consciousness. It has also been rendered in Greek as psychopannychy, although since it appears nowhere in Scripture, the Greek term is rarely used.

Thanks, a Greek name always add credibility . I looked up psychopannychy and apparently it may have been coined by Calvin. As you say, soul sleep is misleading as the theology is when you’re dead you’re dust until resurrection. There are lots of competing theories, but with no way to know which, if any, is correct, I’ll stick with it for its simplicity.

The problem with SS is that what happens to “Absent from the body, present with the LORD”? Which is in Scripture?

But Paul is speaking of “a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven”, surely a long way from a mere ghost, altogether much more … spiritual.

And if you trust Scripture, you have to believe in demons, since they are there.

Nope, we got rid of them too. What was once spoken of as demon possession is now treated as mental illness.

FWIW, I do not believe in ghosts, nor in SS.

One out of two ain’t bad.

 

[inocente]

Soul-sleep isn’t a Catholic thing. In St. Peters letter, I think; he said that Christ descended into Hades after His death ‘to preach to the souls waiting there since the days of Noah’. This means the souls there were awake and living and heard Him preaching to them - they were not asleep until the end of time to awake at the final Judgement; also earlier, there appeared unto them [the three Apostles] Moses and Elias talking with him. Moses and Elias - their souls were alive in paradise.

Commentators disagree about that passage, with questions like how did Peter know, what would be the point of preaching to those already condemned, and alternatively was the preaching done long ago when they were still alive, before imprisoned by death. He makes better sense to me when read symbolically – just as those in the past had a choice, so do we.

 

[You]

Commentators disagree about that passage, with questions like how did Peter know, what would be the point of preaching to those already condemned, and alternatively was the preaching done long ago when they were still alive, before imprisoned by death. He makes better sense to me when read symbolically – just as those in the past had a choice, so do we.

How did Peter know this?

Christ rose from the dead and appeared and spoke to them for 40 days?

what would be the point of preaching to those already condemned?

Because they were not condemned, they were in Hades, not hell. And they would also have the opportunity to choose Christ and enter heaven or purgatory.

and alternatively was the preaching done long ago when they were still alive, before imprisoned by death?

No, because He descended into Hades, the place of the Dead, and preached to them there.

He makes better sense to me when read symbolically – just as those in the past had a choice, so do we.

And so did they have a chance to hear Christ; He told His Apostles to go preach the Gospel to all Nations, He Himself went to the land of the Dead and preaced to those waiting there since the days of Noah…

 

[Ahimsa]

No offense intended to our Buddhist brethren there, Ahimsa. And I should have qualified that by including the many western popularizers of Asian mystical traditions (as well as the many absolute falsifiers and total rip-off artists) as well as the legitimate traditions I read that were popular in the 1970s, including Lobsong Rampa, Madame Blavatsky, Carlos Castaneda, Carl Jung, Werher Erhardt, the I Ching, Morihei Uyeshiba, George Oshawa, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, B.K.S. Iyengar, Alan Watts, Sachindra Kumar Majundar, Miyamoto Mushashi, George Leonard, the Tibetan Book of the Dead…all those books. Some good, others bad.

Oh, I was just curious. Some of those authors are indeed “dreary”.

 

[Matrix_Refugee]

From what many paranormal investigators have found, not every case of a ghost sighting is necessarily a sentient spirit that’s attached to a haunted place. Some appear to be what are known as “residuals”, meaning, that an “image”, as it were, of a once-living being (human or animal) has imprinted on a place and sometimes manifests to people. This could be what happens when someone spots a ghostly cat/dog/horse/what have you.

 

[GEddie]

Thanks, a Greek name always add credibility . I looked up psychopannychy and apparently it may have been coined by Calvin. As you say, soul sleep is misleading as the theology is when you’re dead you’re dust until resurrection. There are lots of competing theories, but with no way to know which, if any, is correct, I’ll stick with it for its simplicity.

You go with simplicity. I’ll trust in the statements of the Church, according to which, there is no psychopannychy.

If the teaching was introduced by Calvin, and was true, does that mean that the Church taught error for over 1550 years?

But Paul is speaking of “a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven”, surely a long way from a mere ghost, altogether much more … spiritual.

Nope, we got rid of them too. What was once spoken of as demon possession is now treated as mental illness.

So modern interpretations are to be trusted over the words of our LORD?

The fact that “some” problems attributed to demons might reside in one’s head, does not change the fact that HE taught that demons exist, and must be fought spiritually.

One out of two ain’t bad.

God Bless and ICXC NIKA

 

[inocente]

If the teaching was introduced by Calvin, and was true, does that mean that the Church taught error for over 1550 years?

It didn’t say Calvin introduced it, just he may have coined a Greek word for it. I’ve only one way of testing which of the theories, if any, is correct, but it involves a somewhat extreme one-way trip, and anyway I couldn’t post you the results as apparently ghosts, even if they existed, can’t log on to CAF.

Unless:

So modern interpretations are to be trusted over the words of our LORD?

Ahem. It was Paul, not our LORD, and words are a bit meaningless until interpreted.

The fact that “some” problems attributed to demons might reside in one’s head, does not change the fact that HE taught that demons exist, and must be fought spiritually.

Perhaps they existed back then, but not anymore, at least nowhere in the world I’ve ever been.

 

[inocente]

Because they were not condemned, they were in Hades, not hell. And they would also have the opportunity to choose Christ and enter heaven or purgatory.

I guess that means, in fairness, everyone else who has never heard of Christ will also get preached to in Hades so they too have the opportunity.

But Hades, hell, heaven, purgatory - and this is without any potential limbos - too much speculative geography for this engineer, I’ll wait and see thanks.

No, because He descended into Hades, the place of the Dead, and preached to them there.

Ah, now this one I do know – the Place of the Dead, Djemaa el Fna, is in the medina in Marrakesh, and well worth a visit.

 

[You]

I guess that means, in fairness, everyone else who has never heard of Christ will also get preached to in Hades so they too have the opportunity.

But Hades, hell, heaven, purgatory - and this is without any potential limbos - too much speculative geography for this engineer, I’ll wait and see thanks.

Ah, now this one I do know – the Place of the Dead, Djemaa el Fna, is in the medina in Marrakesh, and well worth a visit.

No, Hades is closed now. The Gates of Heaven were opened when He died. Hence the need to preach to those about to enter Life.
I feel that those who genuinely never heard of Christ, through no fault of their own or through the fault of another, will also be judged on their Love or lack of Love.

But Hades, hell, heaven, purgatory - and this is without any potential limbos - too much speculative geography for this engineer, I’ll wait and see thanks.

**Hades; the place of the dead but not hell the place of the damned;
**Because Christ also died once for our sins, the just for the unjust: that he might offer us to God, being put to death indeed in the flesh, but enlivened in the spirit, [19] In which also coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison: [20] Which had been some time incredulous, when they waited for the patience of God in the days of Noe,

**Purgatory; Justice demands the repayment to the very last mite before your release;
**And when thou goest with thy adversary to the prince, whilst thou art in the way, endeavour to be delivered from him: lest perhaps he draw thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the exacter, and the exacter cast thee into prison. [59] I say to thee, thou shalt not go out thence, until thou pay the very last mite.

**The preparation and opening of Heaven to mankind;
**Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. [2] In my Father’s house there are many mansions. If not, I would have told you: because I go to prepare a place for you. [3] And if I shall go, and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will take you to myself; that where I am, you also may be.

**The Kingdom of Heaven; whether begun on earth or entering into eternal life;
**For I tell you, that unless your justice abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.