“I think I’m going to hell.” A text like today’s can provoke such a thought.

One wonders if the invention of purgatory was in part to deal with texts like today’s. I don’t meet the standard of the sheep, but perhaps if I can work off my sins in purgatory, then I might stand a chance.

But there is no purgatory. It’s taught nowhere in the Bible. It’s taught nowhere in the Apocrypha. It’s not nowhere in the first few centuries of Christianity. The Lord Jesus presents two stark realities – the sheep and the goats, the blessed and the cursed, the eternal kingdom or the everlasting fire, punishment or life….