Does The Salvation "Process" Continue After Death?

[stellar_renegade]

In my view, the purification process will be accelerated after death because the “veil” will simply have been removed. People will no longer be distracted by the moving show of images and sensory input that momentarily assuage the pain we all feel inside, whether that be cold emptiness, or burning remorse, or whathaveyou. We all have pain and we all have subconscious entanglements and deep sorrows.

To die is to no longer have any distractions; to come face-to-face with what’s deeply bothering your eternal soul. For some this will come as a lonely, dark desperation; for others a burning, torturous pain.

But then there’s a recompense for all of this: the greater the discomfort, the quicker the process will go; the sooner one will come to cry out for, and cling to, the Ultimate Answer. It is those who have more, not less, who have the furthest to go, because they still experience comfort in this world. It is the Lazaruses who sing,

“Limping through the world
There’s a knowing look or two…
Is it just the cripples here
Who understand the truth?”

It is the mourners who will be comforted.

It is a human soul still, and wretched in the midst of all that whiskey can do for it. From the pit of hell it cries out. So long as there is that which can sin, it is a man. And the prayer of misery carries its own justification, when the sober petitions of the self-righteous and the unkind are rejected. He who forgives not is not forgiven, and the prayer of the Pharisee is as the weary beating of the surf of hell, while the cry of a soul out of its fire sets the heartstrings of love trembling.

[Paidion]

i am wondering, soteriologically, how do people here feel about prayers for the dead?

In the OT, God warns against trying to communicate with the dead. If the dead are happily strolling around heaven, why would God forbid communication with them? The catholic church practises praying (or "talking) to the dead, even to dead relatives.

However, if the dead are really dead, then praying for them or talking to them would be pointless. They’re dead! They don’t exist! Solomon declared, “The dead know not anything.” [Ecclesiastes 9:5] and the Psalmist declared: “For in death there is no remembrance of You; In the grave who will give You thanks?” [Psalms 6:5]

The apostle Paul seemed to indicate that if there is no resurrection, we’ll stay dead after death, and that those who have “fallen asleep” in Christ have perished:

*For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. **

And Paul said in verse 32:

If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

So as I see it, it is dangerous attempt to communicate with the dead or pray for them, for demons capitalize on this belief and pretend to be dead persons, and thus deceive the living.*

[Grace]

Paidion ~

thank you for your views, Sir. as a Christian holding to the beliefs that the dead are in fact conscious after death, the possibility of prayer for the dead holds more weight for me.

the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches also have traditions of prayer for the deceased, holding them to be conscious after death, and able to benefit from the prayers of the living (e.g. “God, have mercy on them”). it isn’t an idea which has really carried over very far into Protestant thought as far as i can see, but it does have strong currency in the Apostolic Churches.