Hi Pastor, What do lutheran's believe what happens to you after death? Me and another Pastor are in disagreement over this? I'm reading the Concord but haven't got far in it yet. Your help will be most appreciated 🙏
Naturally. In the Augsburg Confession, you'll find an article treating the Return of Christ (Article XVII), but little or nothing about the "Intermittent State" between death and the Final Judgment. The Lutheran reformers were vastly more concerned with demonstrating how believers are saved than giving propositions about the state of the soul at any given moment. That said, as late Medieval Christians, they take certain things for granted. The soul, at the moment of death, enters either a state of blessedness or torment (in layman's terms, heaven or hell), based on whether the deceased in life had faith in Christ or not. The Small Catechism says this: "We pray in this petition (Deliver us from evil) in summary that ... when our last hour comes, our Father in heaven would give us a blessed end and graciously take us from this vale of sorrow to himself in heaven." The only other lucid reference to the hereafter is in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Article XXI), which maintains the Biblical position that the saints in heaven pray for the church on earth (cf. Revelation 6:9-10). But it does not follow that we should invoke them with specific prayer requests in mind. There is no article treating purgatory. We find implicit denunciations of purgatory, especially in the Apology (Article XXII and XXIV) and the Smalcald Articles (Part III, Article III). The Reformers saw it as being without Scriptural foundation and bound up irretrievably in the discussion of "meritorious works" devised by the Romanists (indulgences, relics, pilgrimages, votive Masses, works of supererogation). The point of most concern, as may now be plain, is the final state after Christ's Return. We believe in the words of the ancient Creeds that the body will be resurrected - that is, spirit and body are reunited, after which people will be capable of either perfect bliss or torment. The Intermittent State is just that: an in-between phase and not the ultimate destiny itself.
@@cypresslutheranparish1827 Thank you Pastor for the information and your time. I really appreciate it. I've found a lutheran church here in Virginia. I've reached out to. Thank you for your help and information. God Bless! 🙏😊
