Adult Sunday School - The Roman Catholic Controversy Part 17

Prayer and Introduction to the Roman Catholic Controversy on Purgatory

Well, good morning, beloved. Good morning. Good morning. Too close? Is it good? Testing, one, two, three. Testing, one, two, three. Yeah, you got it. However you need. I just felt like I was kind of too close to my mouth.

Yeah, it's great. It's great. As long as everyone can hear me, it picks me up online. OK. Let's pray. We pray, gracious God, we come before you in the name above all names, in the name of Jesus, our beloved Savior, to whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.

We pray, God, that in this moment, you'd help us to lay aside earthly cares and worries and help us, Father, to now consider the matters before us in your most holy and precious word. We pray, God, for the saints that are gathered here and the saints that are gathered elsewhere.

We pray, Lord, also for the saints that are ill and sick and cannot be here. We think of our sister Sue, particularly this morning. We pray, God, that you'd heal her and bring her forth in a manner in which would be pleasing to you.

Father, we pray, God, that you'd bless all the saints here gathered and help us to understand rightly your word so we may rightly divide the word of truth in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, today we're going to go into chapter 12 of our book on the Roman Catholic controversy.

And I think we spent like two or three weeks on mass, on Eucharist, communion. So hopefully, we got a good grasp of that. And I want you to see a common theme of all these kind of controversies of Rome.

So I mean, the book is called The Roman Catholic Controversy. So what's the controversy here? And I would say underlining every single controversy that Rome teaches is an incomplete view of justification.

It always comes back to the doctrine of justification when it comes to Rome. And purgatory, which is the subject that we're going to be examining now this week, is no different. The whole issue of purgatory arises out of a faulty view of justification.

We're going to examine why exactly that is. And again, we're going to be in chapter 12. We're going to go to the page 182. And I want someone to explain to me what is purgatory. Yes, Emmanuel. That's pretty good.

Anyone else want to take a jab at it? The DMV. The DMV, yeah. So it's come up a couple times. Venial sins, mortal sins. What's the difference between venial and mortal sins in Roman Catholic dogma? Emmanuel?

Give me an example of venial versus mortal.

Go ahead. Well, I can hear from my severity of sins. For example, if I wanted to tell a lie, for example, that would be counted as a venial sin. But if I did something that was overburdened with more evil, say, for example, murder, that would be a mortal sin.

So you are entitled to God's grace. And you would be brought back into the fold. And that would be a mortal sin. Once again, I say it. Pastor? Is purgatory, I didn't quite finish the chapter, but does purgatory also have to do with whether or not you had last rites before you died?

Could be, yeah. You had last rites, and you sinned to forgiven, and you go to heaven. But I was wondering if I did quite right.

Last rites does not guarantee someone entrance into heaven, right? So it helps in Roman Catholic dogma. But it's not like the cure-all thing. And so again, Roman Catholics, similar to, well, I guess Jehovah's Witnesses similar to Roman Catholics, because Roman Catholics and firsts have this really weird worldly explanation for death, in a sense, where they all say God is the ultimate judge.

So we can't say who really gets into heaven, who doesn't, right? We can't determine that, per se. And the Jehovah's Witnesses will say that as well, even though they believe they're the only ones who will get saved if they obey and do all the right things.

But any works-based religion will basically always kind of, their escape hatch is, well, God's the judge, right? So he's going to determine who gets to heaven or not. But that's actually a really unbiblical way of thinking.

Not that God is the judge, because obviously that's true. That's right. But the way in which religions and the world uses that as a cop-out to determining people's spiritual state, right? And so one of the jobs of the church is to determine people's spiritual state, which is membership, right?

And so it is our job to discern whether a person is a member of the body of Christ, whether a person is truly saved, born again, regenerated. Now, we don't know in an ultimate sense, because people come in who are not sometimes born again, even though they seem to have a credible testimony of faith.

But it's really a cop-out to say, well, God's the judge. And so we don't really know. Where the scripture says, these are written so you may know you have eternal life, they who put their faith in the name of the Son of God.

And so there is an assurance in salvation. There's an assurance. And Jesus talks about this when he talks about the parables of weeds and wheat, clearly distinguishable different things. Weeds and wheats are not the same thing.

So clearly, they're going to be distinguishable in the end times, which is what Jesus points to in Matthew 13. So again, we want to think rightly about these things. But yeah, mortal sins are grave offenses to God in Roman Catholic dogma.

Mortal sins include things like adultery, murder, certain types of fornication, very grave, serious sins. So if you die in that state, you are outside of God's grace. Versus venial sins are sins that, like someone said, kind of dings against you, but aren't necessarily grave enough to remove you out of God's saving, or sanctifying grace is what they use.

They use the term sanctifying grace. And so that's where the doctrine of purgatory comes in, is what do you do with someone who hasn't committed mortal sins, but has all these venial sins that need to be sanctified or purged?

So this is where we get the word purgatories, comes from the word to purge, okay? And so how do we purge these sins from these venial acts? That's where the idea, the concept of purgatory comes into play.

Any questions so far? Manuel? Say again? Gluttony would be probably more venial, yeah. Been a lot of fat popes throughout the years, so. Yeah, they ate pretty good, so they had to make sure that was in the venial side of things.

So. Well, that's a good question. I think, honestly, I've looked a little bit into this, and gluttony is one of those sins that on paper is considered, but because, honestly, there's been so many gluttonous popes.

They've always shoved that to the side and say, well, you know, that's one of the things that only God can judge. You know, how big is too big? Only God knows, right? So. It is a very Catholic, yeah. I mean, Protestants don't typically use that as a measuring.

Oh, you know, yeah, that comes from Rome. Yeah, that's Roman dogma. And so, really, there's three ways in which Rome categorizes sin. There's three categories. There's original sin, which is present at birth, and it's forgiven at baptism.

This is why they baptize infants, right? And then there's mortal sin, which, again, these are grave matters. These are things also done in full knowledge, so intent is really important in regard to their concept of mortal sin.

Deliberate consent is what they also refer to as something that you have to deliberately consent to these things in order for it to be considered a mortal sin, and these are things that removes friendship with God.

These are things that can lead to eternal punishment, but they can be forgiven by confession, okay? So if you go to the priest, you confess these things, they can be forgiven. And then there's venial sins, which, again, they're less serious sins.

There's a temporary punishment for these things, not an eternal punishment. They're forgiven by mass, by penance, or purgatory, okay? So basically, again, like I said earlier, this is a very important statement.

Every error of Rome comes back to a misunderstanding of justification, every single one of them, okay? And purgatory is no different. So again, we're in chapter 12 this morning. And the reason why purgatory exists is because, what, again, what do you do with these venial sins?

They're forgiven by mass, so if you take mass, you're forgiven these venial sins. You can also do penance. Anyone know what penance is? What is penance, Emmanuel? That's a good distinguishing marker, actually, yeah.

In particular, that which is prescribed by Rome for certain venial sins. So if you've ever gone to a confession, we don't have too many ex-Roman Catholics here, right? I don't think any, is anyone here ex-Roman Catholic?

Yeah, okay, two. So you go to your priest, you do the confession, and as you're doing the confession, if it's a venial sin, the priest will usually say, okay, now go and do seven Hail Marys, something to that degree.

That is your penance, that is your good works. And you do the beads, you do the rosary, you do something to appease divine wrath, essentially. Am I right, or, yeah? Yeah, it's a prescription. Yeah, it's a prescription, exactly right, yeah.

It's all right, here's your spiritual prescription. And there's something really attractive about that, to be honest, in our flesh, we want it to be that simple. We go to a doctor, we get a prescription.

We go to a drive-through, we get food. You go to your priest, you want something prescribed to you so that you can do something, so that you feel like you've been absolved, right? There is a strong appeal to that.

I mean, sometimes, as Reformed Baptists, we can look at that and scoff, but there really is an appeal to that, that we need to reckon with. Because we, as humans, want to feel like we are doing something contributing to our wholeness, to our wellness, to our spiritual well-being.

And, of course, Roman Catholics will, in the priesthood, will give you their prescriptions for your venial sins. And so, penance is essentially, again, it's good works that lead to forgiveness of sins, or forgiveness of venial sins.

So, again, all this comes back to what? This is a works-based salvation system, okay? They have a wrong view of justification. How is someone made right, justified before God? Is it through faith in Jesus Christ, by grace alone, or is it by means of all these other things?

And that's at the heart of the Roman Catholic controversy, is, again, the doctrine of justification. Pastor? How many beads does a rosary have, anyone know? So, there's 59 beads in a rosary, okay? And the rosary, it's like a necklace.

Looks like a necklace, has a cross, usually, or an image of the Virgin Mary, or Saint Jude. And then, you count them. So, it's almost like a reminder, okay? I've gotta do seven beads. I gotta do, okay, Hail Mary, full grace, this and that, and then that's one, okay, then do it again.

And so, the beads are there to help remind you to keep count of your penance, of your spiritual prescription. So, say something. Count the beads. I say, Hail Mary, full grace. Yeah. Whatever that is. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's sections to the beads, and the different sections of the beads mean different things. So, I don't know all about the, I don't know too much about it, but there's sections, like, I think it's broken up in five sections.

Yeah. Yeah, so there's like five sections it's broken up to, and, you know, they all have a different significance. It's kind of a lot for a person to remember, you know. That's why it's almost like a visual aid.

You know, Roman Catholics were very visual, of course, if you go to a Roman Catholic church. Images and statues everywhere, stained glass, with, you know, biblical depictions. They're very, it's a very visual religion, and that's part of the appeal, is that it's very tangible.

It's very physical. That's right. I mean, it's paganism. I mean, the ancient pagans were, I mean, if you look at any ancient pagan civilization, very visual. You go to ancient Egypt, statues of Horus, Isis, everywhere.

I mean, you can't escape it. Ancient Rome was the same way. They have altars everywhere to different gods, with images, and something akin to a rosary. The rosary's actually an evolution of ancient pagan practice of, again, a very similar type of penance to those ancient gods.

They would have kind of what looks like a rosary, and it was as an active reminder of their daily prayers. And so, you know, Roman Catholicism really just piggybacks off a lot of the pagan practices of the ancient world, again, which is part of the appeal.

Any questions so far? Okay. Well, let's get down and dirty with the picture of purgatory. This is a fascinating discussion. It's a really interesting discussion, because, again, we have kind of the why.

Why did the issue of purgatory arise? And it arises out of a false, faulty view of justification, and also a false view of sin, because they break up sin into kind of three categories. Again, original sin, mortal sin, venial sins, and that's a faulty view of sin.

Sin is sin, James 1 and 2 says that if you've broken one law, so what is sin? It's transgression against the law. If you've broken one law, you're guilty of? All of it, all of it, right? And so, sin, Romans 6, verse 23, the wages of sin is death, okay?

It is your wage, you are working towards it. Psalm 55, I believe, you know, we were conceived in sin in our mother's womb. You know, so we are, Ephesians 2, by nature, objects of wrath, because of our sin, because of our sin nature.

And so, breaking up sin into kind of these three categories is not a biblical concept. All sin leads, all sin leads to eternal punishment. All sin must be accounted for. How is sin accounted for in the biblical worldview?

It's through the shed blood of Jesus, or eternal separation from God and hell. And when I say separation, I think sometimes that's also a faulty view of hell, and so let me define what I mean by separation.

Not separation from the presence of the Lord. In fact, hell is where you get God's full presence unleashed on you. And we know that because Revelation chapter 14, it says, speaking of the lake of fire, hell, that they will be tormented day and night in the presence of God and of the Lamb, day and night.

So think of it as, you know, if God is the center, if God is the sun, you're literally being tossed into the center of it. You're being tossed into the gravity of God's holiness, and nothing is going to spare you from it, okay?

That is hell, is God's full presence fully unleashed upon the unrepentant. Whereas Jesus, in Christ, we are shielded from not the presence of God, but from the wrath of his presence, and we get to enjoy, we get to step into that gravity, that sun, that glorious light, and not be totally consumed by it, right?

Because Jesus, just as Moses, when he encounters Jehovah in the mountain, on Mount Sinai, he had to wear a covering, Jesus is that covering for us, where we get to approach him and not be consumed by him totally.

And so when I say that it's away from the presence, it's away from the presence of his grace, of his love, but it's also a place where you're getting God for all that he is in his holiness, and it completely consumes and destroys the sinner for all eternity.

That's a right view of hell. Whereas, again, the Roman Catholics say, well, actually, there's a middle place, and that middle place is where people who have lived maybe good moral lives didn't commit any mortal sins, and again, in their concept, there are people who don't commit mortal sins, which is actually nonsense.

Every sin is a mortal sin. You gotta understand that every sin is a mortal sin, every sin leads to death, okay? And it's not true that there are those who do not commit mortal sins, in the Roman Catholic view, right?

So if we're just taking Roman Catholicism at face value, everyone commits mortal sins. It says, well, a good Roman Catholic says, well, I haven't committed adultery, but I say unto you, as Jesus says, if you even look at a person with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart, right?

So it's the same thing that the ancient Jews were trying to level at Jesus, like, hey, Jesus, I keep the law, I'm not committing these mortal sins, and Jesus says, well, actually, you are, because you're doing it in your heart, right?

And so every sin is a mortal sin. So Roman Catholics, again, miscategorize, misunderstand justification, they misunderstand sin, and so they have to account for, what do you do with individuals who don't, in their view, commit mortal sins, who commit venial sins, less serious sins, but haven't been forgiven by either the mass, last rites, penance, or anything of the sort?

How can their sins be accounted for? How can their sins be purged so that they can go to heaven? Because they do believe, rightly, that sin cannot coexist in heaven, okay? Okay, that's right. However, how do you get these people who've committed venial sins sanctified enough to go to heaven?

Purgatory. So it's not the blood of Jesus, and it's not his sanctifying work through the Spirit, it is now another mechanism by which a person can be purged of their sins, and that's, again, in the doctrine of purgatory.

So purgatory really is this intermediate state where it's neither heaven nor hell, it's something kind of in between. It is a place, however, that is less than ideal because it's not heaven, but it could be a lot worse because it's not hell.

And so you have this weird, you've heard of this term limbo, right? Limbo is a Latin description for purgatory as well, okay? Yes, because there is punishment. So in the Roman Catholic view, there is punishment that's happening in purgatory, and so it is, again, less than ideal.

You don't want to be there, per se. Yeah, Emanuel? Yeah, so it's usually for, again, Roman Catholics who haven't received us rights or who, and again, this is where it gets very sticky is because ultimately they say, well, only God truly knows, but there are pronouncements that can be made, or used to, it doesn't happen often anymore.

Purgatory is not as popular as it once was, and actually this chapter delves into that a little bit, because it's not particularly accepted in Western culture, right? So purgatory was a far bigger deal back in Europe, back in the Middle Ages.

It's still something that Roman Catholics hold onto, but it's just not as popular as it once was. But when it was popular, they would say outright, well, this person wasn't good enough, even though they're Roman Catholic, they're in purgatory.

So hey, if you've got a relative who's in purgatory, you can help them be sanctified through these penance, through these indulgences, is what they call them, and indulgences were usually mechanisms within the Roman Catholic Church to raise money, and what they would do is they would say, well, if you paid this amount to the treasury, you'll help them on their scoreboard to get out of purgatory quicker.

And so that is unfortunately some of the mechanisms that Roman Catholicism has used throughout the ages to swindle people out of resources and money and time, and yeah, it's a very wicked thing in reality as it's practiced.

It's a form of spiritual abuse, and it's a form of coercion, so. Because if you have a member of your family who's in purgatory, of course you want them out of there. So, yeah, pastor. Yeah. It's a bit of an oversimplification, but there is a truth to it.

So in the first nine centuries of the church, you don't have any well-defined view of purgatory. You have some weird statements from people like Justin Martyr and other church fathers who were ambiguous.

Part of the issue here and what I wanna get into is where some of this doctrinal issues arise of purgatory is actually a doctrinal misunderstanding of their intermediate state, okay? And the church fathers really struggled with this as well.

And so you get some kind of weird, vague things from the church fathers, and they kind of morse over centuries. And so about 1 ,000 to 1 ,400, you have this formalization, this canonization of this doctrine of purgatory, okay?

So really from around the year 1 ,000 to 1 ,400, that's where it really becomes solidified within Roman Catholic dogma. And it arises primarily because of, again, the debates that were being held in the church regarding the intermediate state and also the evolution of mortal sins, venial sins, original sin, and then obviously, yeah, the need for raising money to build St. Peter's Basilica, which took 400 years to make.

So they needed to get some money into the treasury. So, and that is historically true. It coincides, but it wasn't just so that they can raise money. You know, there was some sincerity to the formulation and debates that were being held in that time, so yeah.

The Intermediate State, Sheol, and Hades in Old Testament Hope

So let's define that. Again, this is where it gets interesting because even within Protestantism, there's diverging views, right? And so I would have maybe a little bit of a different view from even some within our church.

And so essentially, here's the two main categories, okay? So we have heaven and hell. That's like the classic Christian Protestant understanding of the afterlife, okay? So let's categorize, there's the here and there's the hereafter, that's the afterlife.

And the question that arises in the biblical narrative and also within church history is, first and foremost, what do we do with the Old Testament saints? Because heaven, in the way that we understand today, is a very New Testament thing.

It's a very New Testament phenomenon. In the way that we talk about heaven, it's very New Testament. When you ask an Old Testament saint, so let's say we're interviewing an Old Testament Israelite, what their hope is, it would not sound like a Christian's hope.

You'll never hear an Israelite say, well, my hope is to die and go to heaven. That is foreign to the Old Testament. The Old Testament does not have that same concept, and you just don't find it. If you ask an Old Testament figure what their hope is, their hope is directly connected to the land.

Their hope is to inherit the land of Israel, to flourish the land of Israel, that they would live on it forever. That was their anticipation, that was their hope, that was where their focus was, was the inheritance of the land, the physical land, and ultimately the inheritance of the whole earth.

So their mind was somewhere else. It was not necessarily upon dying and go to heaven. That's a very New Testament concept. And so, okay, what do you do then? Okay, where did the Old Testament saints go when they died?

Christians will have two answers. I'm not talking about Roman Catholics, I'm talking about Protestants. We'll have two answers to that, both being different. First, Christians would say, well, they died and went to heaven.

Okay, that's when they went, and that's where they were, that's where they are today. Another side of the Christian, I would say, well, actually, they went to paradise, and that's not the same as heaven.

And so they would have what's called an intermediate state. And in the Old Testament, if you ask an Old Testament figure, like, for instance, Job, Jonah, David, and I'm using those names in particular because they actually tell us where they were gonna go when they died.

They all said that when they died, they would go to Sheol in the Hebrew. Greek equivalent would be Hades, okay? So they all knew that when they died, they would go into Sheol. They never talked about going to heaven.

They always talked about going to Sheol. Job said he prayed to be concealed in Sheol. Jonah prayed from the belly of Sheol in death. David said that he would be buried and he would lie in Sheol. These are all things, expectations, that they had.

Now, most people agree, Hebrew scholars would agree that Sheol is not heaven. Sheol is the general term for the grave, or for the afterlife, in a sense. But it's always a shadowy place, not a place of light, love, and enjoyment, necessarily, but it's more a place of, it's kind of shadowy.

We don't have a lot of data, we don't have a lot of information about it. The Old Testament is particularly kind of quiet about what happens in Sheol and what happens in Hades. So it's a mysterious place to the ancients, to some degree.

Emmanuel? They're swallowed. Yeah, that's right. So Sheol is, again, an interesting place. And in the King James Version of the Bible, the good old King Jimmy, they often put in, Sheol is often translated as hell.

I would say that is an incorrect translation. I don't think Sheol is hell, and I don't think it's heaven. And so my view would be the latter. I don't think Sheol is heaven, and I don't think Sheol is hell.

I think this is a distinct place. And what's of interest is how the New Testament looks at this and how Jesus looks at this place called Sheol, and the New Testament in the Book of Luke uses the term Hades, which is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew word Sheol.

And we know this because in Acts 2, Peter quotes from the Old Testament where Sheol is used, but he uses the Greek word Hades. So we know this is the two, it's the same place. It's the same word, different language.

And so when we look at Luke chapter 16 in particular, let's go there for a moment. Verse 19, Luke 16, verse 19. There was a rich man whose clothed in purple and fine linen and was feasted sumptuously every day, and at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.

Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. Very interesting, okay, we have Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and at Lazarus' side.

He called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. But Abraham said, Child, remember that you in your lifetime received good things, and Lazarus and like men are bad things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.

And besides all this between us, you and a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here may not be able, and none may cross from there to us. So here's the picture that Jesus is painting of Hades, okay?

There's two sections, apparently, one that's torment, one that is Abraham's bosom, and between the two is a great chasm. So think of one side, if you've ever been to the Grand Canyon, think of one end of the Grand Canyon, the other end.

You might be able to wave to the other person, you may even be able to scream to the other person, but there's no way you're gonna get from one end to the other. There's a great chasm between the two, okay?

And so one is Abraham's side, Abraham's bosom, what's often referred to as paradise in the Old Testament, and then there is, of course, the side of torment. And so Jesus paints this picture of Hades as really interesting, and this is where the church fathers begin to really develop, where eventually you get to this idea of purgatory, and it actually stems from a misunderstanding of what's called the intermediate state.

And so I would be a proponent of the intermediate state, not everyone would be. I don't think it's that vastly important in the grand scheme of things, but here's my perspective. My perspective is simply this, that in the Old Testament, when a person died, the righteous would go into Abraham's bosom, the unrighteous into Hades, so if you think Hades is kind of like the county jail, the bad part of Hades is like the county jail, but it's not the penitentiary.

It's not the eternal state of hell, okay? So it is a place of torment, it isn't where you want to be, but it's not the eternal hell. And how do we know this? Because the Bible talks about, particularly in Revelation, that death in Hades, Sheol, will be tossed into the lake of fire.

And the lake of fire is that which is referred to as the eternal state of the damned, of the wicked, is gonna be lake of fire. Now, Jesus uses another Greek word to describe what I believe is the biblical hell, the eternal state, the lake of fire, and it's a Greek word, Gehenna.

Jesus uses this term often, Mark chapter nine, for instance, where he talks about Gehenna as the place where the worms do not die and the bodies are not consumed. This is the eternal state for the wicked.

And that doesn't happen until his coming. If we understand 1 Thessalonians chapter one, we understand 1 Corinthians chapter 15, we understand Revelation chapter 14, chapter 19 and 20, these are all things that happen at his coming, okay?

Is the eternal separation of the sheep and the goats. And the goats will depart into everlasting fire. That means they're not there yet. They're not into that place of eternal fire yet. They are currently in Hades, would be my perspective.

Now, again, according to the Old Testament, everyone died and went to Hades as Sheol. But something drastically changes at the resurrection and ascension of Christ. Christ opens the door for heaven. No one has ascended to heaven, but he who descended from heaven, the son of man, Jesus says in John three.

And so Jesus is the way by which heaven is open. I'm the way, the truth, and the life. And if you look at Hebrews chapter 11 and 12, and maybe at some point we can go into this a little bit deeper, but if we, and I'd encourage you to look in your free time and in those chapters of Hebrews 11 and Hebrews chapter 12, it talks about all these great cloud of witnesses from the Old Testament saints.

But then it makes a really stunning admission at the end of chapter 11 and the beginning of chapter 12 is that these who preceded us, the Old Testament saints, would not be glorified apart from us, okay?

So that means that those saints of the Old Testament couldn't have been glorified in heaven apart from the inclusion of the New Testament church, right? So it's the New Testament church, it's the Jesus opening the new and a better way through his shed blood, which opens the way for heaven for both the Old Testament and the New Testament saints simultaneously, okay?

So that now the believer who dies in Christ doesn't go into Hades, doesn't go in Sheol, but he goes directly into the presence of the Lord where he awaits now the resurrection from the dead. That would be my view.

It's also seemingly the view of the early church fathers, and however I would be at odds with many Puritans in my position because many Puritans had a more simplistic view because what I just described to you is a little bit complicated.

The Puritans had a more simplistic view, which is no, the Hades, Sheol, these are all just terms for heaven and hell. And depending on the context, it could either be heaven or it could be hell, and that when a person dies, they go to hell, a person dies in the Old Testament, they went to heaven.

That's fine, I don't think there's anything wrong with that position. However, I think there's enough scriptures to point, that points to a very clear distinction between Sheol, hell, and heaven that I just, I have a hard time contextualizing.

It doesn't mean that I'm right or they're wrong, it just means that there's a lot in this topic that needs to be considered. What's that? Hey, that's okay, man, that's all right. Go ahead, pastor. Oh, no, it clearly, yeah, yeah.

Of course, yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't think, yeah, he's clearly a parable, because he says, he's setting up a story, a scenario, right? But behind the teaching, so we have to be careful when we say, okay, a parable.

A parable doesn't mean that, Jesus often taught in parables to teach theological truths, right? And so, the story is the parable. The story is rich man, Lazarus, we've got this dichotomy between these two groups of people, these two types of people.

But then, the setting is true, just like he would use the setting of farming, you know, fishing. These are all settings that are real, that are true. But the story, the characters involved are parabolic, yeah.

Anyone have any thoughts or questions? Yeah, go ahead. Well, he went to Hades, and this is where the Nicene Creed is very important, right? So it says, he descended into hell. Wait a second, Jesus descended into hell?

No, no, no, no, the word there is Hades. Now, this is where we'd have a problem. If Jesus actually descended into hell, into the lake of fire, eternal torment, what are we saying about the nature of Christ?

What are we saying about his nature, that he descended into hell, the place of fire? Was he tormented there? It brings up all these Roman Catholic controversies, in a sense, right? Whereas, if you have an Old Testament view of Hades, or Sheol, it would make sense that he went to Hades, because that's where everyone went.

Everyone went to Hades, okay? And that's not missing, it's what the Bible says in the Old Testament. Everyone went to Sheol. David went to Sheol. This is why he's quoted in the book of Acts, in chapter two, and also in chapter 16, I believe.

He's quoted as dying and being in Hades, okay? And that's where Jesus went. Jesus also descended into Hades, which is the place of the dead, which is how the church fathers interpret Ephesians four. When Ephesians four says, what does it mean that he descended, but that he went to the lower regions of the earth, but that he also ascended and brought with him a host, which, in the view of the early church, was that this is a triumphant victory of Christ, taking the Old Testament saints out of Hades and transferring them to heaven, okay, to his kingdom.

And so that was the view of the early church, and that would be more akin to my view as well. First Peter chapter three says that he preached to the spirits that were in prison. Yes. Yeah. Another view that is popular is that he preached to the angels that were imprisoned during Noah's time, or the Nephilims.