Did Jesus Descend into Hell? | (un)ANSWERED

The Certainty of Death and the Human Questions It Raises

We've all experienced the odd occurrence in the Bible and was left with fringe questions. Watch and listen as we leave no question unanswered.

There is nothing more certain promised to every man but death. Picture this, you wake up. In front of you is a hallway, dimly lit, it stretches on for quite some time. And the closer and closer you get to what appears to be a door, shapes seem to sharpen, colors seem more vibrant.

Yet at the same time, what appears to be material loses form. Your own body almost appears to disintegrate. It can no longer hold the substance of your being, which is beginning to depart from you. Despite the oddness of what is occurring, the slowly slipping from what you thought was reality, you continue pressing forward.

Breath becomes more shallow. Your spirit seems to become more tangible. Finally, at the end of the hallway, there seem to be two beings waiting to usher you into a place in which there is no turning back.

Looking back, you see your loved ones gathered around your body. They cannot see what you see. Every ounce of you wants to go back, but you have no control over what has happened. The beings, as if sent from God, bring you from the place which you once knew into eternity.

There is no going back.

All is over.

Your life was a vapor and now cannot be grasped. You have slipped away from time and you feel as if whoever holds you together, whoever holds all of eternity together, is beckoning you. The time has come.

You must meet God. Now this was just a work of fiction, something that I dreamed up while preparing for this episode. Obviously, I don't know exactly what happens when you die. But death is something that captivates all of humanity.

Some think that they just cease to exist. That since they were a byproduct of random chance evolution, they will just become nothing. Some think that they will be reborn into a karmic cycle until they reach the point of samsara, which is the end of death and rebirth.

The point is that since death is coming for us all, we all think about death and have come to our own conclusions. However, we do have an objective truth given to us from God about death and what happens after.

Death as the Consequence of Sin

There is no karmic cycle of death and rebirth. We do not dissolve into nothingness. Death comes as a consequence of sin. The grip of death that is slowly reaching for us all proves that the Bible is true regardless of your opinion.

So this leads us to the question, what happens after death? Where do we go? One answer to this mystery is found in the revelation of Jesus Christ. Looking at his parables, his death and resurrection, and then looking back into the Old Testament to understand the sheer magnificence and power of God ending in age and bringing us into something much greater than what was.

So in order to understand what happens after we die, we must in fact die to ourselves and trust God's word and ask the question, what happened to Jesus? Where did he go after he died on the cross? Did Jesus immediately go to be in the presence of the Father?

Or did he go somewhere else? Let's take a look at the texts and dive into one of the great mysteries revealed to us in the Bible, the afterlife. So in order to get a good foundation of the afterlife, let's go into the Jewish perspective from the Old Testament.

Sheol in the Old Testament

There is a Hebrew word given to us for where the souls of the dead dwell. It can reference to a place and also the grave. It is Sheol. It is a place where both the damned and the righteous are to dwell.

Genesis 37 .35 shows us that. And so does 1 Samuel 28 .13 -14. But there's a plethora of other texts in the Old Testament that detail Sheol. But Isaiah 38 .10 tells us that it's a city with gates. And the language used in the Bible references that Sheol is underneath us.

There's one example with the rebellion of Korah in Numbers 16. It states that the ground opened up and swallowed them alive into Sheol. According to the Old Testament, we are receiving revelation from God by the prophets of an afterlife.

That once we die, we do not just cease to exist, but our souls live on. And for those in the age of the Old Testament, the place where they dwelled was Sheol. A dark place. One where there is no worship of God.

Where according to Solomon, wisdom ceases to exist. However, what we know about Sheol doesn't stop there. It was actually Jesus who taught us more about the afterlife than we could have ever imagined.

Jesus' Teaching on Hades and Abraham's Bosom

Jesus gives us a parable in Luke 16 .22 -26 in which he states the following. 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 Lazarus at his side.

And he called out,. But Abraham said, Child, remember that you, in your lifetime, received your good things. And Lazarus, in like manner, bad things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.

And besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and no one may cross from there to us. So do you see here, Jesus tells us that there's two men who go to Hades.

And I want to let you know, the word here, Hades, isn't Sheol. But being that this is in Greek, this would be a translation of what the Hebrew word of Sheol would be, which is Hades. We can find that even in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

Alright?

But what does Jesus say? There's two sides in Hades now. One for the unrighteous, and the other side for the righteous. There is a chasm fixed between the two that cannot be broken, but those who are suffering under God's judgment can literally see those who are dwelling in the rest and peace of Abraham's side, or bosom.

So what do we know, right? It appears that there is a place where the dead dwell, Sheol, Hades. Interchangeable, right? This place is separated into two compartments. Again, one for the righteous, and one for the unrighteous.

So the question then remains is, what happens today? Do people who die, are they separated into the two compartments within Sheol? Well, to better get an understanding about what happens today, which we can through the Bible because the Bible tells us, I think this has actually been changed because of Jesus Christ.

Christ's Descent, Psalm 68, and the Spirits in Prison

We are told the following about Christ by Paul. It's Ephesians 4, 8 -10.

It states this,.

He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. Paul here is quoting from Psalm 68, 18. This is what Psalm 68, 18 says. You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train, and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.

Furthermore, we find verses like 1 Peter 3, 18 -20, which states this,. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight, persons were brought safely through the water.

The reality is this, that Jesus Christ, when he died, went to Hades, into Abraham's bosom, where the saints of old were awaiting the sacrifice of the Messiah. There they were in a dwelling, comforted by God, until the Messiah would storm the gates of Sheol to ascend on high into the paradise of heaven with a host of captives with him.

If we think of the Old Testament scriptures and the overwhelming emphasis on Sheol, whether good or bad, righteous or unrighteous dwelling there, we find that every Old Testament prophet had the expectation of going to Sheol.

Furthermore, the text shows that God would not abandon Christ in Sheol. Instead, he would lead a host of saints out of it. And that's exactly what Jesus did. Christ emptied Abraham's bosom and brought these saints to heaven in pure victory.

Those on the other side of Hades witnessed to their sheer horror the conquering proclamation of the gospel through Christ's victory lap in Abraham's bosom. So from Abraham's bosom of the Old Testament to paradise in heaven, the ending of an age.

The Believer's Hope in Paradise and the Final Judgment of the Unjustified

Now when those who are justified today by the blood of Christ die, we go to be with him in paradise where the tree of life dwells, where we then await the resurrection of our bodies and life with God forever on earth.

Beautiful.

For those who are not justified by the blood of Christ today, they go to Sheol to the side in which torment occurs, where the wrath of God is poured out on them as they look upon an empty Abraham's bosom, knowing that there's no hope left.

But they also await a resurrected body. But this is the sad thing. They await one in which they will be cast into the lake of fire for all eternity. This, my friends, is why we have a burden for those who do not know Christ.

What awaits those who do not have a relationship with Christ is a torment that could not be fathomed. Jesus Christ in the flesh had the wrath of God extinguished on him at the cross for the sins of his people.

By belief in him, by grace through faith, and not of ourselves, but on him who is both the just and justifier, we can be redeemed from the pit of Sheol, redeemed from the curse of death to have everlasting life with the author of life.

And this, my friends, is the glory and hope we have in Christ who is seated in the heavens, the one who rescued the saints from the grave and who rescues us from the grave as well, in which our heavenly inheritance waits, undefiled, seated with Christ, in which we await a glory unfathomable, purely by his mercy and his grace alone.

So if you do not know Jesus, it is time to repent and place your faith in the God who took your place on the cross. If you want to defeat death, then place your faith in the destroyer of death, the conqueror of the grave, the God of the universe, the almighty Jesus Christ.

Your works will never satisfy the righteous requirement of the law. They are nothing but filthy rags before God. Jesus Christ was perfect and he died that sinless sacrifice in order that we may be justified and declared righteous before God.

The Cross, Justification, and the Final Answer to the Question

So the question, what happened to Jesus after he died? Well, at this time I will consider this one answered. What do you think?