Where did Jesus go after His death Pt.3
By Ivan Ho 1 Sept 2024
This is the 3rd part of my recent message entitled “Where did Jesus go after His death?“.
It seems that the bible doesn’t make it very clear where Jesus went and what he did during the 3 days he descended to a place in the heart of the earth translated as “hell” in KJV.
Before I go any further, I need to say that your salvation won’t be based on your view concerning what happened to Jesus between his death and resurrection. In other words, whether or not you believe Jesus went to hell after his death, you won’t be sent to hell for what you believe on this issue.
However, if you deny the fact that Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected 3 days after, you are not saved. Salvation isn’t based on where you believe Jesus went between his death and resurrection but upon your faith on the historical fact that he died on the cross for our sins and was raised from the dead!
But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Romans 10:8-10 NKJV
So why is it important to know what happened to Jesus between his death and resurrection?
This is because, if we begin to entertain all kinds of unbiblical views regarding issues like the virgin birth of Christ, His second coming, the literal reality of heaven and hell, godly definition of marriage and so on, gradually we will accept all kinds of false teachings about Jesus, to the point that one will deny His diety and Him coming in the flesh.
We need to make sure what we believe align with what is in the word of God, at least not contradict what the bible says on important subjects even though sometimes things are not totally clear and agreed upon by everybody.
With that in mind, let’s look at some scriptures surrounding Jesus just before he died on the cross :
And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.
And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
Luke 23:42-46 KJV
Jesus said to one of the thieves being crucified next to him: “Today you will be with Me in paradise“. Soon after he said that, Jesus died, and we know that he (his spirit) must have gone to paradise immediately upon his death.
Just before Jesus died, he said to God the Father: “Into your hands I commit my spirit“. Some people take that to mean that the spirit of Jesus went to be with the Father in heaven immediately upon his death. However this notion would contradict the preceding narrative when Jesus said he was going to paradise, knowing that paradise wasn’t in heaven but in the heart of the earth, based on the following scriptures:
for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Matthew 12:40 KJVWherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, And gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)
Ephesians 4:8-10 KJV
From the above scripture, we know that Jesus, immediately upon his death, first descended into the lower parts of the earth (where paradise was located) before he took the spirits in captivity there and ascended into heaven, which is in agreement with what Peter said:
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
So why did Jesus said to his Father: “Into Thy hands I commend (commit) my spirit“? I believe what Jesus merely meant was that he relinquished his spirit into the hands of the Father, and immediately the spirit of Jesus left his body and he died physically on the cross.
I hope by now we can all come to an agreement that immediately after Jesus’s death, his spirit went to paradise which was in the center of the earth.
The question remains : “Did Jesus also go to hell during the 3 days after his death?” which I addressed in my previous writings on this subject.
Without absolutely ruling out the possibility of Jesus actually going to hell (ie the part of hell where the lost souls were in torment, and the part of hell where fallen angels were bound), I will attempt to explain my view on the subject in further details in the next episode.
Where did Jesus go after His death Pt.4