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April 2007, Page 6.
Index of articles:
by subject,
by date.
In this issue:
(April 2007)
Christ is risen,
Prayer,
Question,
Song.
In our "Questions to the clergy" slot, John will try to answer any query you throw at him, without hesitation, deviation or repetition...
Three days' absence?
Q. What was Jesus doing during the time between his death on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday?
A. Well, I asked colleagues on the internet about this one, and there are basically two answers.
1. In the creeds we say “He descended to the dead” and “He suffered death and was buried”. So it depends what you think happens to someone when they die.
Unfortunately the Authorized Version of the bible uses the word “hell” for two different Hebrew words “Sheol” and “Gehenna” which appear in the bible. Sheol was thought to be a shadowy place of waiting to which everyone went - a kind of limbo, neither good nor bad. Gehenna was a place of torment and burning fire, of agony and terrible despair. Two places not to mix up! In the prayer book the Apostle’s Creeds was translated “He descended into hell” - but later scholars realized that the bible doesn’t actually say so, and the translation “hell” was misleading.
So the first answer is: Jesus was a real man, and he therefore suffered a real death and first went where all real dead people go.
2. There is one bible passage which backs up this idea - 1 Peter 3:18 and 4:6 says that Jesus went and “preached to the spirits in prison”, and the disobedient who lived in the time of Noah are especially mentioned as the audience. Many people interpret this as meaning that Jesus went and preached to those who didn’t get a chance to hear the gospel during their lifetimes, because they lived before Jesus and the gospel had not been revealed in those days.
There are some branches of the church which go on to build a doctrine of “purgatory” on these verses: saying that after we die there is a time for paying compensation for our sins, and an opportunity for repentance so that we can turn to the Jesus whom we rejected on earth. But actually the rest of the bible is against this idea. Hebrews 9:27 says we die once and after that comes judgement. And Jesus himself says that once the owner of the house closes the door, the latecomers will have finally missed their chance to be part of the heavenly wedding-feast (Luke 13 & 14).
So no-one reading this article should think that they might be one of the spirits who might get a second chance after death. The bible is quite clear that those who do have a chance to hear about Jesus had better be quick and respond to him!
John Hartley