Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10120. The realm of Hades is the New Testament word for the place where the dead are held between dying and rising, and it is not the same thing as the lake of fire. That single distinction clears away most of the confusion people carry about this word, and it is worth getting straight…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10119. Sheol and Hades are the Old and New Testament words for the realm of the dead, and they cover the same ground. Sheol is the Hebrew term, used sixty-five times, and the Greek translators of the Old Testament almost always rendered it with Hades. So when we ask what Sheol is, we are…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10118. Abraham’s bosom is the expression used in Luke 16 for the place of comfort where the righteous dead waited before the resurrection of Jesus. The ESV renders it Abraham’s side, which is closer to the picture Jesus was drawing, and the picture is of reclining next to Abraham at a feast rather than…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10117. The biblical paradise is the place of God’s presence, pictured as a garden, where the righteous dead are at rest and where the tree of life stands. The word appears only three times in the New Testament, and each occurrence adds something: Jesus promises it to the dying thief, Paul is caught up…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10116. Scripture says nothing directly about near-death experiences as a category, and that silence is itself instructive. What the Bible gives us instead is a settled account of what happens at death, a firm warning about deception, and a clear statement that we already have everything we need in the written word. Those three…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10115. The doctrine of purgatory teaches that those who die in a state of grace but with unforgiven venial sins, or with temporal punishment still owing, undergo a purifying process after death before entering heaven. It is not biblical. It rests on a text outside the canon, on inferences from passages that will not…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10103. Soul sleep is the teaching that the dead, believers included, pass into a state of complete unconsciousness at death and know nothing at all until they are raised at the last day. On this view there is no experience between dying and rising, so that the moment of death and the moment of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10102. When believers die they go immediately into the conscious presence of the Lord Jesus. There is no interval of unconsciousness, no holding area, no process of purification and no delay until the last day. The soul and spirit of the Christian are at home with the Lord from the moment the heart stops,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10101. The intermediate state is the condition of a person between the moment of death and the resurrection of the body, and Scripture presents it as conscious, personal and, for the believer, immediately in the presence of the Lord. It is called intermediate because it is temporary. It is not the end of the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6003. The consequences of sin reach further than most people ever suspect, and understanding them is essential if we are to grasp what the Lord Jesus actually accomplished on the cross. God warned Adam plainly: “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Adam ate, and did not…