Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10119 The word “Sheol” occurs sixty-five times in the Hebrew Old Testament and represents one of the most important concepts in the biblical understanding of death and the afterlife. Yet it is also one of the most misunderstood. English translations have rendered it variously as “the grave,” “the pit,” “hell,” and “the realm of…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10120 Hades is one of the most frequently misunderstood terms in the New Testament, largely because English readers associate it automatically with the Greek mythology from which the word originates. But the New Testament writers did not adopt Greek mythology when they used the term. They used the Greek word to express the Hebrew…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10118 The phrase “Abraham’s bosom” appears only once in the entire New Testament, in the account of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), and yet it has generated an outsized amount of theological discussion. What did Jesus mean by it? Was He describing an actual location in the afterlife, or was this simply…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10168 The question of where hell is located surfaces with regularity, often in the context of popular imagination that places it beneath the earth’s surface. It is a question that mixes legitimate biblical curiosity with assumptions drawn from Dante, medieval art, and cultural mythology. What Scripture actually teaches is more nuanced, and more sobering,…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3025 The three days between Good Friday and Easter Sunday have long puzzled Christians. Where was Jesus during that time? What was He doing? The question is not idle curiosity but touches on the nature of death, the reality of Christ’s human experience, and the scope of His victory. Scripture gives us enough to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3063 Few statements in the Apostles’ Creed have generated more confusion than the phrase “He descended into hell.” What does it mean? Did Jesus, between His death and resurrection, actually go to the place of the damned? Was He suffering there? Preaching there? Triumphing there? Christians have debated this for centuries, and sorting through…