Bible Question:
Matthew 12:40 says after being crucified, Jesus spent three days in the center of the earth. Can anyone explain the purpose of this and what He was doing in the center of the earth? Chusarcik |
Bible Answer: The Bible’s answer to the question, “What did Jesus do in Hell for 3 days?” To answer this question, you be the judge as to what the Bible says “death” is. A word of caution though, at the outset is in order, because there are indeed other teachings which tend to sway us. We are introduced to death as Adam’s penalty for sinning. Gen. 2:17 “But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” Thus God says Adam would die. What though did Satan tell Eve? He told her at Gen. 3:4 “At this the serpent said to the woman: “YOU positively will not die.” I personally choose to believe what God told Adam and NOT what Satan told Eve. If we read Gen. 2:7, we learn what life is. Thus the opposite of life is death. Logical? Certainly it is. Gen 2:7 tells us, "And Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul." What consciousness did Adam have when he was a dead soul, a few momements earlier? I have no reason to conclude that he had any! What conclusion am I to draw but at dying Adam returned to total unconsciousness as he was before becoming a “living soul”? Is that not what the Psalmist tells us when speaking of living souls at Ps. 104:29, “If you conceal your face, they get disturbed. If you take away their spirit, they expire, And back to their dust they go.” Going back to Genesis 3:19, “In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.” What consciousness does dust have? Supporting Biblical thoughts abound and here are a few to contemplate: 1)Ps 146:4 “His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; In that day his thoughts do perish.” 2) Eccl. 9:5, “For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all" 3) Eccl 9:10, ”All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol, the place to which you are going.” 4) Ps. 22:15, “My power has dried up just like a fragment of earthenware, And my tongue is made to stick to my gums; And in the dust of death you are setting me.” The Interpreter’s Bible (Vol. II, p. 1015), commenting on 1 Samuel 25:29,which says, “When man rises up to pursue you and look for your soul, the soul of my lord will certainly prove to be wrapped up in the bag of life with Jehovah your God; but, as for the soul of your enemies, he will sling it forth as from inside the hollow of the sling.", observes that “the idea of man as consisting of body and soul which are separated at death is not Hebrew but Greek.” (Edited by G. Buttrick, 1953) Similarly, Edmond Jacob, Professor of Old Testament at the University of Strasbourg, points out that, since in the Hebrew Scriptures one’s life is directly related with the soul (Heb. nephesh), “it is natural that death should sometimes be represented as the disappearance of this nephesh (Gen. 35:18; I Kings 17:21; Jer. 15:9; Jonah 4:3). The ‘departure’ of the nephesh must be viewed as a figure of speech, for it does not continue to exist independently of the body, but dies with it (Num. 31:19; Judg. 16:30; Ezek. 13:19). No biblical text authorizes the statement that the ‘soul’ is separated from the body at the moment of death.”—The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, edited by G. Buttrick, 1962, Vol. 1, p. 802. What must we hereby conclude once again? That even though the ancient Egyptians and other peoples of pagan nations, and particularly the Grecian philosophers, were strong in their belief in the deathlessness of the human soul, both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Greek Scriptures speak of the Hebrew soul nephesh and Greek psykhe as dying (Jg 16:30; Eze 18:4, 20; Re 16:3), needing deliverance from death (Jos 2:13; Ps 33:19; 56:13; 116:8; Jas 5:20), or as in the Messianic prophecy concerning Jesus Christ, being “poured out . . . to the very death” (Isa 53:12; compare Mt 26:38). The prophet Ezekiel condemns those who connived “to put to death the souls that ought not to die” and “to preserve alive the souls that ought not to live.”—Eze 13:19. The only reasonable conclusion we can come to is that Jesus did absolutely nothing for three days, because he was dead. The Bible's definition of what Hell is will also enable one to see this more clearly. Truthfinder |