HADES, HELL, PARADISE, AND HEAVEN

Is there life after death? If so, what happens to people after death? Where can we find reliable information about this subject? There are many answers to these questions being given today. Most of them are opinions spun out of thin air. Those who believe that the Bible is the word of God believe that it is the place where we can learn the truth about these matters. The Bible’s teaching on hades, hell, paradise, and Heaven is much more developed in the New Testament than in the Old, so in the following pages, we will study every occurrence of these and some related words in the New Testament except for the word “Heaven,” and draw in Old Testament passages when they help our understanding.

One of the problems of studying these words is that some versions of the Bible do not translate them properly. The Greek word for “hades” (actually the same in Greek, hades) is often translated “hell” in the King James Version, but that is not the meaning of the word. There is a different word entirely for hell. In the same manner, the King James sometimes mistranslates the Old Testament Hebrew word sheol as “hell,” but sheol does not mean “hell.” In our study, we will show the proper translations and meanings of the biblical words.

HADES

As noted above, the word hades comes directly from the Greek word hades. In Greek mythology, Hades was the god of the underworld, the place of the dead. Thus hades as a place is the place of the dead. But we learn in the New Testament that, while hades may mean simply death or the grave and that all will go there in that sense, it is also the prison of the unrighteous dead who are awaiting judgment, a place of torment while its inhabitants await the final judgment of Rev. 20.11-15. Without using the word “hades,” Peter writes that “the Lord knows … to keep the unrighteous, being punished, for a day of judgment, ” and Jude makes a similar statement in v. 6 of his epistle, which we will quote later. These facts will be seen as we study each passage that contains the relevant words. It is important that we keep in mind this dual meaning of the word hades, that is, simply death or the grave, which all undergo, or the prison of the lost dead. Both meanings will be seen in the passages to be studied.

Our first encounter with the word hades in the New Testament is in Matt. 11.23- 24, where the Lord Jesus says, “And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to Heaven?

You will descend to hades, for if the powerful works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”

Capernaum was a Jewish city of Galilee on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The name means “village of comfort.” The “Caper-” part actually means “covered,” the picture being that of buildings, which, of course, are covered with roofs. The “-naum” part is the same as the Old Testament name “Nahum,” comfort. Because the Jews were the people of God chosen to be such in the Old Testament, it was easy for them to assume that they were in the right relationship with God simply because they were Jews. This appears to be the case in Capernaum, according to the words of the Lord. In an ironic twist on the name of the city, the Lord as much as says that the city which takes comfort in the fact that it is Jewish and therefore will be lifted up to Heaven will in fact descend to hades. It had seen miracles that should have caused repentance from this spiritual pride. If Sodom had seen such miracles, it would have repented and would not have been destroyed. Because Sodom was not given the same basis for repentance that Capernaum was, it will go better for a city as proverbially wicked as Sodom on the day of judgment than it will for a supposedly righteous, because Jewish, city such as Capernaum.

What does the Lord mean by saying that Capernaum will descend to hades? We noted above that hades is the place of the unrighteous dead who are awaiting final judgment. The Lord says that those inhabitants of Capernaum who are not in a right relationship with God will descend to the prison of the lost dead even though they are Jews.

Matt. 16.18 gives us the next reference to hades, and it is one of the passages that have been seriously misinterpreted because mistranslated. The verse says, “And I say to you that you are Peter, and on this Rock I will build my church, and the gates of hades will not prevail against it.” The King James Version says “the gates of hell,” but the Greek does not say “hell,” but “hades.” The verse has nothing to do with hell. Hades is the place of the dead. It is death. The Lord is saying that the church will be the place of those who have been made alive with resurrection life in Christ, and thus have conquered death. Even though they die physically, death cannot hold them. They will come out of the grave alive forever. The picture is not one of assault on hell, but of the taking from death of the Lord’s people at the resurrection of the dead in Christ of 1 Thess. 4.13-18. One of the greatest aspects of the good news message is life, eternal life with the Lord. That is what he proclaims in this verse.

Luke 10.15 has the word hades, but it is a parallel verse with Matt. 11.23, so we will move on to Luke 16.23, which sheds more light on the proper understanding of hades. The verse occurs in the context of the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and reads, “And lifting up his eyes in hades, being in torment, he saw Abraham from afar and Lazarus on his breast.” In v. 24, the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to dip

his finger in water and cool his tongue, for he was in great pain in the flame. So we see in this verse that hades is a place of torment. The lost dead who are held there are conscious and aware of their circumstances. They are in a fire of judgment and feel the agony. Yet they are not consumed.

Acts 2.27 and 31 are very instructive, for they are quotations from the Old Testament, and thus they shine its light onto our subject. We will quote the entire passage, vs. 25-32:

²⁵For David says of him, “I saw the Lord before me always, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. ²⁶Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced, and further, my flesh will live in hope, ²⁷for you will not abandon my soul to hades, nor give your holy one to see corruption. ²⁸You made known to me the ways of life. You will fill me with joy with your face.” ²⁹Men, brothers, it is proper to say with boldness to you concerning the patriarch David that he came to an end and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. ³⁰Therefore being a prophet and knowing that God swore to him with an oath from the fruit of his loins to sit on his throne, ³¹seeing beforehand he spoke concerning the resurrection of Christ that he was not abandoned to hades nor did his flesh see corruption. ³²This Jesus God raised, of which we all are witnesses.

The quotation in vs. 25-28 is from Ps. 16.8-11. The word which the New Testament renders as “hades” in Acts 2.27 and 31 is the Hebrew word sheol in Ps. 16.10, and thus we learn that Old Testament sheol and New Testament hades are the same. This fact is confirmed by Is. 28.15 and 18, which speak of death and sheol as the same. In the Old Testament it was usually believed that all the dead went to sheol, which was really a place of almost nonexistence, a very shadowy existence at best. It could also be simply death or the grave. We have here an example of the further clarification of truth that the New Testament sometimes makes as compared with the Old Testament. Whereas most of the people of God in the Old Testament believed that all the dead went to sheol, hades, righteous and wicked alike, and had little if any concept of eternal life or Heaven, the New Testament makes it clear to us that, while all will go to hades in the sense of death and the grave, it is only the wicked dead who go to hades as the prison of the lost dead. There is another future for the people of God, which we will come to later.

Peter says plainly in Acts 2.31 that in Ps. 16, David was speaking of the resurrection when he said that the soul of Jesus would not be abandoned to hades, nor would his flesh see corruption, that is, the decay of the body in the grave. This clear statement underlines our contention above on Matt. 16.18 that hades is death, and that the church will prevail over it by, as with her Lord, not being abandoned to hades, in this case death and the grave, and not the prison of the lost dead, but would know

resurrection life. This passage is not saying that Jesus descended into hades or hell as the place of the dead, but that he died and went into the grave. It then says that death and the grave could not hold him, but he was resurrected.

All the rest of the uses of the word “hades” are found in Revelation. The first is in 1.18, and it again shows the victory of the Lord Jesus over death. We will quote vs. 17- 18: “And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead, and he put his right hand on me saying, ‘Don’t be afraid. I am the first and the last and the living one, and I was dead and look, I am living to the ages of the ages, and I have the keys of death and of hades.’” This is the great vision of the Lord that John records in the first chapter of Revelation. In it we see again, as we saw in Acts 2.27 and 31, that the Lord is alive from the dead. The grave could not hold him. Furthermore, he has the keys of death and of hades. That is, he is able to release his people from the grave and death by resurrection to eternal life.

In Rev. 6.8 we have an entirely different picture, the fourth horseman of the seven seals: “And I saw, and look, a pale green horse and the one sitting on him, and a name to him, death, and hades followed with him, and authority was given to him over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword and by famine and by death and by the beasts of the earth.” When the antichrist makes his ascent to power, there will be much war, with its accompaniments, famine and disease. Death will reign on every hand. As death makes its miserable march through the world, hades, death and the grave, will follow behind greedily gobbling up its victims.

We have already referred to Rev. 20.11-15, the description of the last judgment, that of the great white throne. Vs. 13-14 say, “And the sea gave the dead that were in it and death and hades gave the dead that were in them, and each one was judged according to his works. And death and hades were thrown into the lake of fire.” V. 13 shows us that hades has indeed been the prison of the lost dead awaiting final judgment, for that is just the scene before us, all the dead who are not in Christ (those dead in Christ were raised at the return of Christ before the millennium) called before the great white throne to be judged. And they are judged by their works. That is, just as there will be degrees of reward for the people of God according to their works, so there will be degrees of punishment for the lost according to their works.

V. 14 recalls 1 Cor. 15.26 and presents one of the great comforts of the Bible. No one goes through this life without suffering mourning for a loved one who has died. Everyone who is born into this world will face death himself, with the exceptions of Enoch, Elijah, and those alive at the end. Death is the final tragic end to every loving relationship, every happy home, every hope and dream in the hearts of people. But 1 Cor. 15.26 proclaims to us our great hope, “The last enemy is destroyed, death,” and Rev. 20.14 shows us the scene: “And death and hades were thrown into the lake of fire.” We will deal later with the lake of fire. The point for now is that death itself will die. Hades will cease to be. All sorrow will end as we are reunited with our loved ones for

an eternity of service together to our God who has redeemed us all and given us eternal life.

These are all the uses of the word “hades” in the New Testament. There are two other words that mean the same thing, though, as well as a few that possibly do, and we turn now to them.

In Luke 8.31, when the Lord Jesus was about to cast out the legion of demons from the Gerasene demoniac, we find that the demons “begged him that he might not command them to go away to the abyss,” and thus we have the first use of the word “abyss.” This word literally means “bottomless pit.” The abyss is not necessarily actually bottomless. It may be, but it may also be that it is so deep as to seem bottomless. The point is that there is no escape from it. Other passages will show us that the abyss is the same as hades, either death or the grave itself or the prison of the lost dead, and we will consider those in due time. For now, we begin to see here in Lk. 8.31 that hades or the abyss is also the prison of demons awaiting final judgment. To get a clear picture of this fact, we need to turn to another passage that uses another word for hades. It is 2 Peter 2.4.

The word used there is actually a verb, and it is its only occurrence in the New Testament. It is tartaroo (pronounced tar-tar-OH-oh) in Greek, meaning “to cast into tartarus.” The question is the identity of tartarus. Again, the versions take it as hell, but if we compare its context with the other Scriptures we are considering, we will see that tartarus is not hell, but hades. Since this verse is the only one in the New Testament that uses the word, we must approach it in that way of comparing it with other relevant passages.

We need to quote the verse along with v. 9, which completes the thought: “For if God did not spare angels when they had sinned, but casting them into tartarus kept them in chains of darkness, kept for judgment…, the Lord knows to deliver the godly from temptation, but to keep the unjust in punishment for a day of judgment.” When we take these two verses together, we see that tartarus is the same as hades, as we saw when considering the word “hades” that it is the prison of the lost dead awaiting final judgment. And now we learn that along with the lost dead there are also angels who had sinned kept in this prison, being punished, and awaiting judgment. Here in 2 Peter the word used is not hades or abyss, but tartarus. Jude 6 says the same thing: “… and angels who did not keep their own beginning but left their own dwelling he has kept in eternal chains under gloom for judgment of a great day….” We learn here also that hades is a place of darkness, of gloom.

We believe demons to be fallen angels. Some have been allowed to work under Satan’s rule on earth. Others have already been put into the prison of hades for whatever reasons. Now in Luke 8.31 we find just such a group of fallen angels, a legion of them, tormenting a man. When the Lord Jesus arrives on the scene, they know who he is and they know he is able to cast them into the abyss. They do not want to have to

go there, but to be allowed to remain free to continue their evil work on earth. They beg not to be cast into the abyss, knowing that there they would join the sinning angels of 2 Peter 2. They ask to be permitted instead to enter a herd of pigs. The Lord grants their request, but perhaps they take themselves to the abyss by an ironic twist to the story.

When the demons enter the pigs, the animals, crazed, rush down the hill and into the lake, where they drown. Without going into detail at this point, let us just note that in the Bible the sea is sometimes seen as the doorway to the abyss. The story of the deliverance of the demoniac may say that when the pigs rushed into the lake, they took their evil inhabitants to the doorway of the abyss, through which they were indeed cast into the abyss or hades or tartarus.

The word “abyss” is found next in Rom. 10.7, which further confirms what we have learned so far. This verse is a quotation from Dt. 30.12-13. We will quote the Old Testament passage first: “It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to the heavens for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’” In this passage, Moses is telling the Israelites that God’s Law is not too difficult for them that they would have to find a way to Heaven or go across the sea to be able to obey it, but it is in their mouths, that is, by the confession of faith in God they are able to obey him. Notice that in Deuteronomy, the word in v. 13 is “sea,” but when we read its quotation in Rom. 10.7, it is “abyss”: “Who will descend to the abyss, that is, to bring Christ up from among the dead?” Here again the New Testament interprets the Old. In Deuteronomy it is the sea. In Romans it is the abyss. We saw just now, in considering the legion of demons, that perhaps they took themselves to the abyss by driving the pigs with madness into the sea, the doorway of the abyss. Paul’s interpretation of Deuteronomy, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, shows us the truth of this understanding. The point for Paul in Rom. 10.7 is that righteousness and salvation are by faith. The point for us at present is the connection between the sea and the abyss, and further, that the abyss here is seen as death or the grave, the same as hades.

As with the word “hades,” so also with “abyss,” all the rest of its occurrences are in Revelation. The first is 9.1-2: “And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star from the sky having fallen to the earth, and the key of the shaft of the abyss was given to him and he opened the shaft of the abyss, and smoke went up from the shaft like smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened from the smoke of the shaft.” This passage pictures what happens during the Great Tribulation when the fifth trumpet is sounded. Hordes of demons in the form of locusts that look like war horses and have scorpion stings in their tails are released from their prison, the abyss, to inflict torment on those who are not the Lord’s. These are some of the fallen angels and imprisoned demons kept in this horrible prison, first, for this time of torment, and second, to wait for their own final judgment.

V. 11 of this chapter adds to our understanding. In it we learn that these demon locusts “have over them a king, the angel of the abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he has a name, Apollyon.” The exact identity of this king is matter for speculation. Some think that he is Satan himself. He might be the demon who is the reality behind the Greek mythological god Hades. Perhaps he is another being entirely. Whoever he may actually be, his name in Hebrew and Greek mean the same thing, destroyer. Hades, the abyss, is the place where people and angels are spiritually destroyed in spiritual death.

This verse is the only occurrence of Apollyon in the New Testament, but we find the word Abaddon in several places in the Old Testament. We will quote each of them. Job 26.5-6 reads,

The departed spirits tremble

Under the waters and their inhabitants.

Naked is Sheol before Him,

And Abaddon has no covering.

Job is speaking of the power and knowledge of God. His words first of all again confirm our belief that the sea is a gateway to hades, for he says that the departed spirits tremble under the waters. Then he equates sheol and Abaddon, using Abaddon as a place rather than as the angel of the abyss who rules the place. We have already seen that Ps. 16.10 and Acts 2.27 and 31 equate sheol and hades, so these verses in Job equate all three, sheol, Abaddon, and the abyss.

In Job 28.20-23 we read,

Where then does wisdom come from?

And where is the place of understanding?

Thus it is hidden from the eyes of all living

And concealed from the birds of the sky.

Abaddon and Death say,

“With our ears we have heard a report of it.”

God understands its way,

And He knows its place.

Abaddon, which is the abyss or its angel-ruler, is equated with death, again showing the truth of our findings thus far.

The final use in Job is in 31.9-12:

If my heart has been enticed by a woman,

Or I have lurked at my neighbor’s doorway,

May my wife grind for another,

And let others kneel down over her.

For that would be a lustful crime;

Moreover, it would be an iniquity punishable by judges.

For it would be fire that consumes to Abaddon,

And would uproot all my increase.

This passage shows that Abaddon is the place of punishment for the sin of adultery. We have already noted that hades is the place of punishment under imprisonment until final judgment.

There is one occurrence of the word in the Psalms, in 88.11 (we quote vs. 10-12):

Will You perform wonders for the dead?

Will the departed spirits rise and praise You? Selah.

Will Your lovingkindness be declared in the grave,

Your faithfulness in Abaddon?

Will Your wonders be made known in the darkness?

And Your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

The psalmist shows that Abaddon is the grave, death. In this verse we see it not as the prison of the lost dead, but simply as death itself, the end of all mankind, or the grave, as we have seen hades to be also.

Two verses in Proverbs use this word. The first is 15.11:

Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the LORD,

How much more the hearts of men!

The second is 27.20:

Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied,

Nor are the eyes of man ever satisfied.

Both of these verses equate sheol and Abaddon, but add nothing new to what we have already determined. The latter does show that death is never satisfied, but is always ready to claim more victims. Thanks be to God for his promise that the last enemy, death, will be destroyed.

We return now to Revelation. The same prophecy is made in 11.7 and 17.8, that the antichrist will rise from the abyss. Rev. 11.7 says, “And when they have completed their testimony, the beast who comes up from the abyss will make war with them and overcome them and kill them,” and 17.8, “The beast which you saw was and is not and

is about to come up from the abyss and go to destruction.” In Rev. 13.3, 12, 14, and 17.11 we are told that the antichrist, the beast, will be one who has died and returned to life. This is not a resurrection, which is being raised with a transformed, incorruptible body, but a return to life in a physical body such as we have now. In the verses quoted, 11.7 and 17.8, this return from death is seen as a return from the abyss, showing once again that the abyss and hades are one and the same, death, the grave, or the prison of the lost dead.

The last occurrences of the word “abyss” are in Rev. 20.1 and 3:

And I saw an angel coming down out of Heaven having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he seized the dragon, the old snake, who is the devil and Satan, and he bound him for a thousand years, and he threw him into the abyss and shut it and sealed it over him, that he might not deceive the Gentiles any more until the thousand years are finished. After these things he must be released for a little while.

These verses tell us that Satan will suffer the same punishment that he has inflicted on so many, on angels from his own fall and on people throughout human history. He will know the torments of imprisonment in the place of spiritual death, but, as with all whom he has sent there, this is not his end, but he will be there awaiting his final judgment.

There are three other verses that we should note. The first is Eph. 4.9, and we will quote its context, vs. 7-10:

But to each one if us grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led captivity captive; he gave gifts to men.” But, “He ascended:” what is it, if not that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth?

What is meant here by “the lower parts of the earth”? The quotation in this passage is from Ps. 68.18, where the original likens God to a king of Israel who has won a great victory in battle, then brought a host of captives through the streets of Jerusalem. In the psalm, it says, “you have ascended,” and so forth, rather than “he ascended,” saying that the king, and God, received gifts from men. When Paul quotes this Scripture, he puts it into the third person to say that Christ gave gifts to men after his resurrection and at his ascension to Heaven. It is not our purpose here to discuss the change in person in the quotation, but to investigate the lower parts of the earth.

There are three possibilities: (1) hades, either as simply death or as the prison of the lost dead, (2) the grave, as being in the earth, and (3) the earth itself, meaning that Christ descended to earth in the incarnation and then returned to Heaven in his

ascension. Let us first say that since this is the only occurrence of this phrase in the Bible and there is nothing said in this particular verse to elucidate it, we cannot be certain as to the meaning. It seems that the best choice is hades in the simple sense of death, agreeing with our interpretation of Acts 2.27 and 31, that the soul of Christ was not left in death, nor his body in the grave to decay, but he was resurrected. Some believe that this passage means that Christ descended into hades as the abode of the dead or into hell, took captives away from Satan, and led them to Heaven. There is nothing in this passage conclusive one way or the other, but, as we will see momentarily on 1 Peter 3.19, we do not believe that Christ descended into hades as the prison of the dead at his own death, but that his descent into hades (Acts 2.27 and 31, Rom. 10.17) was simply his death. Also, there is no one in hell at present, as we will see when we deal with hell, so the Lord would not have descended there to release captives. Furthermore, there is no escape from hell. It is final.

The next verse is Phil. 2.10, with v. 11 also quoted: “… that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of beings heavenly and beings earthly and beings subterranean, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” What are “beings subterranean,” that is, under the earth? In all likelihood they are the inhabitants of hades as the prison of the lost dead, for hades is seen as being under the earth, just as Heaven is above it. In the end, everyone will acknowledge the lordship of Christ, not just the saved, but also those who have rejected him. They, too, will have to admit that he is who the Bible says he is.

The final passage we should refer to was noted just above, 1 Peter 3.19. This portion of Scripture is rather difficult to interpret, so we need to quote its context, vs. 18b-20, and then attempt to understand it without going to too great a length:

… having been put to death in flesh but made alive in Spirit, in whom also having gone he preached to the spirits in prison who were once disobedient when the patience of God waited in the days of Noah while an ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight, souls were saved through water.

The reason for the difficulty of the passage is that it raises the question as to whether or not Christ descended into hades and preached between his death and resurrection. This doctrine is held by some, but it is rather obscure in the Scriptures, and the reason for such preaching is difficult to discern. If Christ did descend into hades and preach to the dead in order to give them an opportunity to repent and gain salvation, then we are involved in the difficulty of believing in a second chance after death, a doctrine against all other Scripture, which plainly teaches that now is the day of salvation and that death is the end of opportunity for it, that if one dies without Christ he is eternally lost without hope of salvation. If Christ descended into hades simply to announce his victory over Satan, sin, and death, it seems to involve him in gloating over

those who have rejected him, behavior hardly worthy of our Lord. So it is hard to see how Christ could have descended into hades during the three days of his physical death, yet the passage seems at first glance to say that he did. How are we to solve this problem?

The first question we have to answer is that of how to translate the word “spirit” in v. 18. If we take it to refer to the human spirit of Jesus, we are immediately involved in the problem of saying that the spirit of Jesus died, for there is no doubt that the verb is “made alive.” The spirit of Jesus would have had to have died in order to be made alive. Also, Eccl. 12.7 says that when a person dies his spirit will return to God who gave it, and Lk. 23.46 says that when he died, the Lord Jesus said to his Father, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” his human spirit. (See also Ps. 31.5, Acts 7.59.) It seems to me impossible that the spirit of the Lord Jesus could have descended into hades. The other option is to take it as a reference to the Holy Spirit, as we have done in the translation above. If we are correct in this conclusion, then the statement has to do with the resurrection of Jesus. He was put to death in flesh, the crucifixion, and made alive in, or by, Spirit, the resurrection.

Peter then goes on to say, “in whom … he preached.” That is, he preached to the spirits in prison in the Holy Spirit. If it is true that he preached, not in his human spirit, but in the Holy Spirit who raised him from the dead, then the passage does not deal at all with the time between the death and resurrection of Jesus. He preached in the Spirit who raised him from the dead. When did he do such preaching?

The preaching was done in the days of Noah, and through Noah. Peter himself, in 1 Peter 1.10-11 writes of the Spirit of Christ within the prophets. Noah was a righteous man through whom the Spirit of Christ preached to the people living in his day, warning them of the coming judgment by means of flood (2 Peter 2.5) and calling on them to repent. They did not repent, so they were swept away in the flood. They died physically, but their spirits, because they were disobedient, were imprisoned, where they are held to this day awaiting the final judgment, which would indicate that the spirits of the lost dead do not return to God, and indeed this passage says that these spirits are in prison. My sense of I Peter 3.19-20, then, is that the spirits who are now imprisoned are the spirits of human beings who lived in the day of Noah and that they are imprisoned because they disobeyed when Christ preached to them in the Spirit through Noah while they were still alive.

Further evidence that Christ did not descend into hades is found in the good news according to Luke. We saw that Lk. 23.46 says that the Lord Jesus said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” In 23.43, Jesus tells the repentant thief, “Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” It is clear from 2 Cor. 12.2-4 and Rev. 2.7 (compare Rev. 22.2), as we will see later, that paradise is Heaven, or at least in Heaven. Just as the unsaved dead go to hades to await judgment, the saved dead go to be with the Lord while they await the resurrection of their bodies and the full realization of the

blessedness of the saved that will come when Christ receives his kingdom and returns for his bride. Jesus was the only man who ever lived who gained Heaven on his merits as sinless and perfectly obedient to God. When he died, his body went to the grave, but he went to be with the Father, not to hades, the prison of the unsaved dead.

HELL

If the dead who are lost are in hades, then what about hell? The fact is that there is no one in hell at this time, as will be seen as we study the passages on hell and compare them with those on hades, but let us look first at the Greek word for hell and the origin of its use for this purpose. The Greek word is geenna, rendered in English as “gehenna.” On the southwest side of Jerusalem is a valley called Ge Hinnom (Valley of Hinnom) in Hebrew (Josh. 18.16). The word “Hinnom” is of unknown derivation. We are told in 2 Chron. 28.3 and 33.6 and in Jer. 7.31 and 32.35 that some of the Jews sacrificed their children by fire to the god Molech in this valley, and in 2 Kings 23.10, that King Josiah therefore defiled it so that it could no longer be used for this purpose. Thereafter it was used as the place for burning trash and garbage, and even the bodies of criminals were placed there. Since it was then a continual fire, it came to be symbolic of the place of punishment of the wicked after this life.

It is quite interesting that this word is used only a few times in the New Testament, and all of them, with one exception, are in Matthew, with two parallels, one in Mark and one in Luke. The first use is in Matt. 5.22, where the Lord says, “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and he who says to his brother, ‘Empty,’ will be liable to the Sanhedrin, and he who says, ‘Fool,’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” What we learn from this statement is that hell is a place of fire, like the Valley of Hinnom from which it derives its name, and symbolizing judgment.

The next occurrence is also in Matt. 5, in vs. 29-30: “But if your right eye causes you to stumble, pull it out and cast it from you, for it is better for you that one of your members be destroyed and your whole body not be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and cast it from you, for it is better for you that one of your members be destroyed and your whole body not go away into hell.” It appears from this verse that there will be some sort of bodily existence in hell. Those there will not have resurrection, spiritual bodies, as will those who are in Christ, but it seems that they will know bodily torment. Remember the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man in hades wanted his tongue cooled because he was in pain in the flame.

In Matt. 10.28 (paralleled in Luke 12.5) the Lord says, “And don’t fear those who kill the body, but who are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear the one who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Man can kill the body, but only God has power

over the person himself, the inner person, to condemn him to the spiritual destruction (not nonexistence) of hell. So we see that hell is just such a place of spiritual death. Matt. 18.9 is much like Matt. 5.29-30: “And if your eye causes you to stumble, pull it out and cast it from you. It is good for you to enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into the hell of fire.” The parallel in Mark 9.43 reads, “And if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is good for you to enter into life crippled rather than having two hands to go away into hell, into the unquenchable fire.” Mark adds that the fire of hell cannot be put out.

In his denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees in Matt. 23, the Lord says in v. 15, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you go around the sea and the dry land to make one proselyte, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.” Religion can lead to hell. In v. 33 of this same chapter, the Lord asks the scribes and Pharisees, “Snakes, brood of vipers, how will you escape from the judgment of hell?” Hell is a place of judgment.

The lone use of this word outside the gospels is in James 3.6: “And the tongue is a fire. The world of unrighteousness, the tongue is set among our members, which pollutes the whole body and sets on fire the cycle of existence and is set on fire by hell.” The language here is obviously symbolic. The tongue can do so much damage, that is, a person can do so much damage by what he says, that it is as though the tongue were itself a fire that consumes all around it, making the whole person unclean, even though the other members do no evil, and even setting ablaze the whole cycle of existence, everything around it from birth to death and beyond. So damaging can a word be that it seems as though the tongue were set on fire by the fire of hell itself. Such a symbolic statement does not reveal anything further to us about hell, but it does say a great deal about how we ought to speak.

These are all the occurrences of this word in the New Testament. We learn only that hell is fiery with unquenchable fire, that it is a place of some sort of bodily existence so that the fire will be felt, that the death there is spiritual, that religion can lead there, and that it is a place of judgment. Is there anything else we can learn about hell?

Matt. 18.8 and 25.41 say that hell is eternal, though neither verse uses the word gehenna. They are without doubt, though, references to hell. We have already quoted Matt. 18.9, “the hell of fire,” and v. 8 deals with the same subject with a different name: “But if your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and cast it from you. It is good for you to enter into life crippled or lame than having two hands and two feet to be cast into the eternal fire.” Then v. 9 adds the phrase “the hell of fire.” Matt. 25.41 adds another fact to our knowledge of hell: “Then he will say also to those on the left, ‘Go from me, cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” This eternal fire was never meant for human beings, but was prepared for the devil and the angels who followed him in his rebellion against God, but those humans who

choose to go the way of evil will suffer the same final judgment as the ones for whom hell was prepared.

Jude 7 also says that hell is eternal: “… as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, in the same way as these living immorally and going after other flesh, are set forth as an example, undergoing punishment of eternal fire.”

In Rev. 14.9-11 we read,

And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a great voice, ‘If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the fury of God which is mixed full strength in the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented in fire and brimstone before holy angels and before the little Lamb. And the smoke of their torment will go up to the ages of the ages, and those worshipping the beast and his image, and if anyone takes the mark of his name, will not have rest day and night.’

Hell here is seen as a place in which brimstone, burning sulfur, is added to the fire of torment. Eternity is again noted, with the added fact that those in hell will never know rest.

A chilling phrase that gives us a bit more knowledge of hell is used in 2 Peter 2.17: “These are waterless springs and mists driven by storms, for whom the gloom of darkness is kept.” Jude 13 confirms this fact: “… wandering stars for whom the gloom of darkness into the age is kept.” Not only is there the suffering of fire. There is eternal gloom, eternal darkness.

The absolute justness of such a final judgment by God is seen in 2 Thess. 1.6-9:

For it is just for God to repay those afflicting you with affliction, and you who are afflicted, with relief with us at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from Heaven with angels of his power in fire of flame, giving retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the good news of our Lord Jesus, who will undergo eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his strength.

No one in hell will be able to say that he is there unfairly or unjustly. All there will be receiving retribution, repayment for what they have been and done. We learn additionally that this punishment is eternal destruction away from the presence of God. Many wonder how God could allow evil in the world if he is really loving and almighty, and they refuse to believe in him because of this. The true question is as to how there can be any good in the world, given the fact of the great sinfulness of men. God could justly withdraw himself and let evil reign supreme. As it is, there is some

good in the world and it goes on because of his mercy. There will be a day, and a place, hell, where God will not be. Then those who question the goodness of God will know how good it would be to be in even this evil world with God present. Where there is no God, there is no good. We cannot comprehend such a situation. God indeed have mercy on us!

There is one final phrase we need to consider in regard to hell. It is found only in Revelation, but it is found there five times in chapters 19 and 20. The phrase is “the lake of fire,” or a form of it. We see it first in 19.20: “And he seized the beast and with him the false prophet who did the signs before him with which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and who worshipped his image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with brimstone.” We saw in Matt. 25.41 that the eternal fire was prepared for the devil and his angels. Now we see this fire as a lake of fire that burns with fire and brimstone.

In 20.10, Satan joins his false christ and false prophet in the lake of fire: “And the devil who deceives them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are also, and they will be tormented day and night into the ages of the ages.” The punishment of Satan, the antichrist, and the false prophet are also eternal.

We have already seen 20.14 in our consideration of hades: “And death and hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.” We are told here that there is a second death, and hell is that second death. Henry Alford, in his great commentary on the Greek New Testament, has a statement about the second death that cannot be improved on: “As there is a second and higher life, so there is also a second and deeper death. And as after that life there is no more death (21.4), so after that death there is no more life, ver. 10; Matt. 25.41.” This does not mean that those in hell cease to exist. It means that they have no spiritual life. They are in final spiritual death that cannot be reversed, even eternally. Wonderful is the promise of the Lord to the overcomers in Rev. 2.11: “The one who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.”

The next verse, 20.15, does not tell us anything new about hell, but it does raise a serious question. “And if anyone was not found written in the scroll of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” This judgment is the great white throne judgment after the millennium. The people of God will be resurrected before the millennium. Does this mean that some Christians will not be resurrected until after the millennium? There are some who believe that to be the case. In order to answer this question, we need to go back to another verse we have already dealt with and bring out another truth that we have not yet emphasized. Before we do that, however, let us look at the last use of “the lake of fire,” in Rev. 21.8: “But for the cowardly and the unfaithful and the detestable and murderers and the immoral and sorcerers and worshippers of idols and all liars, their part is in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

There will be many who once were “detestable and murderers and the immoral and sorcerers and worshippers of idols and all liars” in Heaven, but those there will have been forgiven and thus will be new creatures in Christ. None of these who will be in hell will be able to say that they should not be there. There will be those just like them in Heaven, except for the blood of Christ. That blood is available to save all who will be in “the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” May the Lord be gracious to use even these poor words to lead some from darkness to light, from death to life, from the brink of hell to Heaven.

Let us return now to our question from Rev. 20.15: Will there be some Christians who will not be resurrected until after the millennium? The first sentence of this chapter on hell begins with the words, If the dead who are lost are in hades, then what about hell? The final truth we want to see about hell is that there is no one there at present. Thus far, no one has gone to hell. The lost dead are in hades. It is obvious that the saved dead would not be in hell. The first people who will be thrown into hell are the antichrist and the false prophet, as seen in Rev. 19.20. There is no Old Testament word for “hell.” Its word sheol we have seen to be the same as hades. That is where the lost dead went in the Old Testament. All those identified in the New Testament, people and angels, as having gone to the place of the lost dead are seen to be in hades (Luke 8.31, 16.23, 1 Peter 3.19, 2 Peter 2.4, Jude 6, Rev. 9.1-2, 11, 11.7, 17.8). Rev. 19.20 is the second place in the New Testament where we see some thrown into the lake of fire, which is hell, but it deals with the first two to be there, the antichrist and the false prophet.

Matt. 25.41 is the first place where we see some thrown into the lake of fire, but chronologically these are sent there after the antichrist and the false prophet. Matt. 24 is that gospel’s chapter on last things. There the Lord Jesus reveals some of the order of events at the end. There will be the abomination of desolation (the antichrist setting himself up in the Temple as God), the Great Tribulation, the disturbance of the sun, moon, and stars, and the coming of the Son of Man to gather his chosen ones (the resurrection of the dead in Christ and the rapture of Christians alive at that time, 1 Thess. 4.13-18). After this event will come the battle of Armageddon, with its destruction of the armies of the antichrist, at which time the antichrist and the false prophet will be thrown into the lake of fire. Then the Lord will descend to the earth at the Mount of Olives (Zech. 14.4). At some point soon after this descent, there will be the judgment of Matt. 25.31-46.

This passage in Matthew is usually misunderstood. Its right understanding depends on the translation of one word in v. 32. Most versions say that the Lord will gather the nations and separate them, sheep from goats. The sheep will be saved and the goats will be lost. “Nations,” however, is not the correct translation. The Lord will not judge nations at that point. Nations are not thrown whole into the lake of fire. Each member of every nation will be judged individually. Nations may be judged for destruction in this age, just as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome were, but not

for judgment in hell. Individuals are judged in hell. Each person stands or falls for himself or herself. The right translation for the word here is “Gentiles.” At his return to earth, the Lord will judge the Gentiles. Who are the Gentiles?

Men are forever dividing people into two groups. Some wag once said that there are two kinds of people, those who divide people into two groups and those who do not! The New Testament divides people into three groups, Jews, Christians, and Gentiles (1 Cor. 10.32). The Jews are the Old Testament people of God. Christians are those who have received Christ during this life. The Gentiles are all the rest. We are usually taught that all who are not Christians will be lost and will go to hell. This passage in Matt. 25, though, says that some Gentiles will be saved and others lost. In Rom. 2.14-16 we read that people who do not know the Law (the Gentiles of Matt. 25.32) will be judged by whether or not they have the Law written in their hearts, as seen by their deeds. Some will have their consciences accused and others, defended, by this measure. That is, some will be saved, the sheep, and others will be lost, the goats. Jews faithful to God in their ignorance will be saved. True Christians will be saved. Gentiles who have the Law written on their hearts will be saved. All others will be lost.

The Gentiles who are judged in Matt. 25.31-46 are those Gentiles who are alive at the return of the Lord. The sheep, saved, are sent into the kingdom of God. The goats, lost, are told, “Go from me, cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” This is the second group cast into hell. And this passage tells us the answer to our question from Rev. 20.15 as to whether or not some Christians will not be resurrected until after the millennium. The answer is no. Those whose names are found written in the scroll of life in Rev. 20.15 are Gentiles who will be raised from the dead at that time, after the millennium, at the great white throne. Only the dead in Christ are raised before the millennium. The dead outside of Christ will not be raised till after the millennium. These will all be Gentiles, neither Jew nor Christian. They will be judged in the same way as the Gentiles alive at the Lord’s return, by whether or not they have the Law written in their hearts, as revealed by their deeds. Those who do will be saved: their names will be in the scroll of life. Those who do not will be lost and will be thrown into the lake of fire. The devil will be thrown into the lake of fire by himself in Rev. 20.10. He is the third “group” so dealt with. These Gentiles who are judged after the millennium are the fourth and last group to be thrown into the lake of fire.

A very important point needs to be made from these findings about hell. We often hear hell referred to as though it were Satan’s headquarters or a kingdom over which he rules. Along with this, we see cartoons depicting the devil tormenting the lost in hell. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hell is not Satan’s headquarters or kingdom. It is his doom, his eternal judgment. He does not rule over it. He dreads it. It was prepared for him and his angels (Matt. 25.41), and there he will spend eternity in torment.

To sum up, the lost dead go to hades at death. There is no one in hell presently, but its first inhabitants will be the antichrist and the false prophet at the return of Christ. The next group will be the goat Gentiles of Matt. 25.31-46. Then Satan will be cast into the lake of fire after his final rebellion after the millennium. Finally, the lost Gentiles who are raised for judgment after the millennium at the great white throne will be thrown into hell.

What about Christians?

PARADISE

The word “paradise” occurs only three times in the New Testament, but those three uses tell us much. Before looking at them, let us consider the origin of the word. It is of Persian origin, and in that language meant a park or garden. Thus it came to be associated with a place of pleasure.

The word does not occur in the Hebrew Old Testament (its original language), but the Greek translation of the Old Testament (called the Septuagint and abbreviated LXX for the seventy scholars who supposedly made the translation) made for Greek speaking Jews late in the era before Christ uses it several times, more than the New Testament does, to translate Hebrew phrases referring to the garden of Eden. For the Hebrew “garden of Eden” in Gen. 2.15 and 3.23, the LXX has “paradise of pleasure.” Gen. 13.10 says “garden of YHWH” (the Old Testament Hebrew name of God – I AM of Ex. 3.14) in Hebrew, “paradise of pleasure” in Greek. Is. 51.3 reads “Eden … garden of YHWH” in Hebrew, “paradise … paradise of the Lord” in Greek. In Ezek. 28.13 we find “Eden, garden of God” in Hebrew and “pleasure of the paradise of God” in Greek. Ezek. 31.8 has “garden of God” in Hebrew and “paradise of God” in Greek, and 31.9 has “Eden, garden of God” in Hebrew and “paradise of the pleasure of God” in Greek. Ezek. 36.35 has “garden of Eden” in Hebrew and “garden of pleasure” in Greek. Finally, Joel 2.3 reads “garden of Eden” in Hebrew and “garden of pleasure” in Greek. This verse and Ezek. 36.35 do not use the word “paradise,” but show the equation of the garden of Eden with a garden of pleasure. It is obviously quite clear from these Old Testament uses that the Jews of the Old Testament times understood the garden of Eden to be a garden of pleasure and called it “paradise.”

The first occurrence of the word in the New Testament is in Luke 23.43, where the Lord Jesus said to the thief on the cross: “Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in the paradise.” The first fact that we learn from this statement is that at his death, the Lord entered paradise. We said above that we do not believe, as many do, that the Lord entered hades as the place of the lost dead when he died. He did enter hades understood as death or the grave, but his spirit entered paradise. The second fact that we learn is that another person went there also, the thief crucified with the Lord.

We next encounter this word in 2 Cor. 12.4. We begin our quotation with v. 3: “And I know such a man, whether in body or without the body I do not know, God knows, that he was caught up into the paradise and heard inexpressible words which it is not permitted to a man to speak.” This statement occurs in Paul’s description of his visions and revelations of the Lord. He had already said in v. 2 that he was caught up to the third Heaven. It is not certain whether the third Heaven and paradise are the same or different, but it does seem that both refer to levels of God’s Heaven or spiritual world above, or perhaps we should say beyond, the earth. They would not be opposites, but either the same or of the same sort. This catching up was a spiritual experience in which Paul consciously entered a spiritual dimension beyond the material world. Whether he went there in the body or left the body he could not say. He was aware only of the spiritual. Thus we have a hint that paradise has something to do with Heaven, or at least with the spiritual world.

The word “caught up” is the same as the word used for the catching up of the Lord’s people, those resurrected and those alive at his coming, in 1 Thess. 4.17, and for the catching up of the overcomers in Rev. 12.5 to God and to his throne. This catching up of the Lord’s people, whether to himself in the air or to the throne of God in Heaven, adds to our impression that paradise is in Heaven.

Paul’s hearing of “inexpressible words which it is not permitted to a man to speak” indicates the spiritual nature of his experience, and he had already said that he was describing visions and revelations of the Lord.

The final use of the word “paradise” in the New Testament,” when compared with another verse, makes it certain that paradise is either in Heaven or is Heaven. In Rev. 2.7 we read in the letter to the church in Ephesus, “To the one who overcomes I will give to him to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” All we learn from this verse about paradise is that it contains the tree of life, and that those who overcome will be there, but Rev. 22.2 says that in the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of Heaven from God (Rev. 21.2 and 10) is the tree of life, telling us plainly, when compared with Rev. 2.7, that paradise is in Heaven or is Heaven. The tree of life is in paradise. It is in the heavenly city. Thus paradise is in Heaven or is Heaven.

When we join this fact with the statement of the Lord in Luke 23.43 that the thief would be with him in paradise, we have a truth of great comfort to the Lord’s people. We all wonder where our loved ones who have departed are, and we wonder where we will go when we die. Some believe that when a person dies, he is just dead, either no longer existing (a materialist) or no longer alive but waiting to be raised from the dead (a believer in the supernatural). There is certainly no basis for the materialist belief in the Bible. Statements in the Bible about being in the grave and awaiting resurrection could be construed as teaching the latter view, belief in the supernatural, but that is only a deduction from such statements and not something the Bible plainly says.

Others believe that paradise is a division of hades, and that just as the lost dead are in the prison of hades awaiting final judgment and hell, so the dead in the Lord are in the paradise section of hades awaiting resurrection and Heaven (Lazarus on the chest of Abraham). There is no warrant for this belief in Scripture. What verse says it?

Others believe that when a person dies in the Lord, he goes to Heaven. It seems clear from Luke 23.43 and Rev. 2.7 and 22.2 that this belief is correct. We can be comforted with the knowledge that our loved ones who have died in the Lord are with the Lord now in Heaven, and that that is also our destiny. We hasten to make it clear, though, that this presence with the Lord is in spirit, that the body is dead, and that this state is not the Lord’s best for us. He made us as spirit, soul, and body, and it is his intention that we be in the body eternally. Paul tells us in Rom. 8.19-23 that we will not be complete as individuals, nor will the material universe be what it was made by God to be, until the resurrection of the body and the redemption of the universe. Being with the Lord in spirit in Heaven is a blessed state, but it is not the Lord’s final plan for us. The body will rise from the grave, be reunited with the spirit, and be transformed into a glorious spiritual body like our Lord’s (1 Cor. 15.44, 51-52, Phil. 3.21), never again to suffer pain, disability, disease, death, decay.

So we learn from these three verses of Scripture along with Rev. 22.2 the experience after death of those who die in the Lord: they will be with him in paradise, in Heaven. This view is confirmed by two other verses that do not use the word “paradise.” The first is 2 Cor. 5.8, where Paul says that to be absent from the body (that is, physically dead) is to be at home with the Lord, and the second is Phil. 1.23, where he says that to depart (that is, die) and be with Christ is far better than to live physically and remain here. When one of the Lord’s leaves this life through death, he is with the Lord in Heaven. “Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

HEAVEN

As we come to a consideration of Heaven, let us say at the beginning that the same word is used in both Hebrew and Greek for Heaven and the sky, and it is not always possible to determine which is being referred to. The Hebrew word is used many times in the Old Testament and always in the plural, Heavens or skies. So also is the Greek word used many times in the New Testament, but sometimes singular and sometimes plural. There is also the word “heavenly” that will appear as we proceed. There is not a developed idea of the afterlife in the Old Testament, so we will confine ourselves to the New Testament in this study, and, even though we studied every New Testament occurrence of the words for hades, hell, and paradise, we will not study every use of the word for Heaven, for that would take up much space and many of the uses would not add to our understanding. In this place we will refer to certain passages chosen for what they reveal to us about Heaven. We will provide a list at the end of this

work of every verse in the Old and New Testaments in which the Hebrew and Greek words occur so that the reader may pursue further study on his own if he should desire to do so.

We will consider Heaven in two aspects, first, Heaven itself, and then, Heaven as it relates to us. The first fact that we see about Heaven is that it is the special dwelling place of God. God is everywhere, but his home, so to speak, is Heaven. Matt. 10.32-33 reads, “Therefore everyone, whoever, confesses me before men, I also will confess him before my Father who is in the Heavens. But whoever denies me before men, I also will deny him before my Father who is in the Heavens.” Heaven, the Heavens, is where God is. It is seen as a definite place. We read in Acts 7.48-49, “But the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands; as the prophet says, ‘Heaven is my throne, but the earth, my footstool.’” This is one of those difficult verses in which “Heaven” could be seen as the sky, the picture being of God sitting on a throne in the sky with his feet on earth, or as Heaven itself. I take it that Heaven is meant.

Paul writes in 2 Tim. 4.18, “The Lord will deliver me from every evil work and will save me into his heavenly kingdom, to whom be the glory into the ages of the ages. Amen.” There is a place where God rules that is not seen by the eyes of men. We believe, of course, that his rule even now extends over all, though in unseen sovereignty, and that one day that rule will be openly shown.

In the Lord’s prayer, recorded in Matt. 6, the Lord told his disciples to pray, in vs. 9-10, “Our Father who is in Heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, as in Heaven, also on earth.” First, God is in Heaven as distinct from the earth, and second, there is a place where the will of God is done as it is not presently done on this rebellious earth. Heaven is again seen as a distinct place.

We could multiply examples, but these suffice to show our point that Heaven is the dwelling-place of God as opposed to the material universe.

The Bible also tells us that the Lord Jesus is in Heaven. Heb. 8.1 reads, “ … we have such a High Priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the Heavens….” After his sacrificial death, his burial, and his resurrection, the Lord ascended bodily into Heaven and took his place there on the throne with the Father. He is in Heaven today as a man, in the body, the resurrected, glorified body. Not only is Heaven a definite place, a spiritual place, but it is also a place in which a material body can dwell by being transformed into a spiritual body. We do not understand this fact, for the spiritual is by definition immaterial, and the material is by definition not spiritual, but the Scriptures assure us that there is a man dwelling in a body in Heaven, a fact of great importance for us, as we will see when we come to consider Heaven as it relates to us.

Just before the first Christian martyr, Stephen, was about to be taken out to be stoned, he, being full of the Holy Spirit, “looking straight into Heaven saw the glory of

God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and he said, ‘Look, I see the Heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’” (Acts 7.55-56). Peter adds to the testimony in his first epistle, 3.22, where he writes of Jesus Christ, “who is at the right hand of God, having gone into Heaven after angels and authorities and powers were subjected to him.”

There are angels in Heaven. Matt. 18.10 says, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in the Heavens always look at the face of my Father who is in the Heavens.” Heaven is seen as a place not only where the Father and the Son are, but other beings are there as well, the angels.

These angels are seen as appearing on earth to the shepherds in the story of the birth of the Lord Jesus in Luke 2.13: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God….” These angels appear on earth, but they are heavenly.

The Old Testament teaches in Is. 14 and Ezek. 28 that Satan was originally an angel of God, perhaps the chief angel, but that he fell through pride. The Lord Jesus said in Luke 10.18, “I saw Satan as lightning falling from Heaven.” Again, Heaven is a definite place from which it is, or we should now say was, possible to fall.

Heaven is a place of great joy: “I say to you that thus there will be joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents more than over ninety-nine righteous ones who have no need of repentance.” In the same vein, Heaven is a place of unending worship and praise toward God. The fourth chapter of Revelation perhaps best expresses this fact, so well, in fact, that we quote it in full without comment. It cannot be improved on:

After these things I saw, and behold a door having been opened in Heaven, and the former voice which I heard as a trumpet speaking with me saying, “Come up here, and I will show you the things which must take place after these things.” Immediately I was in Spirit. And behold a throne stood in Heaven, and on the throne one sitting; and the one sitting was like in appearance to a jasper stone and a sardius, and a rainbow was around the throne like in appearance to an emerald; and around the throne twenty-four thrones, and on the thrones, twenty four elders sitting, clothed in white garments, and on their heads golden crowns; and from the throne went out lightnings and voices and thunders; and seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God, and before the throne something like a sea of glass like crystal; and in the midst of the throne and around the throne four living beings full of eyes in front and behind. And the first living being was like a lion, and the second living being, like a calf, and the third living being, having the face like a man’s, and the fourth living being, like an eagle flying, and the four living beings, each of them having six wings, around and within full of eyes. And they do not have rest day and night saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty, who was and who is and who

comes.” And when the four living beings give glory and honor and thanks to the one sitting on the throne who lives to the ages of the ages, the twenty-four elders fall before the one sitting on the throne and worship the one living to the ages of the ages, and they cast their crowns before the throne saying, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, for you created all things, and because of your will they were and were created.”

We turn now to Heaven as it relates to us. First we see that if we are the Lord’s, our names are recorded there. We saw in Luke 10.18 that the Lord told the disciples that he had seen Satan falling from Heaven. Then he told them in v. 19 that they had authority from him over the spirits of evil and anything they might use to harm them. But he spoke his most important word in v. 20: “Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in the Heavens.” That is another one of those great comforting thoughts of the Scriptures. No matter what may happen to us on this earth, our names are written in the Heavens. There is a record there, in that eternal place that is not subject to harm, that we are the Lord’s.

Closely allied with this fact is the truth that our commonwealth is in Heaven. Paul writes in Phil. 3.20-21, “For our commonwealth is in the Heavens, from which also we await a Savior, Lord Jesus Christ, who will change the body of our lowliness, conforming to the body of his glory, according to the working by which he is able also to subject all things to himself.” Adding to the thought in the preceding paragraph, we might say that since our names are recorded in Heaven, the place of our commonwealth, it does not matter that we are in this world where Satan rules (John 12.31). No matter what he may do to us, we are under the protection of the Lord of Heaven and of all, and even if Satan is able to bring about our death, it will not harm us, but only repatriate us. Our birth is from above (John 3.3 and 7), our life here is governed from above (Dan. 4.26), our work here is as ambassadors of Heaven (2 Cor. 5.20), and our final home is Heaven, as we will see.

Heaven is a place to which we can send treasure now so as to be prepared to live there when we arrive. The Lord says in Matt. 6.20, “But store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust ruins and where thieves do not break through nor steal.” The bank of Heaven is impregnable. Along the same lines, Heaven is a place of reward. The same Lord said in Matt. 5.12, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is much in the Heavens….” We can send treasure ahead, and the Lord will add his reward to it if we are faithful to him in difficulty (kind of like a heavenly 401k!). There is much that is greatly to be desired that awaits us.

We noted above that the fact that there is now a man in Heaven in the body in the person of the Lord Jesus is of great importance for us. We have just quoted Phil. 3.20-21, that the Lord “will change the body of our lowliness, conforming to the body of his glory,” and 1 Cor. 15.35-58 says that we will have bodies transformed so as to be

suitable for dwelling in Heaven. Just as we now have physical bodies capable of living on the material earth because of their ability to breathe air and so forth, so will we have bodies adapted for our new environment. Vs. 42-44 of 1 Cor. 15 say that the body goes from being corruptible to incorruptible, from dishonor to glory, from weakness to power, from being soulish (that is, having only physical life as a body, not to the exclusion of the spiritual life of those who are born again), to being spiritual. We saw above in noting that the Lord Jesus now dwells in Heaven as a man in the body, that it is possible for a human being in the body to dwell in Heaven, a spiritual world, because of the transformation of the body. That same transformation will happen to us, “in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye” (1 Cor. 15.52) and we will be suited for Heaven. To restate our words from above when dealing with paradise, our bodies will be transformed into a glorious spiritual body like our Lord’s, never again to suffer pain, disability, disease, death, decay.

Just so, Heaven is our eternal dwelling place. Paul says in 2 Cor. 5.1, “For we know that if our earthly house of the tent be destroyed, we have a dwelling from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens.” The “earthly house of the tent” is the body. We will have a new heavenly dwelling. Peter adds that we have “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, kept in the Heavens for you.” The inheritance in the Old Testament was a plot of land guaranteed to its owner in perpetuity. Our plot of land is in Heaven (actually a share in Christ), and, unlike that of the Old Testament Jews, it cannot be taken from us by force or any other means. It is indeed eternal.

It is of interest that as many times as the word “Heaven” is used in the Bible, there are only scattered bits of information about it, with only one passage that is all about Heaven. That passage is Rev. 21.1-22.5. Because it is such a passage, dealing only with Heaven, we will quote each verse and make comments as we go, much in the manner of a commentary or exposition. Since we will be dealing with a lengthy passage and commenting on each verse, we will quote each verse first and put it in bold type. This is the Bible’s great picture of Heaven, our eternal home.

¹And I saw a new sky and a new earth, for the first sky and the first earth went away, and the sea is not any more.

In Rev. 20.11, the earth and the sky flee away from the presence of the great white throne of the last judgment after the millennium. This occurrence is probably the same as that of 2 Peter 3.7-13, the burning of the sky and the earth. Now John sees a great sight, the fulfillment of Is. 65.17, a new sky and a new earth, and Peter adds, “in which righteousness dwells.” All creation has been purified of anything having to do with sin and evil. John also sees that there is no sea on this new earth. What is the meaning of that feature?

All through the Bible the sea is symbolic of evil. It is a place of danger, a place to be feared. The great flood of Genesis made the whole world a sea and killed every living being on earth. Waters flooding in picture the overwhelming tide of trouble and evil. In the gospels, the Lord Jesus more than once stilled a storm at sea when the disciples thought they would lose their lives. And as we saw in considering hades, the sea can symbolize the doorway to the abyss, hades, the prison-house of fallen angels and lost people. With the sea being such a great symbol of danger and evil, it is no wonder that in John’s vision, the new earth has no sea. There is no more danger. There is no more evil. There is no more possibility of slipping into the abyss. There is eternal Heaven.

²And the holy city, new Jerusalem, I saw coming down out of Heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

John next sees a marvelous sight, but one that also raises questions. There before him are the new sky and the new earth, and down from Heaven comes the holy city, new Jerusalem. If the sentence stopped here, we would not have questions, but it does not. John sees this city as a bride adorned for her husband. How can a city be a bride?

In Gen. 2 we read that God made Adam, and then in v. 18 God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper corresponding to him.” Then God made the beasts, but none of them were suitable to be man’s companion, so God put Adam to sleep, opened his side, took a rib, and made from it a woman, whom he presented to Adam. Adam then had a helper corresponding to him. Adam was the first Adam, and there is a last Adam. The first Adam was a picture of the last. Just as it was not good for the first Adam to be alone, so it is not good for the last Adam to be alone. God longs for a bride for his Son. As God caused a deep sleep to come on the first Adam, he caused the deep sleep of death to come on the last. As he opened the side of the first Adam, took something from it, and made with it a woman, so he caused to flow from the riven side of the last Adam the blood and water that gave life to the church. As the first Adam was raised from sleep to be presented with his wife, so was the last Adam raised from his sleep to resurrection life. But the last Adam has not yet been presented with his bride. She is a corporate bride, the church, and she is still in preparation at this writing. But the day will come when his bride is presented to him. John sees the bride as a city. Again we ask, how can a city be a bride?

We noted just now that the bride of Christ is corporate. He is to be married to his people corporately, and they are to reign with him forever as his queen. Just as the statement in Gen. 1.26-27 shows the nature of God as love, fellowship, relationship, so the symbol of the corporate bride of Christ shows that this same concept will extend into eternity. There are many symbols of corporateness that could be used. Each of these emphasizes certain aspects of the matter. Paul and Peter say that the church is a

building or house for God to dwell in, a corporate building made of many living stones, a picture in which the central point is that God dwells in his people. The concept of the bride shows the intimacy between Christ and his people. The city as the bride shows the functioning of the bride as the wife of Christ. Many things happen in a city. There is government. There is society. There is trade. There is culture. There is family life. There is play. There is worship. On and on we could go. When what we call eternity begins (actually eternity does not have a beginning, otherwise it would not be eternal), whatever it is that God had in mind for man before Adam fell will be put into motion. The Lord Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords, will rule over the enterprise, and his bride will reign with him. She, his corporate bride, his city, will carry out all his plans, his helper corresponding to him. The wife of the Lamb will share in all that goes on. Col. 3.11 says that Christ is all and is in all. The picture of the city tells us that nothing will go on there that is not Christ manifesting himself in some way. It will all be to his glory and the glory of his Father.

³And I heard a great voice from the throne saying, “Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will tabernacle with them, and they will be his people and God himself will be with them,

This concept of intimacy between the Lord and his corporate people pictured by the bride as a city continues with this statement that God will tabernacle with his people. What began in Gen. 1 when God said, “Let us…,” thus revealing his nature of relationship, and went on through his creating man male and female in his image, his choosing of a nation to be his companion and wife (Jer. 2.2), his ordering of the Tabernacle to be built as a symbol of his presence with his people and as a type of his Son who would bring all into realization, his calling of a people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, and his revelation that he desires a bride for his Son, now finds fulfillment in Heaven when the Son has his wife and God dwells among his people, not in a tent to separate him from them even though he is in the midst, but directly with them. This verse in Revelation is one of the great statements in the Bible. It shows the fulfillment of all that has been on God’s heart from eternity.

⁴and he will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death will not be any more, and mourning and crying and pain will not be any more, for the former things have gone away.”

We saw “the death of death” in Rev. 20.14 in dealing with hades. Man’s greatest enemy, the end of everything good in this life, the ultimate cause of sorrow, will have been done away with and will be no more. No longer will it be said that all good things must come to an end. They must not and they will not! All good things will go on

forever. Neither will there be mourning or crying or pain. Those terrible results of the fall will exist no longer in God’s renewed creation, but will be replaced by joy, rejoicing, and utter well-being.

⁵And the one sitting on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new,” and he said, “Write, These words are faithful and true.”

God made the creation at the first as he wanted it, and he had wonderful plans for man to carry out in it, but creation was marred by the fall and his plans had to be put on hold till he could accomplish redemption and the gathering of a people who would replace Adam and his descendants. We have the promise of God that he will indeed accomplish such a restoration, making all things new. There are two Greek words for “new.” One means simply later in time. The other refers more to the nature of things and means something of a different kind. It is the latter word that is used in this statement by God. He is not just bringing in an order of things that is later in time than what has gone before, but it is of a different kind. It will have not any slightest infection of sin and evil and the fall and the curse. It will be a perfect restoration of his initial creation to its unfallen state, and all the glorious plans of God that we really have no concept of will begin to unfold. What he makes new will be not just the creation, but all things, that is, what he does also. He will do things unlike anything we have experienced or thought of, and it is no use for us even to speculate what they might be, for God has concepts that are beyond our creative ability and belong only to his. We know some things that God has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor. 2.9- 10), but we do not know everything he has in mind. It will be one of the great adventures of eternity to see the ever-unfolding creativity of our God.

Then God underlines the truth of what he has just said by telling John to write that these words are faithful and true. God does not need to say anything more than once for it to be taken as true. When he does say for the second time that something is true, he is emphasizing for us that this is important. It will happen. We do have a wholly new creation waiting for us one day, and a wholly new unveiling of the thoughts of God.

⁶And he said to me, “They are done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

When he says, “They are done,” the Alpha, the Beginning, the one who started everything by his creative word, says that all that he has promised has come about and the Omega, the End, has been reached. He is fully able to complete what he starts, and he will do so. But with our God, there is no end. The end is a new beginning, the end of the fallen age and the beginning of the eternal ages.

I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life freely. ⁷The one who overcomes will inherit these things and I will be to him God and he himself will be to me a son.

We have stressed the corporate nature of the people of God, the city, the bride, yet one of the great truths of the Bible is that God’s people do not lose their identity in him. In some religions, the goal, what is considered “Heaven,” is to be reabsorbed into God, who is himself not personal but is just all that exists, and in this reabsorption to lose identity and consciousness of oneself, but in the faith of the Bible, one does not lose his identity or self-consciousness in Heaven. He is indeed part of the corporate people of God, but he is still himself. He can enjoy being in the body because he is conscious. God emphasizes that truth in this verse by saying that the one who thirsts will be given the water of life freely and the one who overcomes will inherit, and God will be his God and he will be God’s son.

The matter of inheritance is one of great importance in the Bible. It goes back to the Old Testament, to the promise to Abraham that he would inherit the land of promise and to the command of God when the land was conquered under Joshua that each family be given a lot in the land. That lot was inviolable. It could not be taken from its rightful owners. If they had to give it up through poverty, provision was made by God for them to regain it. Then we have the concept that the Levites had no land, but their lot was God himself. We also have the statement that his people are God’s lot (Dt. 32.9), with its amplification in Eph. 1.18. It is the overcomer who will inherit all the promises of God. Those who overcome during this age and this life will inherit these things in the millennium and on into eternity. Christians who are not overcomers in this age will not inherit these things in the millennium, but will be disciplined in that age so as to be taught to overcome, and in eternity will, we believe, share in all the blessing of God. In the end (the new beginning) God will have his desire, a kingdom of priests, a people, all of whom are overcomers.

⁸But for the cowardly and the unfaithful and the detestable and murderers and the immoral and sorcerers and worshippers of idols and all liars, their part is in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

There will be Christians in Heaven who have done all of the sins listed in this verse, but they will be people who have repented of these sins and been forgiven and cleansed, just as all of us in Heaven will have been sinners who have been forgiven and cleansed. Those who refuse to repent, who defy God, in the end will find themselves in the lake of fire, and this lake of fire is the second death, death that is not lack of existence and consciousness, but total separation from God and his people and from

anything good. We cannot imagine or describe what that state will be like, but it will be a living death, or a dead living, an awareness of being spiritually dead eternally. Thank God he has provided deliverance from such an end for all who will receive it.

⁹And there came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls that were filled with the seven last plagues, and he spoke with me saying, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the little Lamb.” ¹⁰And he took me in spirit to a mountain great and high, and he showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven

from God, ¹¹having the glory of God (Its radiance was like a stone most precious, like a jasper stone bright as crystal.),

The vision now returns to the bride. One of the angels who had the seven last plagues tells John to come and see the bride, the wife of the Lamb. From a great and high mountain John again sees the city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, and he gives us a description. First of all, she is brilliant with the glory of God. She appears to John as a shining precious stone.

¹²having a wall great and high,

The purpose of a city wall is to keep out anyone and anything not desired there and to protect the city from invasion by enemies. Evil having been done away with, there will be no need of such protection in eternity, but the wall is there nonetheless, showing us the safety of this city. Only what is of God will be there, and nothing else will be able to enter.

having twelve gates and at the gates twelve angels,

The purpose of gates is very much the same as that of walls. The gates when opened permit the passage of those permitted to enter, and when closed, prevent passage, whether of those wanted in or not. Twelve is a number of completeness in the Bible, so we see in the twelve gates the perfect openness of the city, and at the same time its perfect defense. In addition to the twelve gates, there are twelve angels. We are not told their purpose, but it is surely to guard the gates and make certain that only what is of God is allowed into the city.

and names written, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel,

On the gates are the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. The Lord Jesus said that salvation is from the Jews (John 4.22), and here we see them as the gates permitting entry into eternal salvation manifested. The Jews all through history who have been the

Lord’s are just as much a part of the people of God as are Christians. This is the holy city, the wife of the Lamb, and the Jews are its gates.

¹³from the rising three gates and from the north three gates and from the south three gates and from the west three gates,

The “rising” is the rising of the sun, the east. Three gates each face in the four directions. There is entry into the city from every people, tribe, tongue, and nation.

¹⁴and the wall of the city having twelve foundation stones, and on them twelve names of the twelve apostles of the little Lamb.

As the Jews are the gateway to life, humanly speaking, so are the apostles of Christ those who laid the foundation of it, for it is they who carried the message of redemption through the blood of Christ into all the world of their day, and through their successors (Christians, not necessarily apostles), into all the world beyond. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the foundation. Indeed, it is Christ himself who is the foundation (1 Cor. 3.11), Christ as preached by the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2.20). Thus we have God’s Old Testament people and his New Testament people joined together in eternity as the people of God, the wife of the Lamb.

¹⁵And the one speaking with me had a measure, a golden reed, that he might measure the city and its gates and its wall. ¹⁶And the city lies four-cornered, and its length is equal to the breadth. And he measured the city with the reed to twelve thousand stadia; its length and breadth and height are equal. ¹⁷And he measured its wall, one hundred and forty-four cubits, measure of a man, which is of an angel.

The purpose of the measuring is to show the perfection of the city. It is a perfect cube of about fifteen hundred miles, length, breadth, and height being equal. We have translated exactly, using the Greek measurements rather than the English, to show the continued use of the number twelve in the description of the city. It has twelve gates, twelve foundation stones, twelve thousand stadia, twelve times twelve cubits. All is perfection. The Holy of Holies in the Old Testament Tabernacle, the dwelling-place of God among his people, was a perfect cube. So is the dwelling-place of God among his people in eternity. A cubit is about 1 ½ feet.

V. 17 says that the wall is one hundred and forty-four cubits, about seventy-two yards, but we just read in v. 16 that the height is twelve thousand stadia. What is the meaning of this apparent contradiction? We cannot say with absolute certainty because the passage itself does not tell us, but it is probably that the height is twelve thousand stadia and the thickness is one hundred and forty-four cubits. This measurement is

“measure of a man, which is of an angel.” What is the meaning of this strange statement? Again we must state the probable. It is likely that the meaning is that whereas now, in this fallen world, the standards of measurement of Heaven and earth do not agree, man valuing useless things above the eternally valuable, in eternity, when God has restored all things and made all things new, heavenly and earthly measurements will agree. The standard of measurement of all things is the beloved Son of God (Eph. 4.13). Nothing that does not conform to him will be found in the city.

¹⁸And the material of its wall was jasper and the city was pure gold like pure glass, ¹⁹the foundations of the wall of the city being adorned with every precious stone, the first foundation stone jasper, the second, sapphire, the third, chalcedony, the fourth, emerald, ²⁰the fifth, sardonyx, the sixth, sardius, the seventh, chrysolite, the eighth, beryl, the ninth, topaz, the tenth, chrysoprase, the eleventh, jacinth, the twelfth, amethyst, ²¹and the twelve gates twelve pearls: each one of the gates was from one pearl, and the street of the city pure gold, like transparent glass.

Remember that the city is the wife of the Lamb. It is people, the people of God. When the Word of God tells us that the city was made of gold, precious stones, and pearls, it is teaching us one of the greatest lessons of Scripture. In the Scriptures, when it is used symbolically, gold refers to God. Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 3.12 that it is possible for us to build on the foundation which is Christ with gold, silver, precious stones, or with worthless things. The way we build on the foundation with things of value is for us to have those things formed in us. We are the stones that make up God’s house (1 Peter 2.4-5). As we go through life, having yielded ourselves to God, we find that we go through many fiery trials. Often we wonder why. Why is our way so difficult when we want only to be the Lord’s? That is precisely why it is difficult. If we are the Lord’s, we have something of him in us. He dwells in us. Yet there is still so much of flesh in us. Probably in the beginning there is more flesh than God in us! It is sincerely to be hoped that as we progress through life, there will be less flesh and more God. As Paul puts it in Gal. 4.19, Christ is being formed in us. Gold is being deposited in us. But Peter tells us in his first epistle (1.6-7) that the gold must be refined. It is not that there is any impurity in the God who is in us, but that within us there is the mixture of God and flesh. The purpose of the fiery trials is the purification of the gold. As the flesh is consumed through our submission to God in trial, our willingness to let him accomplish his purifying work, we find a greater and greater deposit of gold, of God, within ourselves.

Precious stones are formed over long periods of time under great darkness and great heat. That is just the picture of the course our lives frequently take. We often feel that we are walking in darkness even though we are the Lord’s. We wonder what is happening to us and why we must have such a hard time. We feel the heat of trial, as

with the refining of gold. It seems to go on for such a long time. When we experience this apparently never-ending darkness and heat, we can be sure that God is forming something of great value in us. He is giving us the treasures of darkness of Is. 45.3.

A pearl is formed when an oyster gets a bit of sand or some other irritant into its shell. It secretes a substance that hardens around the irritant to gain relief. This secretion goes on until, layer upon layer, a pearl is formed. Something of great value emerges from a worthless irritant. We all have irritants in our lives, things that perhaps are not great trials but are constant annoyances. We wish we could just be rid of them. When we feel this way, it is certain that God is calling on us to turn to him with the problem. As we do so, we unknowingly secrete a bit of a substance that coats the irritant. God is forming something precious in us.

When we look at the city, we see nothing there but gold, precious stones, pearls. How we despise our trials in this life, how we wish we could be rid of them, but it is they which form in us the very things that will gain us our place in the city. We cannot have gold without refining fires. We cannot have precious stones without darkness and heat. We cannot have pearls without irritations. We cannot have a place in the city without gold, precious stones, pearls being formed in us. O, let us submit to the hard dealings of God. They are perhaps his greatest expressions of love to us, for they enable us to enter his city.

²²And I did not see a Sanctuary in it, for the Lord God almighty and the little Lamb are its Sanctuary.

The Sanctuary is the Holy of Holies, the dwelling-place of God. In the city, we will all dwell in the Holy of Holies, in the very presence of God. There will be no need of a building to house God, for he will live in and among his people. We are his house (Eph. 2.19-22, Heb. 3.6, 1 Peter 2.4-5).

²³And the city has no need of the sun or the moon that they might shine on it, for the glory of God illumines it, and its lamp is the little Lamb.

“God is light and there is no darkness in him,” says 1 John 1.5. When we dwell in the very presence of that light, we will have no need of sun or moon. If they still exist at that point, they will not be seen, their light being lost in the light of the glory of God. Christ has ever been the full expression of God. In the city, he will be the lamp that expresses the glory of God. It is only in Christ that we can be in the presence of God, for it is in him that we have forgiveness of our sins and restoration to an innocent state. That will be true not just now, but eternally. It is the Lamb in whom we see the glory of God and in whom we live in his presence.

²⁴And the Gentiles will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory to it, ²⁵and its gates would not be shut by day, for there is not night there, ²⁶and they will bring the glory and the honor of the Gentiles to it.

God wanted Israel to be a blessing to the Gentiles. Jn. 4.22 says that salvation is of the Jews. I believe that this indicates that God wanted his ancient people, the Jews, to carry this light to the nations. As God said to Abaham in Gen 12.3, “… in you will all the families of the earth be blessed.” In eternity, when Israel takes her place with the people of God, she will indeed be that light, helping to make up the city that, like the one set on a hill, cannot be hidden. It appears from this and other passages of Scripture that there will be people living on the new earth who are not part of the city. We do not know precisely who these people are, but the indication here is that they will be Gentiles. The earth will be populated throughout eternity, and the heavenly city, new Jerusalem, the wife of the Lamb, will be the light of that world.

The thought of the kings bringing their wealth to the city is an Old Testament theme. We find it in Ps. 72.10-11, Is. 60.4-9, and Hag. 2.6-9. We will see its fulfillment in the eternal city. City gates are shut at night for protection, but there will be no night, no time of darkness for the concealing of evil and the prowling of danger, in that city, so the gates will ever be open to receive the glory and honor of the Gentiles. The glory and honor of the Gentiles may be material wealth, or it may be their giving of glory and honor to God, or it may be something else. We really do not know what eternity will be like, so we have little means of being exact about such details. The pictures we have are of things we know and understand. In all likelihood, the reality of eternity will transcend those pictures as God transcends us.

²⁷And every profane person and one doing detestable things and liar will not enter it, only those written in the scroll of life of the little Lamb.

Again the purity and safety of the city are expressed. The word for “profane” is the word “common,” and refers to the person who has no respect for the things of God, but considers them as just common things, of no more value than, say, a single meal. The word “detestable” is the same as the word “abomination” in the abomination of desolation, and has to do with idolatry. The seriousness of lying is seen in the fact that our God is a God who speaks and who is utterly truthful. He has given us a book which is his word, a book that is utterly truthful. His greatest expression, his Son, is called the Word, and he called himself the truth. These three sins, treating the things of God as common, idolatry, and untruthfulness, sum up much of what is opposed to God and is opposed by him. These will not be found in the city. There will be absolute respect for God, worship of him alone, and transparent truthfulness (the city is made partly of transparent gold).

This negative reference to the profane, idolatrous, and untruthful gives way to the positive note that those in the city will be those whose names are in the Lamb’s scroll of life. The city will be a place of life, of abundant life, of God’s life expressed in his people.

22 ¹And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, going out from the throne of God and the little Lamb. ²In the middle of its street and of the river, from here and from there, is a tree of life bearing twelve fruits, according to each month giving its fruit, and the leaves of the tree for healing of Gentiles.

When reading these words, one cannot help being reminded of Ps. 46.4, “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God…,” and of Ezek. 47.1-12, where we see the river flowing out from the Temple till it becomes deep enough to swim in, then goes on to heal, as the Hebrew says, the waters it flows into. V. 9 says it will be a place of life, and v. 12, that trees will grow along the banks whose fruit will be for food and whose leaves, for healing. We believe the Temple of Ezekiel to be millennial, but the river that is seen during the millennium goes on into eternity. The water of this river is the water of life. Surely this is a symbolic reference to the abundance of the Holy Spirit in Heaven, for the Lord himself said in John 7.37-39 that the rivers of water that will flow from his people are the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit of God who supplies life to and maintains the life of the people of God. Not only will there not be, on the negative side, any death in eternity, but there will be, on the positive side, a veritable river of life. We do not really know what life is in the age to come, for we know only physical life very well, and that in a body of limitation, and spiritual life only in a small degree. We do know the life of God in us, but how constrained it is in us because of our poor ability to believe and to perceive spiritually. But there is a wonderful day coming when all those limitations will be removed and we will know a flood of the life of God that we cannot even conceive of now.

V. 2 is difficult to translate literally into good English, so we have translated just as it is in Greek. The meaning seems to be that the tree of life is between the river and the street, the river on the one side, and the street on the other, bordering the space where the tree grows. This tree takes us all the way back to Gen. 2.9, 16-17. In the garden, knowledge of good and evil was the way of death, spiritually and physically. Knowledge of the Lord was the way of life. We believe that, just as the river is the Holy Spirit, the tree of life is the Lord Jesus himself, the one through whom the water of life is mediated to us. As he has ever been the bread of life, so in Heaven he is the tree bearing the fruit of our heavenly sustenance and the leaves of health. In Rev. 2.7, we read the promise to the overcomers, those who loved the Lord with first love, that they would eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God. Here the promise is fulfilled.

³And every curse will not be any more.

When Adam and Eve chose to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden, God gave curses as a result. He cursed the snake in Gen. 3.14-15, the woman in v. 16, and the man, through the ground, in vs. 17-19. The snake would slither on his stomach rather than walking on legs, would eat dust, and would be at enmity with man. (It is of interest that a scientist recently found fossil remains of what he believes to be a snake that had legs!). The woman would have pain in childbirth. The man would have difficulty eking out a living from cursed soil, and that soil from which he came and with which he contended all his life would ultimately claim him again in death.

But in Heaven, there is no more curse of any kind. We have translated the Greek very literally to show not just that there will not be any curse, but that every curse will be done away with. There will be nothing but blessing there.

And the throne of God and of the little Lamb will be in it, and his slaves will serve him. ⁴And they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

At the center of Heaven will be the throne of God and of the Lamb. God has ever been the Sovereign of the universe, but because of his will to make men and angels with free choice, and their choice to be their own gods, his sovereignty has been hidden for all these millennia. Satan is the ruler of this world (Jn. 12.31, 14.30, 16.11) and the god of this age (2 Cor. 4.4), though God is still sovereign over him, and man appears to be in control of his own life. But such is not the case. Satan controls the man of the world and the worldly man’s life is out of his own control. It is ironic that man has defied God in the name of freedom, freedom from the constraints of religion to be all that he can be, and yet he is a slave of sin and its consequences. In Heaven, where the throne will be at the center and all the universe will know who is sovereign, the people of God, who have chosen to be, not free from God, but his slaves, are the ones who are truly free. We will still be the slaves of God in Heaven, just as we are now, but that slavery will be freedom itself. Freedom from God is slavery (Rom. 6.16-19). Slavery to God is freedom. Such is the difference between the thoughts of man and the thoughts of God (Is. 55.8-9).

As we serve our King on his throne, we will see his face. In 1 Peter 1.8, we read of the Lord Jesus, “… whom not having seen you love, in whom now, not seeing, you believe, but you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory….” There are no words in human language to describe the experience that will come one day when those who have loved the Lord Jesus without seeing him and who have believed in him without seeing him will see him. Can you have any imagination of it? Of all the great blessings of Heaven, of which Rev. 21.1-22.5 is a list, no other will compare with this one

blessing, the sight of our Savior’s face. With John and the twenty-four elders of Heaven and the four living beings and all the angels of Heaven we will fall down and worship him. So powerful will be the sight of the one who gave his life for us.

And his name will be on our foreheads. In Rev. 7, we see the one hundred and forty-four thousand faithful Jews sealed on their foreheads to designate them as the Lord’s through the Great Tribulation. In 13.16, we read that all who dwell on the earth during the days of Antichrist will be required to have his mark on their foreheads or hands. In 14.1, we have the Lord on Mount Zion with one hundred and forty-four thousand overcomers, who have his name and the name of his Father on their foreheads. It will be clear to all in eternity who are the Lord’s. It is another mark of the measureless grace of God that he would choose to associate his name with such as we. He gives his very name to us. We are his and he owns us as his.

⁵And night will not be any more, and they will not have need of light of a lamp and light of the sun, for the Lord God will shine on them,

We saw in 21.23 that the glory of God is the light of the city and the Lamb is the mediating lamp. John again sees this truth in his visions, stressing once more that just as the Lord is our water, our food, our health, our blessing, so is he our light. He is our all indeed.

and they will reign to the ages of the ages.

We are taken back to Gen. 1.26-30 where God gave man the responsibility of ruling over his creation. Man failed in that assignment, but it has never been taken from him. God’s purposes are never abandoned and they are always fulfilled. He made man to rule, and rule man will. The Lord Jesus succeeded where Adam, and all of us, failed. He lived a life of perfect obedience to the Father, and the results are seen in his mastery over the creation, he who could still storms, cast out demons, bring healing, turn water into wine, multiply a few loaves and fishes into food for five thousand, even raise the dead with only a word. And because of that perfect obedience, even unto death, God has exalted him and given him a name above every other name that at his name every knee would bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. He will reign forever and ever. God promised him in Ps. 2.6 that he would be King, and in v. 9, that he would rule the nations “with a rod of iron.” Then in Rev. 2.26-27 and 12.5, he makes the same promise to the overcomers. The Lord Jesus will have a bride who will reign with him. In the end, God’s purpose will have full realization. Man will rule.

CONCLUSION

Having seen what the Scriptures tell us about hades, hell, paradise, and Heaven, what conclusions are we to draw? Perhaps there are many, but four will suffice. (1) How seriously we should take the reality of hades and hell, and how sure we should thus be that we are prepared to meet God (Amos 4.12). How could anyone not be certain that he will escape hades at death and hell eternally? As you read these words, ask yourself if you are ready to die at this moment. If not, do not waste a second, but give yourself to the Lord now, asking him to save you now. If you are familiar with the Bible and Christian truth, begin to put what you know into practice, not to earn salvation by works, but to live out the new life that God has placed in you. If you do not know or understand Christian matters, seek help from those in your area who do. If you need direction, you can email the author’s address on the opening page of this web site and help will be available. What you do is of eternal importance, and there is not a second to lose. Act now. Your destiny, Heaven or hell, is in the balance. (2) If you are already a Christian, as you thank God for the eternal assurance you have, take comfort in the truths the Bible presents about life after this life. Your loved ones who have died in the Lord are with him even now as you read these words. What greater comfort could you have? Your own eternal destiny is secure. You need not worry about what will happen to you after death. You, too, will be with the Lord. And you will be with him eternally in the true paradise of Heaven.

(3) If you are a Christian, warn those who are not. Take the thoughts of our first point above and share them with those who do not know the Lord, not in the negative way of trying to scare people, but in the positive sense of warning them of the danger ahead. John the Baptist warned the Jews to flee from the wrath to come. So should we. Of course, we also want to share the positive side of the love of Christ and all he has done for us and promises to us. Do not share just, or even primarily, hades and hell, but share Christ primarily, and the Heaven he has in store.

(4) Finally, worship God. Is he not worthy? Our minds cannot conceive of all that he is on our behalf or of all that he has done for us. When we were still sinners, rebellious against God, defiant of him, he himself took the initiative to do something about our hopeless condition. When we were tottering on the brink of eternal hell, Christ died for us. But he did not just save us from hell. He gave us a life worth living now, and he has prepared a place for us. Heaven with him is our eternal home, all because of his grace. Worship him. Yes, he is worthy indeed.

a – w

Copyright © 2021 by Tom Adcox. All rights reserved. You may share this work with others, provided you do not alter it and do not sell it or use it for any commercial purpose. “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10.8). Also you must include this notice if you share it or any part of it.

New Testament translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

HADES, HELL, PARADISE, AND HEAVEN

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