From: Laurence
To: The Path of Truth
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2016 12:18 PM
Subject: Confused.
Hello sir. I am confused here.
Is it true Jesus when crucified went down into hell to
release the Old Testament Saints? My confusion comes from this.
If Jesus had to go and release them, why did God put them there in the first place. I understand people tell me because the blood wasn’t applied.
But wasn’t Abraham’s salvation credited to him through his faith, without the blood? When the rich man died, didn’t he look up into heaven and see Abraham ? Wasn’t the poor man placed in Abraham’s arms at his bosom? Why would Jesus have to go to that terrible place hell to release people who shouldn’t be there in the first place?
I am sure you will understand where i am coming from.
Please don’t tell me Abraham’s bosom is a place.
Thank You Laurence.
From: Paul Cohen
To: Laurence
Cc: Victor Hafichuk
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 7:08 AM
Subject: Re: Confused.
Hi Laurence,
No, it’s not true that Jesus went into Hell to release Old Testament saints. The Scripture you refer to says He went to preach to those who sinned at the time of the flood:
1 Peter 3:18-20 MKJV
(18) For Christ also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, indeed being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit;
(19) in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison,
(20) to disobeying ones, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared (in which a few, that is, eight souls were saved through water)….
Abraham wasn’t among those. In fact, Abraham was alive with God, as Jesus said when He corrected the Sadducees about the resurrection of the dead:
“And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong” (Mark 12:26-27 ESV).
Abraham’s faith was accounted to him for righteousness, as with all children of faith:
“Even as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Therefore know that those of faith, these are the sons of Abraham” (Galatians 3:6-7 MKJV).
Christ is Abraham’s Lord and Savior, just as with Abraham’s progeny who left Egypt:
“And all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were drinking from that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:3-4 EMTV).
As for the story/parable of the rich man and Lazarus, that’s a false addition to the Bible. Pay no attention to it.
Paul