Sweet Time Traveling Jesus!
The story many probably missed in the Bible
Sweet Time Traveling Jesus!
The story many probably missed in the Bible
Many of you are likely familiar with the story of the harrowing of Hell. Even if you’re not familiar with the name given to it then you’re still probably familiar with the story, but for those who aren’t, I’ll summarize it briefly.
Basically, when Jesus died on the cross due to becoming a sin-sponge he was cut off from the Father, due to the Father’s inability to look upon sin, even when it’s being contained within part of himself. So at this point, Jesus plunged down into Hell and while there he freed the righteous souls who had been stored there, some from basically the beginning of time, and allowed them to go up to Heaven.
According to this theology souls up until this point hadn’t been able to ascend to Heaven because they were still tainted with sin. Only the Jews had the covenant with God, and even they couldn’t abide by the Old Law perfectly, meanwhile, the rest of us were exponentially worse off as far as sin-stains.
So due to this fact, God had stored everyone in Hell, although some will argue that they weren’t necessarily in “Hell”, but a place called the “Bosom of Abraham” or “Hades” or “Sheol”, somewhere possibly not as bad as Hell. Either way, Jesus went down there, kicked in the door, and took the keys of death…whatever that item may be…and made it so souls can go to Heaven upon death if they are saved by him, the souls in the story quite literally being saved by him in person.
It’s quite the tale, but does this story exist in the Bible?
You guessed it, no, not really. The story is pieced together from various fairly vague verses, from “Paul”, “Peter”, Luke, “Matthew”, and John of Patmos. In reality, we don’t know who the authors were for the names I listed in quotes, but traditionally they’ve been attributed (very likely incorrectly) to these people.
9 expression
Colossians 2:15-NASB
15 of them
1 Peter 3:19-NASB
19
1 Peter 4:6-NASB
6 the will of
Acts 2:24-NASB
24 from the dead
Matthew 12:40-NASB
40
Revelation 1:18-NASB
18
As an interesting side note the verse from Revelation most Christians interpret death and Hades here as being the condition of death and the location of Hades, when in reality the Greek used here was originally Thanatos and Hades, two Greek gods. Which I detailed in much more detail in my article about Greek gods in the Bible for those interested.
These verses are of course Christian’s attempts to fulfill what they see as prophecies made by Hosea and Zechariah.
Hosea 13:14-NASB
14
Zechariah 9:11-NASB
11 My
Yes, as you likely guessed more vague verses, but that never has stopped Christians from turning these into prophecies and figuring out a way to claim they’ve been fulfilled.