Q a U o f J U l
amid
the (Church
By Reid McCullough. D.D. Professor of Biblical Languages at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles
gulf, and talk to those in the other compartment. This is where all the dead were at the time Christ told this story, and this was their condition at that time. Not only did the wicked have to go to Sheol, the lowest part, but all the righteous to the upper compartment, Paradise or Abraham’s bosom. This is the wonderfully consistent teaching of the Old Testament. In other words, Sheol is both heaven and hell in the Old Testament. All the saints from Adam on went down there. Samuel also went there as he testified when the Lord sent him up to confound Saul and the witch of Endor. You remember he said to Saul, “Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?” Of course that means up from the Paradise that was in Sheol (1 Sam. 28:15). In the gainsaying of Korah (Num. 16:33) “ they, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into Sheol.” Therefore, the gates of hell or Sheol prevailed against all the dead in the Old Testament days. The saints had to go and stay there until “the heavenly things” should be purified “with better sacrifices than these” (Heb. 9:23). But now, not only do we have access by faith into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, but at death we do not have to go to Sheol like the Old Testament saints. As New Testament church saints, the gates of hell shall not prevail against us. When we are “abseVit from the body,” we are “present [at home] with the Lord.” Moreover, the language used in con nection with hell or Sheol is plainly suggestive of something more than a place. There is the implication that hell is some kind of a being with power, greed and a will to assert its rights, as seen in the' following Scriptures: “ And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire” (Rev, 2Q:14); “ O death, where (Continued on Page 20)
“ Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt. 16:18)'.
T HIS is a passage of the greatest importance in the New Testa ment, because it contains several mysteries revealed now for the first time by the Lord, when He commended Peter for his correct answer to the question that He put to all the disciples in Caesarea Philippi, “ But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatso ever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Here we halve enunciated at least five great doctrines: the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of regeneration, the doc trine of the church, the doctrine of hell, and the doctrine of apostolic power to bind or loose. The commentaries are very profuse in their comments on all of these doctrines except the doctrine of hell, or Sheol — the unseen world. Yet in this doctrine lies the greatest difference between Old and the New Testament saints. Sheol or Hades or hell prevailed against all Old Testament saints but Christ here guaran tees that it will not prevail against the church or New Testament saints. Now what does all this mean? And what is the nature of the promised Page Twelve
blessing? The usual method of inter pretation is to spiritualize the phrase, the gates of hell, and to say that this language means simply that no power can prevail against the believer' today; that he is safe and secure through Christ. But this is nothing new, for the saints in the Old Testament were just as safe and secure as we are. That grand promise, “ I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,” is really a promise borrowed from the Old Testament by Paul as can be plainly seen from He brews 13:5. But the language used here by our Lord evidently implies something new, something wonderful, something that saints have never yet experienced, some thing that could not be enjoyed until the cross was an accomplished fact. Now let us turn to the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke the six teenth chapter, and see what Christ Himself has to tell us about the condi tion of the righteous and the wicked after death up to and at the time that He was here on earth. He pulls aside the curtain and gives us a glimpse into the unseen world, called Sheol in the Old Testament and Hades in the New. He shows us Sheol divided into two compartments, with a great gulf fixed between them so that the inmates of one cannot go unto the other. At death, the saints of the Old Testament times went to the upper compartment, called also Paradise and Abraham’s bosom, where they were in conscious comfort. The wicked go at death into the lower compartment where they are “tormented in this flame.” According to this record in Luke, they could see across the great
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