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Abraham's bosom?
Where is this?
Is there any third compartment besides heaven and hell?
Wait...isn't that from Luke 16?
Which....BTW, is luke 16 a parable or is it a real story?
We all know the story of Lazarus in John 11:1-44.
Where was Lazarus when his body was in the tomb for four days?
I got one "we don't know" where he was and I'm cool with that, but is there anyone else who wants to contribute to the original question?
Lazarus went to Heaven (duh!). There is no other place (limbo, purgatory, etc.).
When Jesus resurrected him, it makes sense to say that He gave Lazarus instructions to not speak of what he saw and heard there (along the lines of Paul saying the same kind of thing about his experience).
The question, where do the heathen go, would also be good.
I haven't thoroughly studied exchatology but it seems to me that the lake of fire is created in the end, it hasn't been created yet, has it?
And even if it already exists, no one has been placed there yet, have they? I always thought it would remain empty until after the judgment where the believers are separated to the right and the unbelievers to the left.
I have always thought that the dead go to a separated place where believers are sent to one place and the heathen in another before the judgment. Then new heavens are created. Then believers are sent to the new heavens. And the heathen to the lake of fire.
I'm sure I'm probably totally wrong in all of this, so ..... please be gentle.
Abraham's bosom?
Where is this?
Is there any third compartment besides heaven and hell?
But Wm. Hendriksen disagrees with Morey. In WH's The Bible on the Life Hereafter (in Chapter 17) he agrees much with Morey on the rendering of Sheol and Hades, yet denies a division in Sheol/Hades with a place for the wicked and a separate one for the just. He is not really clear (from what I have read) that the OT saints go directly to Heaven upon death.
This is the crux of the initial question of this thread: where did the OT saints go upon death?
The best answer I have found is in Herman Hoeksema's commentary on Revelation, Behold He Cometh, page 431 ff, where he asserts they (the OT saints) have gone to glory -- and that before the suffering and exaltation of Christ -- (in online version: Chapt. 30, the section, "The Immediate Object Of This Warfare") and the attack of Satan as "the accuser of the brethren" is contesting their right to be in Heaven as they are sinners and his property, he not accounting as God does they are redeemed by the blood of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."
In his Reformed Dogmatics, the section "The Intermediate State" (page 755 ff), he seems a little less clear, though he asserts, after discussing Luke 16:22-24, a place of conscious glory for the departed: "All these passages teach plainly a state of conscious glory with Christ immediately after death. Yet it must be remembered that this state of glory is still anticipatory and partial, and also that there is a vast difference between the old and new dispensation in heaven [with a footnote here referring to Heb 11:39, 40: 'They received not the promise.']" (page 761)
On page 766 he says, "As to the state of Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus, and in general of those that return from death into this present life, we remark that nothing can be deduced from these examples as to the state of all the saints immediately after death, for the simple reason that Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus were designed by God not to leave this world permanently as yet, but to return to it by the wonder of God in Christ into a state of typical resurrection. It is certainly not possible to maintain that those who died, in order to rise again into this world, enjoyed in their temporal state of death the blessedness of conscious glory with Christ in God, and that from this state they were recalled into this present world of sin and death. We must maintain, therefore, that in those cases the Lord provided a special state, in which most likely they were unconscious, and from which they were aroused into a conscious state in the present world by the wonder of what we would call a typical resurrection."
A few pages later HH denies the theory of "soul sleep".
It's too late now for me to look into more books on the subject! I like Hoeksema best on this subject from what I've seen -- and I am more familiar with his work on Revelation than the Dogmatics.
Steve
Lazarus was in the tomb.
I'm sure this is a dumb question but couldn't they have been both the same Lazarus, and thereby explain how Christ knew about the occurance of the rich man and Lazarus? After raising Lazarus from the tomb, Jesus communicates with his dear friend, the brother of Mary. They spend time with each other and Lazarus relates what he saw when he was removed to be in the presences of Abraham.
We don't have an instance that we can point to where Jesus left the physical earth and went into the spiritual realm other than when he died and was gone for three days. So wouldn't this explain how he knew about the occurance of Lazarus?
BTW, ofcourse this story of Lazarus and the rich man would have to be true and not a parable for it to be the same Lazarus, obviously.