The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

III. Penitent Neither in Kingdom Nor in Paradise That Day

1. DID NOT DIE ON SAME DAY

The soldiers broke the legs of the penitent thief (John 19:31-33), because he was still living as that fateful crucifixion Friday was drawing toward its close. This was so that he could not escape. But, because Jesus was already dead, His legs were not broken. So the crucifixion day ended at sunset with the thief still alive and Jesus already dead. Clearly they could not have been in Paradise together on that same crucifixion day. CFF1 275.1

2. “TOGETHER” THAT DAY ONLY ON ADJOINING CROSSES

We would press the point that the penitent’s request to Jesus was, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom” (Luke 23:42). The thief evidently understood that Jesus claimed He would return to set up His kingdom. Later, at Pentecost, Peter said, “And he [God] shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:20, 21). And as the Saviour has not yet returned to restore all things, the prayer of the thief has not as yet been realized. CFF1 275.2

Furthermore, Jesus could not return from Heaven that day, for the simple and conclusive reason that He did not go to Heaven that day. On the third day after His crucifixion, Christ said to Mary, who was about to embrace His feet in accordance with the ancient custom of deference or worship, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father” (John 20:17) in Paradise, and that was on the third day after His crucifixion. Forty days thereafter He did ascend to God (Acts 1:3, 9), where He has remained till this present time. So, had the thief actually gone to Heaven that day (Friday)—which he did not—he would have had to wait forty-three days before Christ came to be with him. CFF1 276.1

Therefore Christ and the penitent were not together anywhere that day, except on the crosses on Golgotha. CFF1 276.2

3. JESUS WENT TO THE GRAVE, NOT TO PARADISE, THAT DAY

Let us now note where Christ went that crucifixion day. The Scriptures expressly teach that instead of going to Paradise that crucifixion day, Christ went into the grave—she’ol, hades, gravedom. Referring to the first coming of Christ and His atoning death, the psalmist David prophesied, “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [Heb. she’ol, “the grave”]; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Psalm 16:10). And Peter, at Pentecost, confirms this: “For David speaketh concerning him [Christ] ...; thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [Gr. hades], neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One [Christ] to see corruption” (Acts 2:25-27). CFF1 276.3

The Scriptures explicitly teach that “there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave [she’ol], whither thou goest” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). “In that very day [of death] his thoughts perish” (Psalm 146:4). On the contrary, the Immortal-Soulist makes hades (or OT she’ol) a place of life and joy; and Paradise some part of hades. But the Biblical hades could not have been the Paradise wherein the thief and his Saviour were to meet and rejoice. CFF1 276.4

As noted, the Paradise of God, with its tree of life, is clearly not in the grave, but in Heaven—to be entered by the door of the resurrection. It would be utterly unscriptural to say that Joseph’s new tomb, wherein Jesus was laid, was Paradise. But when the full teaching of Scripture is adopted, this episode is in perfect harmony with the rest of the Bible on the intermediate state. CFF1 277.1

That is the beauty and majesty of truth. CFF1 277.2

4. NOT IN HEAVEN DURING “THREE DAYS AND NIGHTS.”

Our Lord Himself was in the grave from the time He died and was buried in Joseph’s new tomb until He rose. If anyone contends that Christ’s “spirit”—which at His death He commended into His Father’s hands (Luke 23:46)—was the actual, the real Christ, that notion is precluded by Christ Himself, when He said that just as surely as the prophet Jonah was “three days and three nights in the whale’s belly” (Matthew 12:40), so was the Son of man to be “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”—Hebraism for the earth, the sepulcher, or tomb (Matthew 27:60; Mark 15:46; Luke 23:53John 19:40-42). CFF1 277.3

To those who came to the sepulcher on the resurrection morn the angel said, “I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen” (Matthew 28:5, 6). He was not in the tomb because He had risen. That is clear. But He was in the tomb until He left it by rising from the tomb, and thus leaving its precincts. And even after His resurrection, and before His ascension, it will be recalled, He declared that He had not yet ascended to His Father (John 20:17). Jesus was not in Heaven during those three days. CFF1 277.4