The After Life and The Ressurection

One of the problems in the world today is that Casual Christianity looks at the after life in a way that is inherently Pagan. It’s not a matter of going to Heaven or Hell.

The perfect eternity we’re looking forward to is NOT contemporary Heaven, contemporary Heaven is going to be us giving an account before God of our lives, washing our Robes in the Blood of the Lamb. What we’re looking forward to is the Resurrection and the Millennium and then the New Heaven and New Earth. The Restoration of the Kosmos to how it was before Adam Sinned.

This is part of why I object to Preterisim and Amillennialism. It’s not just about Eschatology. A denial of the Literal fulfillment of the Millennium allows a Christian to still hold a Pagan view of the After life. And a denial of the literal Resurrection of believers defeats the point of the Resurrection of Christ.

I believe that Salvation can’t be lost, but I believe there are ramifications when a Christian sins, one of those I‘ll discus here. Because all saved during the Church Age have the opportunity to Reign with Christ, as Kings and Priests after the Order of Melchizedek. But not all will. We can’t lose our entrance into the Kingdom, but we can lose our Inheritance. There are also rewards for the good works we do, but some will get no rewards.

There are three Greek nouns translated Hell in the KJV rendering of the New Testament. While the Bible often uses different words for the same thing, these 3 names are all distinct entities.

1. Hades, is the equivalent of the Hebrew Sheol (The word for Hell in the Hebrew Bible). Prior to the Cross all of the Dead went there, not just the unsaved. Luke 16 reveals that is has two compartments, the Saved were comforted in Abraham’s Bosom.

2. Tartaros, this word appears only once, in 2 Peter 2:4. The Grammar of this particular verse is also messed up in the KVJ, because the KJV translators wanted to make an assumption about where it was located. SO here is how it should be.

“For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but delivered them into chains of darkness in Tartaros to be reserved unto judgment”.

Hades and Tartaros both I believe in a sense have geographical

locations within the Kosmos. Hades definitely being inside The Earth. But I say in a sense because if we ever were able to physically dig down there, I don’t think we’d see it with our four dimensional perception of reality. I believe they are there but in the other six dimensions, which we know are there but we can’t perceive in our current mortal fallen state.

Tartaros is often assumed to be also inside the Earth, and maybe it is, but I’m not so sure.

Tartaros is beyond any doubt the same place as The Abyss, the Bottomless Pit, their linked by the imagery of Chains and Darkness. In addition to the Genesis 6 Angels, that is also where Demons go when Christian cast them out of possessed people properly, also binding them. Revelation 9 says “And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.” Elsewhere in Revelation (1-3 and 12), Stars often symbolize Angels, so it’s often assumed the Star is the Him being given this Key. But this is a completely different part of Revelation, less symbolic and more literal. Every other Star in in the Seal-Trumpet-Veil judgments is always an astronomical object, not specially what we today have limited the meaning of a "Star" to, but still what it literally meant then. Given the context of verse 13, I believe the Angel who sounded the Trumpet is the one being given the Key. The term translated “Fall from” could simply mean descend or move from one location to another. It could simply mean some object in the Solar System, or further out in space, coming much closer to Earth then it currently is.

But that's a conjecture, it could still be inside the Earth like Hades/Sheol, or even a sub compartment of it. Jesus is also described as going to the Abyss during the three days he was dead (Romans 10:7, where it'd translated Deep in the KJV). Also Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28-33 have references to a Pit that The Antichrist goes into, there it seems like it's near or in Sheol.

3. Gehena, This word has it’s origin in the name of a fiery Garbage dumb in ancient Judea. But every time Jesus used it, it appears to be a synonym for “The Lake of Fire” not of Hades. This is the finale Damnation, the “Second Death” the ultimate perdition of the unsaved.

The terms “First Resurrection” and “Second Resurrection” are categories more so then a chronological sequence. The First is the saved and the Second the Unsaved.

“The First Resurrection” begins with Yeshua’s own. Remember during the three days and three nights he was “In the Belly of the Earth” he descended into Hades. Why? At least one reason was to get the people being kept in Abraham’s Bosom. Matthew 27:52 “And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

So as we can already see it doesn’t necessarily happen all at once. There is also the Resurrection of the Two Witnesses during the 70th Week. The saved who are part of the Church will be Resurrected at the “Rapture” (whether or not you view it as Pre-Trib, Post-Trib or Mid-Trib). And if any saved are left Un-Resurrected after the Beast is defeated, they’ll be Resurrected at the start of The Millennium.

“The Second Resurrection” Revelation 20 puts at the end of the Millennium, after Satan’s final defeat. But since The Beast and The False Prophet are cast alive into the Lake of Fire without any reference to being killed in Revelation 19, at the start of the Millennium, some have argued that those two are individuals who where allotted to experience the “Second Resurrection” early. Probably his resurrection is the healing of the mortal wound.

There is one area, where Yeshua’s Resurrection is different from ours (The rest of “The First Resurrection“) that I want to discus quickly. Some critics of The Bible I’ve encountered have suggested that Yeshua’s sacrifice on the Cross doesn’t mean anything since he knew he’d be Resurrected. But The Logos didn’t just become a Man temporarily, he became one permanently.

Revelation 5:5&6 “And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain.” It’s well known that Yeshua still had his wounds from the Crucifixion when he was walking on the Earth following The Resurrection via the Doubting Thomas story. And Zechariah 12 and Revelation 1 both tell us he’ll still be Pierced when he returns to be reunited with the Redeemed of Israel in Petra. But here we see it implied he’s Pierced right now at his Father’s right hand, even though he’s not in the physical realm.

None of the other Saved I believe will still have the wounds that caused their Death when their Resurrected, I can’t picture Rachel Scott walking around in the New Jerusalem with multiple gunshot wounds to her head, chest, arm and leg. That’s the permanent part of Yeshua’s sacrifice for us, he’s going to carry His wounds forever so we won’t have to carry ours.