The Place of The Dead

BY D.M. Panton

No dead soul stands in the presence of God in heaven. The Type, first of all, forbids it. Aaron shall bring the blood “within the veil, . . . and make atonement for the holy place. . . . And there shall be NO MAN in the tent of meeting when he goeth in to make atonement, until he come out” (Lev. xvi.17). This is exactly the high priestly work on which our Lord is now engaged. “Through His own blood [He] entered in once for all into the holy place, ... [to cleanse] the heavenly things with better sacrifices,” that is, His own (Heb. ix. 12, 23). So long as our High Priest tarries within the Temple precincts, no man is anywhere in the heavenly courts: until, at the Second Advent, He comes forth, one Man alone is in the Temple in heaven. 

The Law of God also forbids it. To touch a corpse, or even a grave, was to be unclean. “Whosoever in the open field toucheth . . . a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be UNCLEAN seven days” (Num. xix. 16). Nor was it a corpse only which defiled: a far deeper defilement sprang from contact with a departed spirit. “There shall not be found with thee . . . a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer” — i.e., one who holds intercourse with the dead —”for whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto the Lord” (Deut. xviii. 11). Death, in all its parts, is Legal uncleanness: it is the visible Curse of God, the holy, resting on man, the sinner; it is the foul rotting of the leprosy of sin. None such can stand in the Holy Temple, until resurrection, resting on the Blood, has finally obliterated all taint and consequence of sin. 2 Cor. v. 4.
 
One crucial example is given that the dead are still unascended. David had said: — ”Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt Thou give Thy Holy One to see corruption.” David, says the apostle, could not have spoken this of his own soul. Why not? Because, Peter says, “this Jesus did God raise up”; whereas “David is NOT ASCENDED into the heavens” (Acts ii. 34), and therefore he could not have spoken it of himself. This assumes that no disembodied human spirit is ascended to God. For if not David, who is? “He died and was buried, and his tomb is with us unto this day.” Death is an unclothing (2 Cor. v. 4): God’s kings and priests may not appear before Him unclothed. Ex. xxviii. 42, 43. “No man hath ascended into heaven” (John iii. 13).Affirmative revelation also establishes the truth.
 
THE RESURRECTION of the body is a fact absolutely cardinal to the Christian faith. “If the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (I Cor. xv. 16): —Atonement has never been made, Death still reigns, the Curse clings to the dead or ever. But Christ is risen: and “if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. viii. 11). John v. 28. For a naked spirit, judicially disembodied, to enter the presence of God on high would be to approach Him in the shrouds of the Curse.
 
For THE BODY has been redeemed. Glorified human spirits are unknown to the Word of God: glorified human persons — body, soul, and spirit — are to be the perfect fruit of redemption. “How long, O Lord, holy and true?” (Rev. vi. 10), cry the naked souls under the Altar, waiting to be clothed upon: so “ourselves also . . . groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom. viii. 23); for “we wait for a Saviour . . . who shall fashion the body of our humiliation, that it be conformed to the body of His glory”(Phil. iii. 21). Earth is one vast field sown with the dead: out of it, like the rising Lord, will soon burst the waving harvests of resurrection. I Cor. xv. 2026. This cannot be until our High Priest issues from the Temple. “The hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs” — not in the heavens — ”shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good” — the saved are therefore included — ”unto the resurrection of life” (John v. 28); for “the dead in Christ shall rise” — not descend — ”to meet the Lord in the air” (I Thess. iv. 16). *Meanwhile two compartments enfold the departed.
 
Dives, like the citizens of Sodom, imprisoned in the lower Hades, already suffers the vengeance of eternal fire. Luke xvi. 23. Jude 7. PARADISE, in which our Lord and the penitent Thief met on the night of the Crucifixion (Luke xxiii. 43), and where, in His divinity, He still is (Ps. cxxxix. 8), is described, now as a rest, now as a slumber, now as a harbour, now as a garden, now as a home. “For me to die,” says Paul, “is gain; . . . for it is very far better”(Phil. i. 21): wherefore “we are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. v. 8). Life in Christ is good: death in Christ is better: resurrection in Christ is best. “I am in the happiest pass,” said Rutherford, in his dying hours, “to which man ever came. Christ is mine, and I am His: and now their stands nothing betwixt me and resurrection, except Paradise!”
 
* The actual locality .of Sheol, or Hades, is indicated by such scriptures as these: — Matt. xii. 40; Num xvi. 3033; I Sam. xxviii. 13, 14; Job xxvi. 5, 6; Amos ix. 2; Eph. iv. 9; and Ps. lxiii. 9. So scripture speaks of descending into it (Prov. i. 12; Isa. v. 14; Ezek. xxxi. 15, 16), and of rising up out of it (I Sam. ii. 6; Ps. xxx.3; Prov. xv. 24; Rom. x. 7).