Where did Old Testament believers go when they died?

If Old Testament saints are in view at all, they must have been in that blissful part of the unseen world described as “Abraham's bosom” (Luke 16:22). Where, then, did the Lord take these captives to? Certainly they have not got resurrection bodies yet. What, then, did they get that they had not before? Or, where could they have been before, and why captives? And if captives to death, that could only be as to their bodies; and are they not still that till the first resurrection? Indeed, the idea is simply absurd on the face of it, and bristles with insurmountable difficulties.

It is hardly the place here to open up the whole question of the place of departed spirits in Old Testament times. Much has been said of a questionable character, and nothing but a sober examination of the entire subject would furnish a proper statement. There can be no question that the souls of the righteous were at rest, and that the souls of the wicked were not. As to the righteous, it has been thought that they remained in an intermediate place until the resurrection of our Lord, who not only came forth from Hades Himself, but brought out a multitude of captives from a place of comparative obscurity and dread into the wondrous blessedness of what He has secured for His redeemed. There are crudities about this, to say nothing of more serious objections. The Christian naturally shrinks from the thought that Abraham, for instance, remained in a place of obscurity as a captive until the resurrection of Christ; and our Lord's mention of him in Luke 16:22-26 clearly denies this. And when we think that all blessing has been secured through the death and resurrection of our Lord, we would be under the necessity of considering that Old Testament saints did not have forgiveness, and were not born again, until after that work had been accomplished which would furnish the righteous basis on which it could be done. This we know is contrary to Scripture, and compels the conclusion that the souls of the saints in Old Testament days entered into the presence of God and were at rest in the same manner in which believers now depart "to be with Christ, which is far better." Paradise is but another name for the third heaven — God's presence (2 Cor. 12). But we must digress from our subject no further.

(6) The Future. Those who have studied the Lord's great prophetic discourse on the Mount of Olives cannot fail to have seen how clearly is taught the truth of His second coming. It is connected, however, not with the rapture of the Church (a mystery as we have already seen not then made known), but with the judgments preliminary to His establishing His millennial Kingdom. The Kingdom of the Son of Man is to be introduced, as we saw, by judgments of the most fearful character upon His enemies who have their place with the devil and his angels in the Lake of Fire. The future for the saved is described not merely in its millennial characteristics, but in the eternal state. "In My Father's house are many mansions:" these are the everlasting habitations. "Abraham's bosom" too, from a Jewish point of view, sets forth the blessedness of the people of God after death. There is no need for the grotesque interpretation of some that our Lord released the Old Testament saints from the bondage of sheol where they had been confined until His resurrection. The saints are evidently comforted, as Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, and this is the Kingdom of God where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are. The judgment of the 25th of Matthew, as has been said, is a judgment of the living nations prior to the Lord's coming to set up His Kingdom.

"This mortal," or "mortal body," leaves the soul by implication immortal. "Mortal" is always used of the body; and it is clear that death does not touch the soul, for you have the wicked man in hades after death. I am quite satisfied that it is true to say "immortal soul." The opposite thought is founded on the words, "who only hath immortality," spoken of God, of course (that is, who only hath it in Himself); but this does not mean that He cannot communicate it. So the angels are only immortal by God's making them so, and we the same. If I were immortal in spite of God, then I might do as I like without fear of death. In the rich man and Lazarus is a perfectly clear case: the one goes to torment, the other to Abraham's bosom, after death. But they say "these are only figures." "Yes," I reply, "but figures of what?" I am not going to Abraham's bosom, but I am to Christ. I asked them this, "Could God give eternal life to a dog?" Yes. "But would the dog be answerable for what he had been doing while he was a dog?" and if he would not be, Christ had not to die for him, and so they destroy atonement. Put it in another way: if I am a mere brute, only a clever brute, until I get Christ as my life, my responsibility is gone.

A. There is vagueness as to the unseen in the O.T. The gospel only has brought to light life and incorruption. But we never do find Sheol or Hades associated with joy or blessing like Abraham's bosom or paradise. Consistently therewith Psalm 16:10 teaches that Jehovah would not leave Messiah's soul unto Hades, any more than His body to see corruption. To leave in seems the force of neither Hebrew nor Greek in the correct text; and early superstition made much of the error, revived widely in our day. The Revisers are right in Psalm 16:10, wrong in Acts 2:27, 31.

Further, sheol or hades affects necessarily both saint and sinner. And as the body, lying in death (a condition) must in a general way be in the grave (a locality) so the soul, which is in hades (a condition) must be somewhere (a locality). Now Scripture tells us plainly where the souls of the Lord’s people are after the death of their bodies.

Is there a life beyond the grave? Often and anxiously the question is agitated amongst men. The Son of God answers it for us here. The beggar died, and was forthwith, not extinguished nor consigned to centuries of insensibility, but carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The position is described from the Jewish point of view. Conscious blessedness and that in the company of the father of the faithful, is plainly set forth. The rich man also died, and of him it is said, "he was buried." Why is this added in his case? Clearly because the Lord would carefully distinguish between body and soul. The man's body was buried, doubtless with all the pomp and circumstance that suited so wealthy a person; but immediately afterwards we read "in Hell (Hades) he lifted up his eyes, being in torments." Let me repeat, his body was laid in the tomb, but his soul went to Hades. Beyond all just controversy, this is the Saviour's meaning in the passage before us.

Such was man, such the Jew in present life, according to his thoughts of earthly good; but when death comes, when that stands revealed which was beyond the grave, the difference at once appears in all its solemnity. Then we have things in their true light. "And it came to pass that the poor man died." And how different! There is not a word of his burial: perhaps, indeed, he was not buried; but he "was carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom,"417 the place of especial blessedness according to a Jew, in the unseen world, with the most honourable of God's servants waiting on him.

Abraham their forefather was believed by the Jews to be in the highest place of happiness, and their writings show that 'to be with Abraham' and to be in his bosom were terms they used to express the highest security and happiness. Our Lord therefore used an expression that was well understood by His hearers and needed no explanation. Luke 16:23. It stands in contrast to hell, or hades, and was therefore figurative of heaven.

The fact is, he has started with a mistaken idea of what is comprehended in the term sheol, which really includes the grave, as well as the region in which the unclothed spirits await their resurrection. Thus Jacob exclaimed in the bitterness of his soul, when called to part with Benjamin, that his sons would bring down his grey hairs in sorrow to the grave (sheol). (Gen. 42:38.) The congregation of Dathan and Abiram went down alive into the pit (sheol). (Num. 16:30, 33.) After the same manner Job speaks (Job 24:19), and the psalmist (Ps. 30:3; Ps. 49:14; Ps. 141:7), and Isaiah (Isa. 14:15). For by sheol was understood what we might call the whole underworld. Both body and soul are represented as entering it. Hence the prophet can depict in graphic language the dead in their graves (in sheol), with the worm above them and under them. (Isa. 14:11.) To a Hebrew this language was not incongruous, for there are worms in the grave. Graves then can be described as in sheol, for into it the whole person, both body and spirit, was regarded as entering. Now this is a very grave fact for one who opposes the correct teaching of John 5, and denies the resurrection of the body, affirming that it "is lost sight of in the ground for ever." (Page 139.) The supposed scripture authority (page 99), for interpreting John 5:28 of dead persons as distinct from their bodies, is found to be no scripture authority at all. The resurrection of the body, which our Lord there distinctly teaches, the author avowedly denies, and, as he states, on the authority of scripture, which, when examined, only demonstrates his mistaken view of what in the Old Testament is called sheol.