[RnMomof7]

John 20 "17Jesus saith to her: Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father. But go to my brethren, and say to them: I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God."
Now I see here that Jesus is not in heaven. Yet by using the word "ascended" it looks like he is going to heaven. If he did not ascend to "my Father". It has to mean he did not go to heaven. The Father is in heaven. If He was in heaven he would of saw God the Father. Thats what I see in the text.

Hi John .

Indeed HIS BODY..which has just been raised from the grave for 3 days and had not yet ascended to the Father and it was His body she wanted to touch.. also interesting is He invited Thomas to touch Him...

The body, the physical Jesus was dead in the grave.. and had indeed not risen to the father ...BUT His Spirit never died.. He promised the thief that they would be together in Paradise that very day..now He was not speaking PHYSICALLY because His body was still in the grave until He rose ...He would not be physically present to the Father until He ascended into heaven physically

We have to remember here we are looking first at the spirit of Christ going to paradise with the spirit of the thief.. and then the ascension of the physical body of Christ into heaven... two different events..

The physical body of that thief still lays in the grave.. not to rise until the final judgement, as will all of our bodies

There is no scripture that implies or states that any "souls" were freed by Christ when He preached to the souls in Shoal. Also the greek word has a common meaning of prison.. but has a secondary meaning of "in a watch"... which would seem to imply a very different meaning if that was the translation ...that would make it sound more like the book of revelation where the martyrs are waiting and watching for God to take vengeance on the world,,

Because scripture leaves the meaning unclear.. we need to take what it says as it is and allow it to remain in the council of God ...but there is no suggestion that Christ was physically in Hell or shoal or the prison ..what ever we want to call it..

[johngrace]

Well you bring up some good points. Thanks for sharing. Also It is nice to exchange without getting into the "I am right your wrong" manner or the gotcha way. Because I really find it totally fascinating this subject. I appreciate your manner.

I have protestant and catholic theology books in storage. The books are in Moving pod storage in Ny. I am in Georgia. I have to pay a big check to bring it down. I have nowhere to put it yet. I live with family down here. I need big room. But Boy do I miss reading some of those books. Well I do have my bible. This bible have since my mom died. I found a good used book store . I found auto-biography of Billy Graham cheap.

Thanks again