Trouble is, you leave out a lot. Christ said, "Today, thou wilt be with me in paradise.". Many Christians understand that before Christ's death on the cross there was one place that was the abode of the souls of the dead. This place was called "hades". Hades was divided into two compartments, Sheol and Paradise also called "Abraham's Bosom". The condemned went to Sheol and the redeemed went to Paradise. The story Jesus told of the beggar, Lazarus, and the rich man spoke of these two places. They were in the same area but had "a great gulf fixed between them" that wasn't cross able.
When Christ died he was buried and he went to Hades to "lead captivity captive". That is, he went to Paradise and lead the redeemed from there to heaven. He never went to Sheol. There would have been no reason, for once a person dies there is no more chance to choose the Lord.
Heaven, the abode of God, was unreachable to anyone until the sacrifice of Jesus, which cleansed the sins of those who were waiting for the Messiah to redeem them. Jesus DID return to earth, but he took the redeemed to heaven, which included the thief on the cross, first. He did not lie and his words were not misquoted.
Sheol the part of Hades where the damned reside still exists. After the Millennial rule of Christ, then Hell will be created for the Devil, the Anti-Christ and the False Prophet according to Revelation 20:10-15. Those who are in Hades will also be judged and cast into Hell. This is called The Great White Throne Judgment.
People who die today either go to Heaven or Hades/Sheol.
Please name them and post their writings
Well put.
Where does it say in the Bible that he took the redeemed to heaven?
People who die today either go to Heaven or Hades/Sheol
Where does it say so in the Bible?
What you say regarding Hades, Sheol and Paradise is simply not historically accurate. They have some things in common (which is a common feature in Mediterranean and Middle eastern relrigions) but are completely different concepts.
The Christian concept is a corrupt Judeo-Hellenic amalgam derived from the Septuagint translation which refers to Sheol as Hades. Both are unrelated to paradise.
Early Christians had different beliefs regarding paradise. However, it was clearly separated from heaven by the end of the 2nd century by Irenaeus.
Origen, also a late 2nd century apologetic, asserted that it was a temporary place where the redeemed souls awaited their resurrection, not eternal bliss. Eastern Churches still hold this view.
It seems, therefore, that only Luke believed Jesus' kingdom was the paradise which is odd to say the least.
So, paradise and heaven are not one and the same, even though that is the belief that seems to persist in the West (as well as Islam) which is why everyone seems to think that Jesus promised the thief that he will be in heaven with him on that day.
My point was and is that (1) in Luke's passage Jesus (con)fuses his kingdom (heaven) with paradise (which is baseless whether he was referring to Sheol or Hades) and (2) that his promise "today you will be with me in paradise" was deceptive because he did not go to paradise on the day he died.
The Church teaches that after dying on the Cross Jesus "went" to hell, not paradise. The Bible says nothing of either. So, where are you getting your story from?
My third point is that Jews did not believe in paradise as such and that he was speaking to a dying Jewish thief in Greek (!) about concepts neither he nor the thief, as Jews, would have believed, using temrinology neither would have used.
Alex asserts that the thief was Greek based on the Church legend concocted centuries later, in order to "harmonize " the story, giving the thief a Greek name and thus "making" him Greek. In this case, Alex argues, the thief would have understood what paradise is as we understand it. But that's simply not so.
To a Greek, paradise was not the kingdom of God in heaven, but the kingdom of the god of the underworld, whose name is Hades. By telling the thief, presumably Greek, that he will be with him that same day in paradise, he was telling the thief that he was the God of the underworld!