Where Is Jesus Between His Death and Resurrection?

Where is Christ after He dies on Friday afternoon and before He rises on Easter Sunday? Both Scripture and Tradition answer this question. Consider the following excerpt from a second century sermon as well as this meditation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. … He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him—He who is both their God and the son of Eve. … “I am your God, who for your sake have become your Son. … I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.”

Nothing could be more beautiful than that line addressed to Adam and Eve: “I am your God, who for your sake have become your Son.”

St Ephrem the Deacon also attests to this descent among the dead and describes it rather colorfully:

Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strongroom and scattered all its treasure. (Sermo de Domino nostro, 3-4. 9: Opera edit. Lamy, 1, 152-158. 166-168)

Scripture also testifies to Christ’s descent to the dead and what He did: For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison. … For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does (1 Peter 3:18; 1 Peter 4:6).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church on Christ’s descent to the dead (excerpts from CCC # 632-635):

[The] first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ’s descent into hell [is] that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead.

But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there [cf. 1 Pet 3:18-19]. Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell”—Sheol in Hebrew, or Hades in Greek—because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God [cf. Phil 2:10; Acts 2:24; Rev 1:18; Eph 4:9; Pss 6:6; 88:11-13].

Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer [cf. Ps 89:49; 1 Sam 28:19; Ezek 32:17-32; Luke 16:22-26]. “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior … whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell” [Roman Catechism I, 6, 3].

Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.

[So] the gospel was preached even to the dead. The descent into hell brings the Gospel message of salvation to complete fulfillment. This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption.

Christ went down into the depths of death so that “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” [1 Peter 4:6]. Jesus, “the Author of life”, by dying, destroyed “him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and [delivered] all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” [Heb 2:14-15; cf. Acts 3:15].

Henceforth the risen Christ holds “the keys of Death and Hades”, so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” [Rev 1:18; Phil 2:10].

God in flesh died on the cross and in the process the temple veil was split. He acts as our advocate before the father and all who may enter in. What you propose is that the veil should be restitched with Christ’s glory hidden behind your own vague ideas of Jewish old customs and practices that are already fulfilled in Christ or rejected completely by him as the traditions of men.

I quote simple scripture to prove a point and you call me simple minded. As for what I believe for the church, the gentiles and the Hebrews of the future....it will not be a restored covenant from Mount Sinai as you claimed in our last series of “encounters” but as Micah 4 says “The law will go out from Mount Zion...!”

In Context then...”Micah 4 “

The Mountain of the Lord

4 In the last days

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
and peoples will stream to it.

2 Many nations will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

3
He will judge between many peoples
and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.

4
Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the Lord Almighty has spoken.

5
All the nations may walk
in the name of their gods,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord
our God for ever and ever.

The Lord’s Plan

6 “In that day,” declares the Lord,

“I will gather the lame;
I will assemble the exiles
and those I have brought to grief.

7
I will make the lame my remnant,
those driven away a strong nation.
The Lord will rule over them in Mount Zion
from that day and forever.

8
As for you, watchtower of the flock,
stronghold[a] of Daughter Zion,
the former dominion will be restored to you;
kingship will come to Daughter Jerusalem.”

You need not bother wasting time responding to me, if you wish, if you think I’m so much fairy dust...you see you are a means to an end in that I am speaking to others around you. God seeks those who will worship him in spirit and in truth.

I’m supposed to be impressed when a stuff shirt uses big mumbo jumbo words like “Notzerim” when I suspect he doesn’t even know what half of it means himself.

Yet I do understand that God above, in the 70 or 80 years most of us have,expects that we are all to make a “race of it”...to give knowing him a good start as he by his Spirit will meet us halfway!. What we really need to know and what we really are to become will be written inside of us already, like an operating system on a disc drive inside of bodies that are perfect.

As for the 1000 year reign...as other scripture says”No longer will one say to another...”Know the Lord” as the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the Earth as waters cover the sea!”

This ol’ pagan is impressed by one single solid thing...A God who became man, who bled and died so that I might have life and that, more abundantly. It impressed a lot of Pagans who heard such messages from the Apostle Paul. It was that fact about Christ that all the prophets and “Notzerim”(Nazarines or Nazoreans...right, hot shot?) were perfectly clear about. Everything in the Bible points to Christ!

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>> “ What you propose is that the veil should be restitched with Christ’s glory hidden behind your own vague ideas of Jewish old customs and practices that are already fulfilled in Christ or rejected completely by him as the traditions of men.” <<

No, you are apparently totally unconsious.

What I support is what yesghua demanded.

I reject all of the contortions that men offer, such as Judaism, modern “christianity,” and all the other varients thereof.

What Yeshua and his apostles preached was the covenant presented at the first Shavuot on Mt Sinai, perfected in his sinless blood. The “perfect law of liberty” as his brother James explained it.

That is the narrow path of Yeshua that leads to the required garment of righteousness to enter the wedding feast. It requires endurance in the covenant to the end, as Yeshua proclaimed.

All else is man made. There is absolutey nothing in the scriptures, nor the NT writings that suggests anything else. The 15th chapter of the Acts is a tutorial on how to bring new converts into the covenant gradually, as all previous believers were also brought in.

Squirm in confusion all you wish, but all I suggested to you is that we not waste each other’s time fiddling with your deep confusion.
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