This is a tenet of faith in the Word of Faith movement. It is claimed that Jesus spent the time between His burial and resurrection in Hell battling Satan and suffering for us. It preaches really well. Each of the big TV star word-faith preachers has their own dramatic spin of Jesus being tortured, then overcoming His captors and whuppin' up on Satan and snatching the keys to Hell and Death from him. Some even claim that belief in this is essential to salvation. The problem is that it is 100% unscriptural. They've substituted the traditions of men for the Word of God.
The notion goes back to the medieval version of the Apostles' Creed, which contains (in English) the line "He descended into Hell." The more ancient versions of the Creed do not contain this line, and the Greek word translated as "Hell" is "katotata," which literally means "the lowest things." The Greek words for Hell in the NT are "gehenna" and "Hades," not "katotata." The word "katotata" does not even occur in the NT.
There is no scriptural basis for this doctrine. Those that hold it go and pick out verses for it, but what they are doing is constructing a doctrine, then looking for proof-texts, not reading the text. If Jesus spent that time in Hell battling Satan, why did He tell the thief on the cross that he would be with Him "today" in paradise (Luke 23:43)?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment