My friends and I have been discussing the geography of the afterlife, and since I don't have this put down anywhere, I thought I would put all my thoughts on the topic here.
Just so we're on the same page, here's a visual representation of my thesis:
And here's a verbal description: after death, the basic idea from the Old Testament involved everyone's body going to the realm of the dead, known as Sheol. With that said, it seems that Sheol was worse for the wicked than for the righteous and that the two groups were separated in the afterlife. However, there was also an expectation of a future release from Sheol, specifically the resurrection and possibly a sort of prison-break. The latter option happened in an event called the Harrowing of Hell, in which Christ broke into Sheol, took His people out, and took their souls to the Lord's throne room in order to await the resurrection in further blessedness.
Before I go much farther, there are three other things I would like to say. The first two are credits. First, I would like to put forth Rev. Tom Wenig's, a pastor in Indiana whose blog is called afterdeathsite, where he describes much of what I am about to say here. The next is Rev. Eamonn Ferguson, a pastor in Missouri whose podcast really inspired me to think a bit more about the topic. The final thing is that I would like to acknowledge this is a different view than I have expressed in my other posts about the harrowing of hell (1 2). My previous view was that because things in heaven/sheol/etc. are outside of time, the saints had some kind of instantaneous harrowing and thus never experienced Sheol but nonetheless were rescued in the Harrowing. However, I no longer find that very tenable. For one thing, I am not convinced that sheol and heaven are without time. We know that God is outside of time by virtue of his creating time and from many scripture passages (2 Pet 4:8, Ps 90:4, Rev 1:8, 2 Tim 1:9), and we know that certain events happened outside of time (Titus 1:2, 2 Tim 1:9, Rev 13:8). However, we don't have any reason to believe that anything but God is timeless, and in fact, it would seem that those in heaven even have the ability to experience time, as the saints ask the Lord "how long" (Rev 6:10). Thus, it would seem that Sheol, Heaven, and everything else in creation do experience time, even if they don't experience its degradations.
Now, all this is very different from the common picture we have of the afterlife. Not even mentioning the modern assumption that the soul-body division will be eternal, most often we think that the saints went and go to heaven, meaning the divine throne-room, and the wicked to hell, which is the place of infinite torment for all things. Even with the common portrayal of the Harrowing, that makes it appear as if the righteous and the wicked are dwelling together until Christ's death, which we know cannot be (2 Cor 6:14). However, the saints like Jacob (Gen. 42:38), David (Psalm 6:5), and Job (Job 14:13) all say that they will be there, meanwhile it is also said to be the dwelling place of the wicked (Numbers 16:33, 1 Kings 2:6,9, Job 21:7,13). This has led some to conclude that in most passages, especially those in reference to the saints, it is merely a reference to the saints. This, however, is similarly difficult to maintain. In Psalm 9, David describes the Lord rescuing Him from the gates of death and later Him returning the wicked to Sheol (v. 13 and 17), seemingly showing the two of them going to the same place and David being rescued from it. Of course, in plenty of other places David describes himself pleading for the Lord's rescue from Sheol (Ps. 6:5), and Job too describes himself hypothetically hiding from the Lord's judgement there (Job 14:13). In Ps. 18:4-19, we see a very vivid description of the Lord rescuing the psalmist, with him being wrapped in the cords of death (4-5) only for the Lord to descend from the heavens (9-10) and break through the earth (7) to snatch him up from a watery pit (16). One could call these metaphors, since they are either hypothetical (in the case of Job) or reference something else like the destruction of those fighting David, but the reality of the antitype does not negate the reality of the type. That is to say, the reality of a realm of Sheol is not negated by the reality of David's strife. This is similarly true for 1 Peter 3's use of Noah's ark to describe baptism. We should never claim that Noah's ark is fictional because it is a type for baptism, but rather that the former is real and points to the latter.
From this, it seems we're still in our Scylla who says that the righteous and wicked don't dwell together and Charybdis who say that the righteous and wicked both go to Sheol. The solution to this is found in an oft misunderstood passage: Luke 16's story of Lazarus and the rich man. Oftentimes, the story is misunderstood as referencing heaven--the divine throneroom--and hell--the place of eternal fiery torment. This, however, is not the case for two reasons. For one thing, the rich man is not said to go to Gehenna or something else that is more directly used for hell elsewhere in the New Testament. Instead he is merely said to go to "Hades," the direct Greek equivalent of the Near Eastern Sheol. What's more, Lazarus is never described as being taken upwards or into heaven but rather is "carried by angels to Abraham's bosom" (16:22). Nowhere is Lazarus described as dwelling in the presence of God or some kind of eternal bliss, but Abraham simply said that he is "comforted," contrasted with the rich man's "anguish." (25). Of course, it does seem much more blissful for Lazarus than the rich man, who even is said to burn, a description similar to hell, but the presence of God--the primary source of bliss for the dead in the New Testament (Phil. 1:23)--is never even mentioned. Instead his comfort seems to come from the presence of his fathers, a common idea in the Old Testament, where one who die are said to go to be "with his fathers." After that long rabbit trail, this passage seems to solve the conundrum mentioned above: "between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us" (Luke 16:25). The righteous and the wicked then go to the same place but do not dwell together, as there is a great chasm that separates the two!
Another very significant two passages for this view are Acts 2:27-31 and 13:35-37. Both include references to Ps. 16:10, where David describes one looking forward to his flesh not seeking corruption and not being abandoned to Sheol. This the apostles Peter and Paul take as references to Christ, even though they are written in the first person. Peter's reasoning is as follows: “Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption." And for St. Paul's: "For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption." From these sections, I could easily imagine one then taking all the numerous passages from the psalmist about being rescued from Sheol as referring simply to the resurrection of Christ. However, I think it's significant to note which passages the apostles referenced. They are not describing one of rescue but rather of one being prevented from it in the first place. This, the apostles rightly say, never was true of David, who died, "was laid with his fathers," and whose body decayed. Christ, on the other hand, had a body that did not decay, rising from the dead and gloriously descending into the underworld as victor over it rather than captive.
Another view which I know of which would seem close to mine but which I want to push back against is that the nice neighborhood of Sheol is the heaven that Christians will go to after death. I simply don't find this biblically tenable for a few reasons. For one thing, it negates the whole point of the Harrowing as a prison break. This is the constant narrative of David, which is that Christians will go to Sheol but will do so in the hope of their release from it. In addition, this is also very strange from the perspective of the book of Revelation. God's throne is described everywhere as in the heavens, but this would require us to believe that every time we look up to "heaven" (which literally means "sky"), we are really looking into the earth. Instead, a much more natural reading of every text involved is that heaven is one place, always represented as upwards, and Sheol another, represented as downwards.
The final passage that I think is relevant for our afterlife myth-busting is Revelation 20:11-15, which describes the final judgement:
"Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."
In this passage, we begin with a judgement in which some amount of the dead stand before the throne and are judged based on the book of life. Then another group of dead come from Death and Hades and are judged as well. Then Death and Hades are themselves thrown into the lake of fire, which is elsewhere described as Gehenna, a flaming waste pit, followed by the wicked who dwelt in them. The first and, in my opinion, most important thing to note here is that Hades is distinguished from the lake of fire. That, at the very least, we must be able to acknowledge. Thus, it is untenable to hold that anyone is in "hell" before the eschaton, but instead they are imprisoned in Sheol. If we look at this in tandem with our Lord's description of the judgement in Matthew 25:31-46, something will also be made clear. In the passage, the righteous sheep are judged before the wicked goats, and I would contend the same is happening here. The righteous dead all stand before the Lord and are judged according to the book of life, and then the wicked are spit out from Death and Hades, who are immediately cast into hell, and those same wicked are judged and cast into hell themselves.
While this all seems grim, we cannot forget, the righteous are not in either hell or Sheol! This blessing was first given to the righteous Enoch and Elijah, but after the harrowing, all the faithful are inheritors of heaven's bounty! Pardon the long passage, but there's nothing I can leave out in good conscience:
'After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. “Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”'
In this most glorious vision, we see all the saints--not just those of Old but those of New. When we see this multitude, my Greepa, my Pastor Welmer, all those we love and who are in Christ, they are there too. And they, like the blessed Jews of old, sit day and night with palm branches, ushering in the Lord who will come soon. They are there with all the saints who we know and who we don't, with their robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb and their own virtue. O Lord, may we be counted among those blessed ones, or even better, may you come soon. Amen.
Holy Sheoly! that was great!