 | Pastor Dave grew up in northern New Jersey in a very diverse cultural area. He attended Central College in Pella, Iowa received a BA in sociology and psychology. He was an offensive guard for their NCAA Div III National Championship team in 1974. In speaking for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, he sensed a call to full time ministry. Meeting is future wife Sandy at Central, went to Michigan to finish her college while Dave started Western Seminary in Holland, Michigan. Dave married Sandy in 77 and completed his Masters of Divinity degree in 78. Pastor Dave’s first church was in Fort Lee, New Jersey, home of the George Washington Bridge. Their three children were born there and he also served as a Police and Fire Chaplain for the city. In February 1991, they came to Wichita to start Harvest Community Church. In 2006, he received his Doctor of Ministry degree from Covenant Theological (Presbyterian) Seminary in St Louis. During that year he gained a daughter-in-law with now 2 grandsons of 3 years and 6 months old. Besides Pastoring at HCC for the past 20 years, he has been Director of the SCSD & WPD Police Chaplains for 11.
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Religion
2008-07-01 15:11:00
Where was Jesus after he died?
Question: What did Jesus do (where did He go) after He died on the cross until he was resurrected?
Answer: There are some things the Lord gives us clear answers to in His word, and there are other things we can only imagine or speculate about but not speak with any authority. The early church Fathers help us in the factual time line progression written in the Apostles Creed where it states, “crucified, dead and buried, He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead.”
The idea is that Jesus spent that time in the place of the dead, “Hades,” “Sheol” or “Hell.” Jesus experienced the wrath of God on the cross and was buried staying under the power of death. On the third day He gains the victory over death for us. The passages often cited for this understanding comes to us first out of Psalm 16:10 “For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.” Peter in his sermon elaborates on this text further when he says in Acts 2:24-27,31, 24“But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power. 25“For David says of Him, ‘I saw the Lord always in my presence; For He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken. 26 ‘Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted; Moreover my flesh also will live in hope; 27 Because You will not abandon my soul to Hades, Nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay….he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay.”
Now this is why Paul could proclaim boldly, 9“knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.” {Romans 6:9-10} He lived through it, experienced it and then broke death’s chains that no longer have power over the believer. Read again as Paul highlights this victory we have over death because Christ actually died and resurrected, “53For our earthly bodies, the ones we have now that can die, must be transformed into heavenly bodies that cannot perish but will live forever.
When this happens, then at last this Scripture will come true—“Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55-56O death, where then your victory? Where then your sting? For sin—the sting that causes death—will all be gone; and the law, which reveals our sins, will no longer be our judge. 57How we thank God for all of this! It is he who makes us victorious through Jesus Christ our Lord! {1 Corinthians 15:53-57 TLB}
There is also a passage in 1 Peter that may lift the curtain of God’s mysterious ways slightly on what took place with Christ between His death and resurrection. The problem though, the passage is ambiguous and it is hard to interpret by what we know now as to what it exactly means. The passage is 1 Peter 3:18-20}”For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 19in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, 20who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.”
Now there are several interpretations but two are seen as telling us what Christ did during His death and resurrection. One group believes that He went to the prison where the fallen angels are held because they left their spiritual state and had married human women during the time of Noah in Genesis 6:1-4. That Christ went there to proclaim victory. The second interpretation is that Jesus went to the place of the dead and preached to the wicked contemporaries of Noah. As to what He proclaimed is speculative. Some say it may have been the gospel, others say the declaration of Christ’s victory and doom to the hearers. These are only speculations.
The marvelous truth we can know for certain as a believer is that as scripture tells us, “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.” {Romans 6:8} That truth is for us and our loved ones we bury in Christ as Baptism is the illustration of the death and resurrection. May God bless you today as you live in the assurance of the victory you have over death! Alive in Christ, Pastor Dave!
