Uncle John,
If Jonah was a figure of what would happen with Jesus, then was Jesus tormented like Jonah was for those three days?
The way Jesus was talking about trusting his Father to not leave him in the heart of the earth (in Psalm 16:9-10) makes it seem that he didn’t want to go there any more than he wanted to go to the cross, or even come to earth to start with (Ps. 74:11). I always thought that once Jesus died here on earth that his troubles and tormenting life were over, and the heart of the earth was just a pit stop along the way back to his father. But now i wonder if his pain and suffering didn’t end until things were put in order in heaven when he was with his father again?
Is that right?
Abby
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Hey, my sweet Abby!
I recently found out that some leaders in the Charismatic Movement teach that Jesus was tormented in hell during the three days that he was in the heart of the earth. However, that is hard for me to believe. Jesus would have wanted out of the heart of the earth (hell) because even the Paradise part of it was not a desirable place (though the Paradise part of hell was preferable to the Torment part). After all, Abraham was in Paradise (Lk. 16:19ff), yet he was glad to see Jesus’ day (Jn. 8:56), for it brought him hope of getting out of the heart of the earth. So, the Son of God, knowing that the Father would send him into the heart of the earth, would have spoken through the prophets about the Father’s faithfulness to get him out of that awful place.
As for Jesus suffering torment in the heart of the earth, no righteous person was ever cast into Torment; so, unless Jesus’ taking on our sins made him unrighteous in God’s sight, he would not have been sent there. Some will argue that when Jesus took on our sins, he DID become unrighteous in God’s sight. And Paul did say that God made Jesus “sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him ” (2Cor. 5:21). So, “there you go”, as your cousin Elijah often used to say. If one believes that taking on our sins made God’s Son worthy of suffering beyond the grave, verses exist that he can use to defend that position. I just don’t see it that way.
Uncle John