Did Old Testament Saints Go Immediately to Heaven?
It has been taught by some — and Willcock candidly admits he once held this view — that Old Testament saints at death did not go immediately to heaven but to a blessed waiting-place within Sheol, from which Christ released them at his resurrection. The primary Scriptural basis for this view is Luke 16:22–26, the account of Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus, it is noted, was taken not to heaven but to Abraham’s bosom, while the rich man went to torment. Between the two, a great gulf is fixed.
But the expression Abraham’s bosom, Willcock argues, was a thoroughly Jewish idiom for heaven itself. Abraham is the spiritual father of all believers (Romans 4), and the Jews commonly expressed the happiness of heaven in these terms — to be gathered to Abraham, to feast with him. At feasts, as the Last Supper itself shows, guests leaned on one another’s bosom. And Jesus himself said that many would come and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 8:11). The same feast, the same company — it is heaven being described throughout.
The Rich Man in Hell: What Luke 16 Actually Teaches
The fact that the rich man in torment could see Abraham and Lazarus far off does not prove that heaven and hell are in close proximity. It shows, rather, that those in hell can see heaven in the distance — a fact that Luke 13:28 confirms explicitly, where Jesus tells the wicked that they will see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, while they themselves are thrust out. And the great gulf fixed between the two places is not a physical distance but a spiritual and moral absolute — no passage between the two, in either direction, is possible.
Whether or not the account of Lazarus and the rich man was a literal incident (and Willcock inclines to think it was), it most certainly represents the real experience of those who have died. Jesus drew his parables from the actual order of things. The two men represent the two categories of the dead, and their experience after death is a real one.
Purgatory and Soul Sleep: Two False Doctrines Refuted
Two major false doctrines are addressed in turn. The Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory teaches that the soul must undergo further purification after death before entering heaven. But 2 Corinthians 5:8 admits of no delay: to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. There is no intermediate place of suffering between death and heaven. Christ purged our sins — that is the only purgatory the Bible knows. The blood of Jesus Christ, not some period of posthumous suffering, is the sole basis on which the soul enters the presence of God. Willcock notes bluntly that the whole apparatus of purgatory — masses said for the dead, indulgences purchased, the uncertainty of how long the suffering will last — is a money-making device with no Scriptural foundation whatsoever.
The Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of soul sleep teaches that at death the soul ceases to exist and only receives life again at the resurrection. But 2 Corinthians 5:6–8 explicitly distinguishes between being at home in the body and being present with the Lord. The soul cannot be absent from the body if it is dead with the body. And Philippians 1:21–23 makes Paul’s conviction unmistakable: to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better. If at death he was simply extinguished, of what use would that be? How could it be gain in any sense? It would be loss.
2 Corinthians 5: The Tabernacle and the Mansion
The body is called in 2 Corinthians 5 both a house and a tabernacle — a house because it is so well made by God and houses the soul; a tabernacle because, like a traveller’s tent, it is a temporary dwelling. At death the tabernacle is dissolved, but the soul, its occupant, moves on. It moves not into vacancy but into a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens — heaven itself, the mansion Christ went to prepare in John 14:2.
The believer groans in this earthly tabernacle, Willcock observes, not because he desires non-existence, but because he longs to be clothed with the heavenly glory — to enter the perfection and purity that death will usher in. Mortality will be swallowed up of life. And that transition is immediate: not a long wait, not a gradual awakening, but an immediate entry into the glories and beauties and light of heaven, to behold the face of Christ and to be joyfully received by him.