alive again: he had not then ascended into heaven, nor had he descended into hell: how plain is it then that the region of his sojourn must have been hades—the intermediate world? Saul believed that Samuel was still alive, notwithstanding his bodily decease: he would not otherwise have made the effort which he did to "bring him up,"[1] and as the woman applied to for the purpose made no reference to the locality of Samuel's interment, it seems plain that sheol was not understood to be the grave from which he had to be invoked, but that common place of assembly for all spirits on their first departure hence.
The classical signification of the term hades, is the place "where the souls of the righteous and the unrighteous are detained;" thus it is neither heaven nor hell, but that region in the future life of which we have spoken as the world of spirits. And although this word, in the New Testament, is generally translated hell, it does not always mean that miserable abode of the lost. That condition is more fully expressed by the terms "gehenna," "hell-fire," and tartarosas, "hell."[2] And when this idea is intended by hades, it is indicated more by the context than the term, for there are many cases in which it is manifestly not employed with such a meaning. For instance, it is said, "Death and hell (hades) delivered up the dead which were in them; and they were judged according to their works. And death and hell (hades) were cast into the lake
- ↑ 1 Sam. xxviii. 15.
- ↑ Matt. v. 22; Mark ix. 47; 2 Pet. ii. 4.
'Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed; so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us that would come from thence' (Luke xvi. 26). Hence it is evident, that all who go to hell remain there to eternity, and that all who go to heaven remain there to eternity." The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrines, 239.
