Is There a Temporary Heaven and Hell?

The Bible teaches that every believer who died prior to the Ascension of Christ went to an intermediate heaven called Paradise (Abraham’s bosom; Luke 16:19-23).

But when Jesus ascended after His death, He went into Paradise and took all who were there—all the Old Testament saints, all who had died and believed in God before the Ascension—with Him to the third heaven (Ephesians 4:8-10).

This means that believers no longer go to the intermediate heaven upon death. The soul and spirit of today’s believers go immediately to the third heaven, because Paradise is no longer an intermediate place; Paradise is now with God (2 Corinthians 12:2-4).

However, there is an intermediate hell. When an unbeliever dies, his body goes into the grave and his spirit and soul go to Hades.

Revelation 20 tells us that “Death and Hades delivered up the dead” (verses 11-15). This passage indicates that Hades remains an intermediate hell until the Great White Throne Judgment—when “Death and Hades [will be] cast into the lake of fire”—the permanent hell.

But Hades is not a place of decision. There is no such place as purgatory. The Bible teaches that “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27, KJV).

In Luke 16:26, Abraham describes a “great gulf fixed” between Hades and Paradise, “so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.” This passage illustrates the permanence of the gulf between heaven and hell. We won’t be able to “cross” from one side to the other. Whatever decisions we make about eternity will be made in this life.

----

For a complete study of heaven, request Dr. Jeremiah’s book, The Promise of Heaven: 31 Reasons to Get Excited About Your Eternal Home