Matthew 27:52-53 and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
Only in a figurative sense can those passages be interpreted as referring to Hades. Looking at the surrounding verses, it is clear that the passages are saying that rocks split open and that the dead rose from the grave.
This equates, if I am to take the Bible literally and as the inerrant word of God, to many of the dead rising from their tombs, going into Jerusalem, and appearing to many in the city. Yet, there is no historical record of anything resembling such an event outside of the Bible. Zero. If there is, I would very much like to know of it.
It is well known that Jesus called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs and unmarked graves.
And at the time some of these people, temple priests, etc., thought of themselves as too holy to be among the common rabble in the filthy streets of the city where they could be too easily defiled so they had causeways connecting their mansions to the temple mount so they could walk above the rest of the people like stars passing across the sky.
For these people to be seen walking in the streets of the city was like seeing the dead come out of their tombs and graves.
when Jesus told the Pharisees that sinners and prostitutes were entering the kingdom of Heaven ahead of them he was talking about living people entering the kingdom of heaven while they were still on earth. He was not talking about physically dead people floating up into the sky.
Enough with the night of the living dead nonsense already.
A person does not enter the kingdom of heaven when they die, they enter the kingdom of heaven when they come out of their graves and rise to life while they still have a body to ascend in, otherwise, the judgment.
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