It is asked, 'How could they have entered paradise that day when Jesus lay in the tomb for three days?' Paradise, of course, was the Jewish abode of spirits (not the bodies) of the righteous dead. (cf. 2 Cor. 12:4) This is the same as someone saying today, 'I'll see you in heaven' with a time prior to the resurrection of all men in mind.

One of the most outspoken critics of the Bible’s inspiration over the past two decades has been author Dennis McKinsey. Over a sixteen-year period in the 1980s and 1990s, he edited a journal called Biblical Errancy, which was touted as “[t]he only national periodical focusing on Biblical errors, contradictions, and fallacies, while providing a hearing for apologists” (McKinsey, 1983, 1:1). He also published two books on the subject of Bible “errors”: The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy (1995) and Biblical Errancy (2000). One of his writings that seems to have spread more widely than others is a pamphlet he authored on why Jesus should be rejected as man’s God and Savior. Allegedly, man should reject Jesus as Lord for many reasons, including why He lied about His whereabouts to the thief on the cross. Jesus told the thief on the cross, “[T]oday you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). But McKinsey asks: “How could they have been together in paradise that day if Jesus lay in the tomb for three days?” (McKinsey, n.d.).

Although McKinsey has asked what he feels is a rhetorical question (that begs the negative answer, “He could not have seen the thief on the cross during this time”), those who are even remotely familiar with Scripture surely recognize how weak and uninformed this allegation truly is. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament reveal that man is composed of both soul/spirit and body (Zechariah 12:1; Matthew 10:28; 1 Corinthians 5:5). At death, the spirit separates from the body. When Rachel died, Genesis 35:18 says, “her soul was departing;” it separated from her body. After the death of Jairus’ daughter, Jesus commanded her to “arise,” after which “her spirit returned, and she arose immediately” (Luke 8:54,55, emp. added). Implied in this statement is the fact that her spirit had departed from her body at death. Where did the spirits of Rachel and Jairus’ daughter go? To the realm of departed spirits, known as sheol in the Old Testament and hades in the New Testament (cf. Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:27; Luke 16:23).

The reason Jesus could truthfully say that He would meet the thief on the cross that very day in paradise is because, while Christ’s body was placed in a tomb for three days, His spirit went to the part of the hadean realm known as paradise (Acts 2:27; Luke 23:43), along with the spirit of the thief on the cross. Unlike the spirits of the wicked and unforgiven that await Judgment Day in the part of the hadean realm known as “torments” (Luke 16:23), Jesus and the thief on the cross dwelt together in paradise (or “Abraham’s bosom”—Luke 16:22).

The fact that Dennis McKinsey would introduce Jesus’ statement to the thief on the cross as a reason why Christ should not be accepted as man’s Savior, surely testifies to the weakness of his case. “Therefore by their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:20).

Luke 23:43
—Did Christ err when He told the thief on the cross that he would be in paradise the day Christ died?
Problem:
If Christ did not go to heaven until at least three days after His death, how can the thief be in paradise the day Christ died?
Solution:
Christ’s
soul
went immediately to paradise, which is the third heaven (
2 Cor. 12:2–4
), but His
body
went to the grave for 3 days. Jesus said on the cross, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit” (
Luke 23:46
,
niv
), which indicates His soul went to be with the Father in heaven the very instant He died. When Jesus said to Mary after His resurrection, “I have not yet ascended to My Father,” He was referring to His
body
ascending into heaven 40 days after His resurrection (
Acts 1
), not to his
soul
going to heaven between death and resurrection. Thephrase “descended into hell” is not in the earliest Apostles’ Creed but was added much later. (See comments on
Eph. 4:8
.)

Does Jesus’ Promise to the Criminal in Luke 23:43 indicate that humans have an enduring soul?

A central aspect of Jehovah’s Witness doctrine is the denial that there is any soul or spiritual component of a person that continues to exist after the person dies. Death is the cessation of all personal existence. This view, of course, does not fit well with a normal reading of Jesus’ words to the repentant criminal who died alongside him on Calvary:

“And he was saying, ‘Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!’ And He said to him,‘Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.’”(Luke 23:42-43).

If, as Jesus promised, the man would be with Him in paradise that very day, this obviously implies conscious personal existence after death. To get around this, Jehovah’s Witnesses change the punctuation in their version of the Bible so that it reads:

“And he said to him: ‘Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise,’” (Luke 23:43 NWT).

By moving the comma over, it changes the meaning of Jesus’ words so that He is not promising that the man would be in paradise that very day. Instead, He is speaking on that day, but promising that the man would be in paradise without specifying when, allowing it to be in the distant future at the time of the resurrection. The Jehovah’s Witness will point out that there were no punctuation marks in the original Greek and will insist it is our translators who are inserting the comma in the wrong place. It is fairly easy to see, however, that the traditional placement of the comma is correct and that the Jehovah’s Witness is altering the text to force it to fit their doctrine.

First of all, the Jehovah’s Witness version doesn’t make sense. Why would Jesus emphasize that He was telling that man today? Of course He was telling Him today. He could not be telling Him yesterday or tomorrow. By definition, any time you tell anyone anything, you are telling them on the day you tell them. How could you not be? It is a frivolous waste of a word, which is especially hard to imagine when Jesus is gasping for breath while slowly dying during a Roman execution. But even if they had been chatting comfortably over dinner, the phrase would have no meaning. One might emphasize that they are telling you today if they were apologizing for not telling you sooner, contrasting it with something they said previously, or emphasizing your need to remember and obey on into the future the thing they are saying this one time. None of those things apply here. There was simply no reason for Jesus to put emphasis on the day he was speaking rather than on the immediacy of His promise. In the context, the only meaningful way to read the verse is the traditional form, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.”

Secondly, the Jehovah’s Witness translation of this verse is inconsistent with the rest of the gospels. Earlier in Luke, when Jesus is talking to Zaccheus, we read even in the Jehovah’s Witnesses New World Translation:

“At this Jesus said to him:‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham,'”(Luke 19:9 NWT).

Not that we do not read:

“At this Jesus said to him today: ‘Salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham,'”

Today is when salvation has come. Today is not superfluously pushed over to the clause about Jesus speaking. In the same way, today is when the criminal will be in paradise and should not be meaninglessly pushed over to the clause about Jesus speaking. Indeed, Jesus’ consistent pattern of speaking testifies to this. Jesus prefaces His statements with,“I say to you,”“Truly I say to you,”and even“truly, truly I say to you”very frequently in all four gospels and even once in the Book of Revelation. This is something distinctive and unique about Jesus’ own speech pattern. No one else in the Bible talks this way, but Jesus speaks this way all the time. Interestingly, as often as He does this, one never finds him adding a superfluous “today,” or anything of the sort, to the phrase. There is a consistent use of this phrase throughout Jesus’ life and even after His resurrection, and never once does He frivolously add the detail that He is truly saying something to you “today.” The Jehovah’s Witnesses are mistranslating the passage here to avoid the obvious implication.

Thirdly, elsewhere in the New Testament, the word “paradise” is used for a present heavenly abode. Paul says to the Corinthians:

“I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter,” (2 Corinthians 12:2-4).

Paul speaks of a man who was caught up to paradise, parallels this to being caught up to heaven, and is clear that this was not necessarily just a vision by was, perhaps, a bodily experience. Paradise, then, must refer here to a heavenly abode that currently exists. Paul, writing infallibly under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, defined Paradise as a present, heavily reality to which a man could ascend either in or out of the body. It is also worth pointing out that early Christians frequently used the word “paradise” to describe the conscious state of believers’ souls between bodily death and future resurrection. Irenaeus, for example, defined paradise as a place of Edenic comfort where the righteous go upon death awaiting future immortality on the day of resurrection, and indeed the place to which Enoch and Elijah were caught up alive in the body and presently dwell. 1 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 5, Chapter 5To take another instance, Tertullian connects the idea of Paradise with the picture in Revelation 6:9-11 of the conscious souls of those who have died in Christ awaiting the day of final judgment and future resurrection. 2 Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul, Chapter 60These early Christians are, of course, fallible human beings, and their writings are not perfect or devoid of error, but they show us how the earliest readers would have understood Jesus’ words. Clearly, they saw Paradise as the place to which the criminal would ascend immediately after death. They believed in a conscious human soul. This understanding of Paradise fits what we find in Paul’s writings, and makes the most sense out of Jesus’ promise to the dying man.

Lastly, even if, purely for the sake of argument and against all evidence and plain reason, we accept the Jehovah’s Witness version of Jesus’ words, it still leaves them with a problem. If “paradise” means future, bodily resurrection on a restored, Edenic earth, then for Jesus to be with the man in paradise would require Jesus to descend from heaven and dwell upon the earth again. Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, deny that Jesus will do this. They believe that Jesus’ “return” is a figurative reference to a purely heavenly reality. According to Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jesus is an archangel without a physical body and He will never again come literally back to the Earth. They claim that Jesus will rule over Paradise earth from heaven, but will not actually be there Himself. So, even on their modified version, they still have to mince Jesus’ words so that, not only would the man not be in Paradise that day but actually thousands of years later, the man would also not be with Jesus even when he did finally rise again in Paradise. Jehovah’s Witnesses simply do not believe Jesus’ words to this man. Jesus is saying something that Watchtower doctrine absolutely cannot accept. It is just one more place that the Bible and Jehovah’s Witness teachings are in irreconcilable conflict.