One of the prayers I had trouble memorizing when I was a Blessed Sacrament Grade School student in North Omaha was the Apostles Creed. I learned the Our Father and the Hail Mary, OK. I even got the standard confessional prayer without a lot of trouble. Yet, the Apostles Creed always gave me trouble. One phrase in that prayer always got me. It is He (Jesus) “descended into hell.” The prayer says (I had to look it up because I still don’t remember it that well) that Jesus was “born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; He descended into hell; on the third day He rose again from the dead.” Did Jesus descend into Hell between His death and resurrection? First, you must notice that the statement “descended into Hell” was an addendum added to the Apostles Creed somewhere around the 4th Century AD. There has been much debate regarding it, and many believe the phrase should not have been added and would prefer to remove it. There is no valid biblical support for the phrase. Paul says, in Ephesians 4:9, that Jesus “descended into the lower parts of the earth.” Many suggest, such as Kenneth Copeland, that this means that Jesus went to hell for three days to release the spirits of Old Testament saints.
I believe that when the Old Testament saints departed this earth, they went directly to heaven. God took Enoch to be with himself (Genesis 5:24, Hebrews 11:5). Elijah was caught up in “heaven” when he departed (2 Kings 2:1). Abraham’s bosom in Luke 16:23 is a description of heaven. Geisler says, “When Old Testament Saints appear before the cross, they appear from heaven, as Moses and Elijah did on the Mount of Transfiguration.” The question is, what happened to Jesus while he was in the grave for three days? The phrase “descended into the lower parts of the earth” is referring to Christ’s body being buried. He was crucified, He died, and He was buried like all humans. He took that death experience as His own. The Phrase simply means caves, enclosures, or graves.
Psalm 139:15 uses the phrase “lowest parts of the earth” to refer to a woman’s womb. It might mean “from the enclosure of the womb before birth (as Jesus took upon himself with Mary) to the enclosure of the tomb that he took for us after His death on the cross. We all come from the womb of a woman and go to the tomb at our death. Further, Philippians 2:10 tells us that Hell is not in the “lowest parts of the earth.” Rather, it is “under the earth.” Jesus’ body, like ours, went into the grave. His Spirit, on the other hand, went to heaven. He said to the thief on the cross, “This day, you will be with me in paradise.” He also said to His Father in Heaven, “Into your hands, I commend my spirit.” The Spirits of all believers go to be with the Lord immediately at death. There is no purgatory or temporary place for it. Hallelujah! Biblically, there does not appear to be a place we go at death to cleanse us of our sins before allowing us into heaven. Jesus’ words to the thief on the cross assure us of that. So, too, do the words of Paul to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5:8, “Absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”