Journal: Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal
Volume: DBSJ 26:1 (NA 2021)
Article: Ransomed From The Hand Of Sheol: The Heavenly Destiny Of Old Testament Saints In The Afterlife
Author: Kyle C. Dunham

DBSJ 26 (2021) p. 3

Ransomed From The Hand Of Sheol:
The Heavenly Destiny Of Old Testament Saints In The Afterlife

Kyle C. Dunham1

Writing near the end of the 1950s, the renowned dispensational eschatologist and professor of Bible exposition, J. Dwight Pentecost (1915–2014), formulated the standard dispensational understanding of the afterlife in the Old Testament (OT). “[Sheol],” argued Pentecost, “was the Old Testament word for the abode of the dead. It was presented, not just as a state of existence, but as a place of conscious existence (Deut. 18:11; 1 Sam. 28:11–15; Isa. 14:9). God was sovereign over it (Deut. 32:22; Job 26:6). It was regarded as temporary and the righteous anticipated the resurrection out of it in the millennial age (Job 14:13–14; 19:25, 27; Ps. 16:9–11; 17:15; 49:15; 73:24).”2 Apart from a few quibbles or nuances, the view that Sheol constituted the place for all the departed dead of the OT era, whether righteous or wicked, and that the righteous anticipated deliverance out of it through resurrection in the eschaton, would prove the typical view among dispensational theologians.3

DBSJ 26 (2021) p. 4

Not all dispensationalists, however, concurred with this construal. Writing several decades later, Charles Ryrie in his Basic Theology outlined Pentecost’s view and then disagreed:

I believe that the Old Testament saint at death went immediately into the presence of the Lord. The repentant thief was promised he would be in paradise the day of his death (Luke 23:43), and paradise was the presence of the Lord (2 Cor. 12:4). At Christ’s transfiguration Moses and Elijah appeared in His presence talking with him. Are we to understand that this conversation between Christ, Moses, and Elijah took place in the upper compartment of hades where Moses at least would have been until the death of Christ? Are we to understand then that the transfiguration of Christ took place in paradise-hades? Are we to un...