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What did Jesus say to the thief?
“Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” ([Luke xxiii, 43]).
Instead of going to the Christian Heaven above, they went to the Jewish-Pagan Sheol (Hell) below. Did Jesus recant on the cross? Did he renounce the Kingdom of God when God deserted him? Concerning this remarkable passage, Smith’s “Bible Dictionary” says:
“The Rabbis in the time of our Savior taught there was a region of the world of the dead, of Sheol, in the heart of the earth. Gehenna was on one side, with its flames and torments; Paradise on the other, the intermediate home of the blessed.... It is significant, indeed, that the word ‘paradise’ nowhere occurs in the public teaching of our Lord, or in his intercourse with his disciples. Connected as it had been with the thoughts of a sensuous happiness, it was not the fittest nor the best word for those whom he was training to rise out of sensuous thoughts to the higher regions of the spiritual life. For them, accordingly, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God, are the words most dwelt on. With the thief dying on the cross the case was different. We can assume nothing in the robber-outlaw but the most rudimentary forms of the popular belief. The answer to his prayer gave him what he needed most, the assurance of immediate rest and peace.”
The explanation of the apologist is as lame as the story of the Evangelist. Did Jesus go to Hell with the thief because the thief was unfit to go to Heaven with him? This apologist says that Jesus used these words—gave expression to a false doctrine—because the thief was incapable of comprehending the true doctrine. But this conflicts with the alleged words of the thief himself which show that he did comprehend the nature of the kingdom of Heaven. It was this, and not the peace of the grave, for which he prayed.