Again, in Rev. 2:7, we read the promise which the Saviour gives to the overcomers; and he says: “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.” This establishes another equally important fact, that paradise is where the tree of life now is. Now, if the Scriptures anywhere give us any further information respecting the place where the tree of life is to be found, we have still further testimony respecting paradise.
In Rev. 21 and 22, we have a description of the New Jerusalem, the holy city which is above. In chap. 22:1, 2, we read: “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it [the city], and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruit, and yielded her fruit every month.” By this testimony, we learn that the tree of life, which grows in the midst of the paradise of God, is in the holy city, fast by the river of life, which proceeds from the throne of God. Nothing could be more explicit than this. We have now found the paradise of the New Testament. It is in the third Heaven, where the tree of life is, and where God maintains his residence and his throne. Whoever, therefore, goes into paradise, goes into the presence of God. If the Saviour went there on the day of his crucifixion, with the impenitent thief, he went into the presence of his Father.
Now let us reverently listen to the words of the Lord and believe what he says, while he himself testifies whether he went to paradise on the day of his crucifixion, or not. On the morning of his resurrection, the third day after his crucifixion, he said to Mary, who was about to embrace his feet, in accordance with the ancient custom of deference or worship, “Touch me not; FOR I AM NOT YET ASCENDED TO MY FATHER.” The third day, remember, from the crucifixion, and not ascended into paradise yet!
Struck into a state of bewilderment by this stunning fact, Landis, pp. 209, 211, clutches wildly for some supports by which to rear again his prostrate structure. He feigns to find evidence in John 16:16, that Jesus told his disciples that at death he would go to his Father: a scripture which very evidently has reference, not to his death, but to his bodily ascension, forty days after his resurrection. Then, referring to the fact that the word “ascend” is from anabaino, he says: “Now every tyro knows that in composition ana has very frequently [?] the force of again. Baino alone means simply to ascend; ana adds a shade of meaning.”
It is frequently the case that writers try to drive others into an admission of their statements by representing that they will appear very ignorant and stupid to deny them. But Mr. L., not being a tyro, doubtless understands that nearly every statement in this criticism is false in itself considered, and every one of them wholly so, as applied to the case in hand. Ana, in composition with baino, does not have the force of again. In neither Liddell and Scott, Robinson, Greenfield, nor Parkhurst, is there any such definition as “ascended again” given to anabaino. Baino alone does not mean “to ascend.” No such definition is given to it in the standard authorities here named. It means simply to go, without any reference to the direction; other words, either in composition with it, or in the context, signifying whether this motion is up or down, forward or backward, over or under, &c. In no one of the eighty-one instances of the use of the word in the New Testament, is it translated “ascend again.” And finally, those texts which Mr. L. quotes as containing the word again, as Matt. 3:16, which he quotes, “Christ went up again, or returned,” and Matt. 5:1, which he quotes, “He went up again into a mountain,” the word, again, is not expressed in the English nor implied in the Greek. In only one instance is the word again used with anabaino; that is Gal. 2:1, where Paul says, “I went up again to Jerusalem;” but here the word again is from another word (palin), and anabaino is translated simply “went up.”
Rarely do we meet with an instance of more reckless desperation in the line of criticism. And what is the object of it? It is to have us understand that when Christ says, “I am not yet ascended to my Father,” he means to say, I am not yet ascended again to my Father. And from this he would have us further draw the lucid inference that Christ had ascended once, that is, in his disembodied spirit, between his death and resurrection, and now tells Mary not to touch him because he has not ascended again! It would be difficult to conceive of a more unnecessary and far-fetched inference. And that men will seriously contend for such a view, shows the orbless obstinacy with which they will cling to preconceived notions, though they have only the most groundless trifles to sustain them, rather than surrender them for more consistent views. Nothing can be more evident than that Christ, when he said, “I am not yet ascended to my Father,” affirmed in the most direct manner that since his advent into this world, he had not, up to that time, ascended to his Father.
Rather than thus summarily lose the argument that the thief was still conscious in death, and that the soul is therefore (?) immortal, another attempt is made to adjust the matter thus: Although Christ did not go to his Father, he nevertheless went to paradise, which is not where the Father dwells, but the intermediate resting place of departed souls. Do we then understand them? We found them, a little while ago, arguing from Eccl. 12:7, that the disembodied spirit did return to God; which they claimed to be proof positive that the soul is immortal; and thought it would puzzle the annihilationists not a little. Do they now give this up, and admit that the soul or spirit does not go to God, but only into some intermediate place, called paradise? It matters not to us which position they take, only we wish to know which one it is. We cannot hold our peace and allow them to take one position on one text and another on another, to avoid the embarrassments into which their theory plunges at every turn.
That paradise is no intermediate state, a halfway house between the grave and the resurrection, we have fully shown; for we have the positive statements of the Scriptures to show that paradise is in the third Heaven, where God sits upon his throne; and Christ told Mary, the third day after his crucifixion, in so many words, that he had not yet ascended there.
The popular interpretation of Christ’s language to the thief thus utterly failing, we are thrown back upon the text for some other explanation of the phraseology there used: “Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
There are but two probable ways in which this language can be interpreted: One is, to let the phrase, “to-day,” refer to the time to which the thief had reference in his request. He said, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” He looked forward to the day when Christ should come into his kingdom. And if the “to-day” in Christ’s answer refers to this time, then the sense would be, “Verily I say unto thee, To-day, or this day, the day to which you refer, when I come into my kingdom, thou shalt be with me in paradise.” The word, to-day, is from the Greek, σήμερον (semeron); and all the definitions we find of it would seem to confine it to present time, excluding an application of it to the future. This interpretation, therefore, we think cannot be urged.