gordon 2
Senior Member
Concerning the thief term, Luke says he was a criminal. In Greek this is the word kakourgoi, which means “evildoers”.
If the criminal was an evildoer, then he was headed to the resurrection of judgement. Yet Jesus said he would be with him in Paradise. The evildoer thus believed in Jesus. Maybe God lead him to His son. The evildoer repented.
It was sort of his "deathbed salvation" so to speak. Maybe the evildoer did have to go to Paradise and not Heaven. Maybe we all go somewhere as spirits to be with God and return to get a body later and then go to Heaven.
Like we use the same biblical terms yet they mean different things to us maybe the Jews were the same way. If I understood correctly some believed in a cleansing place after death, similar to the Catholic purgatory. Maybe this is the context of what this is all about. The criminal was angling for purgatory and Jesus said, "I'll see you there." We don't really have enough history of what the criminal believed on this subject, but who knows?!
I always found it interesting that Moses never made it to Canaan Land, but he was present at the Transfiguration. Go figure! To my perhaps miscalculating mind something must have happened after his death to get him on a hill in Judea 3000 yrs after he was denied access to that very same place. Who knows?
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