We have been working through a series on the book of Revelation. This book of the Bible can be difficult to understand for a variety of reasons, so we are taking it slow and studying it bit by bit together.

In Chapter 1 verse 18, John writes what Jesus tells him. “I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.”

This week, we are going to analyze Hades. Before we go further, we must first define Hades.

There are two areas of Hades, also known as the place of the dead or Sheol, one area is filled with fire, torment and agony. The other area is filled with peace, love and joy. If you were to die right now and you do not believe in Jesus as the Son of God, you would go to the part of Hades filled with fire. It is critical to understand that once a person has died and is in Hades, it is too late to make a choice to believe in Jesus. We know this from Luke 16, starting in verse 22. “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side [heaven]. The rich man also died and was buried. ²³ In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. ²⁴ So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

²⁵ “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. ²⁶ And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.”

There is no way to cross over the two areas of Hades. One area is the place of torment, full of fire and agony for those who die today without believing in Jesus. The other is full of love and peace.

Revelation 20:14 says, “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. ¹⁵ Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”

The lake of fire is Hell. We will study Hell more as we continue through the book of Revelation. Hades and Hell are two different places. For now, it is important to know Hell is real and people who do not believe in Jesus will spend eternity there. The Bible warns people repeatedly that anyone whose name is not written in the book of life (those who refuse to believe that Jesus is the Son of God), will go to Hades immediately when they die. The physical death is known as the first death, which sends people either to be with Jesus in Paradise (Heaven) or to Hades (Luke 23:43, 2 Corinthians 12:14). Then as we are told in Revelation, Hades is thrown into the lake of fire or Hell. This is the second death, where all people who are in Hades because of their lack of belief in Jesus will then spend their eternity in Hell.

We can think of Hades as a temporary holding place for those who die. For those who believe in Jesus, when they die today, they go to Paradise also called heaven. Even if someone chooses to believe in Jesus as they take their very last breath, they go to Paradise. We know this because the thief that was hanging on the cross next to Jesus was indeed a thief, he confessed to being a criminal. Yet, when the thief said to Jesus that he believed in Him, Jesus said to the thief, “I promise, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Luke 23:43. Not after the thief cleaned himself up or got down from the cross and did a few good things to make up for his bad behavior. Right then and there, Jesus was going to take the thief to Paradise.

Who do you need to tell about Jesus today before it is too late and they are sent to Hades, a place of torment and agony?

Jesus is now holding the keys to Hades, which gives Him all power and authority over physical death and eternal death. We will cover next week exactly how Jesus obtained the keys to Hades.

Let’s pray. Father in heaven, thank You for Jesus. Thank You for the wisdom that we have in the Bible. Lord, help us to apply Your Word in our everyday lives. Lord, help us to study Revelation and give us understanding. In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

We have been working through a series on the book of Revelation. This book of the Bible can be difficult to understand for a variety of reasons, so we are taking it slow and studying it bit by bit together.

In Chapter 1 verse 18, John writes what Jesus tells him. “I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death . . .”.

The book of Revelation is Jesus telling us what has happened, what is happening and what will happen. In verse 18, Jesus explains to John that He was dead and is now alive forever. But how was Jesus raised from the dead and what does that mean for us today?

When someone holds the keys to something, it means that they have authority over it. In verse 18, Jesus is telling us that He has all power and authority over death. On the cross, Jesus died and was then buried. Death was allowed to take over Jesus’ physical body so God could raise Jesus from the dead. Why?

Everything that God does is to show His glory, to show all humans that He is real. God allowed Jesus to die so that God could raise Jesus from the dead. There are many verses that tell us God raised Jesus from the dead. We will look at just a few. Acts 3:15 is addressing the Jewish leaders of the time and says, “You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. And we are witnesses of this fact!” And Acts 4:10 is answering a question asked by the Jewish leaders about a man healed by Jesus, “he was healed by the powerful name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the man you crucified but whom God raised from the dead.”

Galatians 1:1 says, “This letter is from Paul, an apostle. I was not appointed by any group of people or any human authority, but by Jesus Christ himself and by God the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead.” Colossians 2:12 says, “For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead.”

Acts 2:23 says, “This man [Jesus] was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. ²⁴ But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.”

What does God raising Jesus from the dead have to do with our lives today? Romans 8:1 says, “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. . . . The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.” This means that once you believe in Jesus as the Son of God, you have the Holy Spirit living in you. This is the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, giving Jesus authority over death. When we sin, we invite death to come into our lives, so we need Jesus to save us from death (Romans 6:23). But what does it mean that Jesus saves us from death?

All humans will die a physical death, which means our bodies will die. Every human also has a spirit living in our bodies. When our physical bodies die, that spirit either goes to heaven or hell. If we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, our spirit goes to heaven because we have the life-giving Holy Spirit living in us. We have been freed from the power of sin that leads to death. This does not mean physical death, but instead spiritual death. If we do not believe in Jesus, then our spirit goes to hell for all eternity, this is spiritual death. Jesus died on the cross to save us from spiritual death (John 3:16). All we have to do is believe in Jesus.

Let’s pray. Father in heaven, thank You for Jesus. We believe that He died on the cross for our sins. Thank You that Jesus is the perfect and final sacrifice. Thank You for the wisdom that we have in the Bible. Lord, help us to apply Your Word in our everyday lives. Lord, help us to study Revelation and give us understanding. In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

We have been working through a series on the book of Revelation. This book of the Bible can be difficult to understand for a variety of reasons, so we are taking it slow and studying it bit by bit together.

In Chapter 1 verse 18, John writes what Jesus says to him. “I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death . . .”.

Jesus explains to John that He was dead and is now alive forever. For those of us who believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, it is easy to miss what Jesus is saying. He is confirming that He was dead. To better understand what Jesus is saying, we need to explore several questions. Did someone else have the keys of death? And if so, who and how did they get them?

The keys of death go all the way back before the Garden of Eden. Before God created the earth, God created angels (Job 38:4 – 7). One of those angels was named Lucifer. He was beautiful, talented and a worship leader among the angels (Isaiah 14:12). Lucifer served in the very presence of God the Almighty. But a problem arose when Lucifer wanted to be like God (Isaiah 14:13-15).

Lucifer became filled with pride and wanted the angels to worship him, not God. Lucifer’s pride was a problem for a few reasons, pride is sin and sin cannot be in the presence of God. The other problem for Lucifer is that God will not share His glory (Isaiah 42:8). This may make God sound selfish if we do not understand that God created human beings to worship Him. For those that choose not to worship God, they worship all kinds of other things. For example, some people worship animals, trees or other people, but all of these things die. Some people worship money, fame or power, all of these are temporary as well. God is saying that He created us to worship only Him, a loving Father who is eternal and all-powerful. Worshipping anyone or anything else only dooms us in this life and eternity.

Once Lucifer tried to steal God’s glory, he was thrown out of heaven. Jesus describes this in Luke 10:18, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven”. God not only kicked Lucifer out of heaven, but He also renamed him from Lucifer, which means light, to Satan, which means adversary. When Satan was thrown down to earth, he became the ruler of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4 and 1 John 5:19).

We know that when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, “Sin entered the world because one man sinned. And death came because of sin. Everyone sinned, so death came to all people.” Romans 5:12. The keys of death were given to Satan by Adam. God gave man authority over the earth (Genesis 1:28 and Psalms 8:6). When Adam sinned, he handed to Satan the keys to death because “the one who sins is the one who will die” Eziekiel 18:1 and the “wages of sin is death” Romans 6:23.

All people are sinners; this means that we all fall short of perfection or being without sin (Romans 3:23). Once we sin, we are dead, spiritually dead. To be spiritually dead means to be separated from God and destined for hell, (which is different than Hades as we will see in a future post). Most of us sinned when we were children, we lied to get a cookie or took a toy that was not ours or any other number of things. Does it mean that we are still dead in our sin and separated from God if we have since tried to be good people? The answer is yes. We cannot be perfect, no matter how hard we try. Just looking at someone of the opposite sex and thinking a lustful thought is sin (Matthew 5:28). We all sin. So, what are we supposed to do?

Until Jesus died on the cross and shed His blood for our sins, there was no path to be reconciled to God except that of the Old Testament. The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy describe the sacrifices that were required for the people to bring to God for forgiveness of their sins. They would sacrifice animals when they sinned, but the forgiveness was not permanent. Each time they broke God’s Law, they committed a sin. Then the people would need to go to the Temple and make another sacrifice. Why? Because without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 9:22).

Jesus now holds the keys to death meaning that if we accept that we are sinners and He died on the cross for us, then we are free from death. We are free from spiritual death; this does not mean that we will live forever on earth and our bodies will never die. Our physical bodies will still die, but our spirits will go to heaven and spend eternity with Jesus. His sacrifice on the cross is a perfect, permanent sacrifice made for us. All we have to do is believe in Him.

Let’s pray. Father in heaven, thank You for Jesus. We believe that He died on the cross for our sins. Thank You that Jesus is the perfect and final sacrifice. Thank You for the wisdom that we have in the Bible. Lord, help us to apply Your Word in our everyday lives. Lord, help us to study Revelation and give us understanding. In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.