Quote:
Originally Posted by Me
According to Webster, paradise is a place of bliss; a region of supreme felicity or delight. All three occurances of the word in scripture would mean this. It's taught that the paradise of Luke 23:43 could not be the paradise in the 3rd heaven because Jesus didn't ascend there that day, instead He went into the heart of the earth, so we conclude that Abraham's bosom is the paradise He is speaking of here.
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The only way of making the paradise of Luke 23 refer to Heaven is if Christ was referring to the Father when he told the thief "to day shalt thou be with me", which could work, BUT then we are faced with another difficulty because we teach no man could go to Heaven until Christ had purified them first (Hebrews 9:22-24), so there would have to be a special exception made for that thief, which I doubt there was.