What of Heaven, Hell, and the Intermediate State?

Rethinking Hades, Paradise, and the Fate of the Dead

If heaven is not a place we “go to when we die,” but the final, embodied state of humanity when God’s will is done on earth as in heaven, then a number of familiar questions immediately press in on us.

What, then, is Hades or Paradise?

Who went there?

Is Hades the same as hell?

Do people now go straight to heaven or hell after death?

To answer these questions, we need to let Scripture tell its story in its own sequence—rather than flattening everything into a single, timeless afterlife scheme.

1. What Is Hades (or Sheol)?

In the Old Testament, the dominant word for the realm of the dead is Sheol. When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek (the Septuagint), Sheol was rendered as Hades.

Sheol/Hades is not hell in the later Christian sense. It is the underworld—the realm of the dead, where all the dead go, righteous and unrighteous alike.

It is portrayed as:

• Gloomy and shadowy

• A place of weakness and silence

• Lacking praise, joy, or the felt presence of God

Importantly, Sheol is not a place of punishment. Nor is it a place of reward. It is simply the condition of death itself—a holding realm for the dead, awaiting God’s future action.

This fits well with the Old Testament’s limited but growing hope: death is real, bleak, and final—unless God does something new.

2. What Is “Paradise,” Then?

By the time of Jesus, Jewish thought had developed further. Influenced by prophetic hope, resurrection belief, and Second Temple theology, many Jews came to believe that Hades was divided:

• A place of comfort for the righteous (often called Paradise or Abraham’s bosom)

• A place of anguish for the wicked

Jesus reflects this worldview in Luke 16 (the Rich Man and Lazarus). The parable does not invent a metaphysical map; it uses shared imagery to make a moral and theological point.

When Jesus tells the repentant thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise,” he is not describing the final heaven. He is describing the righteous side of the intermediate state—rest, peace, and security with God, while still awaiting resurrection.

Paradise, then, is not the final destination. It is a temporary state of rest for the righteous dead, anticipating resurrection and new creation.

3. Is Hades the Same as Hell?

No—and this is one of the most persistent confusions in Christian thought.

Hades is temporary.Hell (Gehenna / the Lake of Fire) is final.

Hades exists to hold the dead until resurrection. Revelation 20 is explicit:

“Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them.”

After this, Hades itself is destroyed.

Hell—biblically referred to as Gehenna or symbolized as the Lake of Fire—is not the same thing as Hades. Gehenna represents final judgment, the ultimate consequence of rejecting God’s life and rule.

So:

• Hades = the intermediate realm of the dead

• Gehenna = the final outcome after resurrection and judgment

Conflating the two produces confusion, fear-driven theology, and distorted preaching.

4. Do People Go Straight to Heaven or Hell Now?

If heaven is the final union of heaven and earth, then the answer must be no—not in the way people often mean it.

After death:

• The righteous are with Christ (peace, rest, joy, presence)

• The unrighteous remain in a state of separation and loss

But neither group has yet received their final destiny, because:

• Resurrection has not yet occurred

• Judgment has not yet been completed

• New creation has not yet been fully realized

The New Testament’s focus is not “going to heaven when you die,” but being raised when Jesus returns.

Even Jesus himself did not bypass this pattern. He was raised bodily—not released into a disembodied heaven.

Christian hope is not escape from the world, but renewal of the world.

5. The death of death

Jesus’ resurrection is portrayed as the beginning of the end for death itself. He does not merely survive death; he invades it, breaks its gates, and inaugurates resurrection life.

These raised saints are not resurrected into final glory. They are signs, previews, shockwaves of what has begun.

As Paul later puts it:

“Christ has been raised… the firstfruits of those who have died.”

Hades still exists—but it is living on borrowed time.

6. How This Fits Our Reimagined Heaven

If heaven is:

• Where God’s will is done

• The union of visible and invisible realms

• Embodied, communal, joyful, and peaceful

• Already present but not yet complete

Then Hades and Paradise make sense as temporary accommodations, not eternal endpoints.

They are waiting rooms, not destinations.

Hell, likewise, is not a medieval torture chamber but the final outcome of persistent refusal of God’s life and love—whether understood as eternal conscious existence or ultimate destruction remains debated within faithful Christianity.

But the shape of the story is clear:

• Death is real—but defeated

• Judgment is coming—but just

• Resurrection is central—not optional

• Heaven is not “up there,” but coming here

Final Word

Christian hope is not about floating away to a better place.It is about God setting the world right, raising the dead, healing creation, and dwelling with humanity.

Hades is not hell.Paradise is not heaven.And heaven is not the end of the story—it is the world finally made new.

“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with humanity.”

That is not escapism. That is resurrection hope.