The Thief on the Cross -- my research. =)

There's no better way to spend Shabbat then in the Word of G-D! =)

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In my 8.5 years of being a Christian, I never really studied up on the thief on the Cross.

Who knew it would cause so much division though...wow...

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So with my Bible, concordance, pen and paper, this morning / afternoon I went to work to get a better understanding of it. (Luke 23)

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What most Christians quote is that 1 verse, verse 43 which states "And J-SUS said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, to day shalt thou be with me in paradise".

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But they are missing something, something important...verse 42!

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Verse 42 states this " And he (the thief) said unto Jesus, L-RD, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom".

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Christ's reign of His kingdom is still yet to come! He hasn't come back for His church.

Unless me and millions of other Christians have missed the boat and He came back without us knowing. =)

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And now to the verse that sends everyone overboard...

Verse 43 -- "And J-SUS said unto him, Verily, I say unto thee, to day shalt thou be with me in Paradise".

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So I sat there with my Bible and concordance and thought to myself 'what exactly is this paradise Yahshua speaks of?'

According to Strong's # 3857 it's a park, an Eden (place of future happiness).

Sounds like my kind of place! =)

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I seen that the word paradise is only mentioned 2 more times in Scripture so I decided to scope them out to see what they say.

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II Corinthians 12:4 - " How that he was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words, which is not lawful for a man to utter"

It's Paul's vision of paradise. It also mentions about a 3rd heaven in verse 2.

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The final verse of Scripture about paradise is found in Revelation 2:7 --

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" He that hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches; To him that over cometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of G-D".

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Guess what? The tree of life talked about here is the same tree of life talked about in Genesis 2:9, Genesis 3:22 in Eden!

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I can see how Yahshua wants to restore His kingdom to what it used to be like in the garden of Eden, before the fall.

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So, after I figured that out, I sat wonder why all the confusion over this verse?

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The confusion lies that many believe the thief when to Heaven with Yahshua after they both breathed their last breath.

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Both Yahshua and this thief, after breathing their last breath, went to their graves.

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We know what happened to Yahshua, he laid in the sepulchre 3 days, 3 nights before His resurrection.

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You all can disagree with me or give me some actual Scriptural proof as to where the thief went to, but I still see that all of us who breathe our last breath are asleep until Yahshua's 2nd coming. I don't have to repeat Scriptures for that as you can find them all in my previous blog posts.

Why would it be any different for the thief?

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But Yahshua did promise the thief that he will be in the new Kingdom with Christ when He returns.

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A few tidbits to think on:

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* When Yahshua was talking to the thief on the Cross, He was talking to him that day it was happening, i.e. in his case he was saying "today", meaning 'the day that I'm talking to you'.

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* The statement "I say unto thee to day" is a Hebrew custom that whenever they wanted to emphasize something important, they would make the statement 'I say unto thee this day'. "This day" occurs 70 times in the book of Deuteronomy alone!

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* In the original manuscripts there were no chapters, verse divisions, paragraph markings, punctuation (i.e. commas and periods), they were all added by man. It was men who decided based on their beliefs where all the periods and commas go.

Figures...

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So, I praise Yahweh for this study and I do believe I have a better understanding of this controversial topic. =)

Shalom,

Dawn