No!! Jesus said:
"Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43,
Note the comma. This results in a great deal of confusion but remember that Jesus was not raised from the dead (resurrected) until the third day, so it would be impossible for him to be in "paradise" with the thief on the very same day he made the statement. Not to mention that the proper grammar indicates the true meaning of what he said.
Jesus told him on that day "today" that the thief would be resurrected to a paradise on earth. After the second coming.
This is what the Jewish thief would expect according to his own religious background.
Psalm 37:29 " The righteous themselves will posses the earth, And they will reside forever upon it."
Isaiah 65:17, 18; " For here I am creating new heavens and a new earth; and the former things will not be called to mind, neither will they come up into the heart. But exult, you people, and be joyful forever in what I am creating."
Psalm 115:16 " As regards the heavens, to Jehovah the heavens belong, But the earth he has given to the sons of men."
Isaiah 45:18; "For this is what Jehovah has said, the Creator of the heavens, He the God, the Former of the earth and the Maker of it, He the One who firmly established it, who did not create it simply for nothing, who formed it even to be inhabited: 'I am Jehovah, speaking what is righteous, telling what is upright.'" |
