Acts 2:34 For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, ;
JL: Of course David did not ASCEND into heaven only Christ has ASCENDED into heaven. No one went to heaven before Christ. Mankind could only be taken into heaven by the power of God, after Christ’s ascension. Before that man’s soul went to Sheol. Man cannot ASCEND into heaven. If David’s soul is now in heaven, I believe he is, he would have been taken, in soul, along with the OT great crowed of witnesses when Christ ascended, Hb11.
David’s body or dust will still be in the sepulcher on earth till the resurrection of the body at the END when Christ returns. Now after Christ the just souls are in the Heavenly Jerusalem [Hb12:22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the HEAVENLY JERUSALEM, and to an innumerable company of angels, 23 To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to THE **SPIRITS OF JUST MEN MADE PERFECT, 24 AND to JESUS THE MEDIATOR of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.] Notice scripture says the SPIRITS OF JUST MEN, we know BODIES are raised at the last day. Yet the SPIRITS OF JUST MEN are NOW in, the Heavenly Jerusalem, the same place Jesus is present.
Many human beings even now have eternal life, they posses the very life of God, which absolutely must begin here on earth, with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, in fact eternal life is, ONLY, given and received in this life, not after death. Eternal life and immortality are not quite the same. Good angels have both immortality and eternal life as they posses God. Satan and fallen angels have immortality, they do not die, yet they do not posses eternal life. They are separated, CUT OFF, from the life of God and heirs to eternal punishment, immortal existence and all the chaos and mayhem being CUT OFF from God entails. Their existence is called the second death, it is not a real death nor a real life, but existence. Their life is destroyed, just as substance abuse can literally destroy man’s body and life, to the point he is only existing, yet not bodily dead.
The body will put on IMMORTALITY at the resurrection, as the flesh or body is not yet immortal, yet the soul is. The resurrected bodies, of the just and unjust, will have immortality, but only the just have eternal life along with a glorified body, because the Holy Spirit indwells the just soul. [Jn5:28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves [not Hades but mnemeion=Greek] shall hear his voice, 29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. Dan12:2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.] The unjust’s body will be the same body but changed to reflect the shame and contempt of their particular sins. The God created spirit=soul is IMMORTAL by its very created nature. Just as angles, good or fallen, by their very created nature, are immortal, even though some, the fallen angels and men without the indwelling Holy Spirit, do not have eternal life, they are eternally CUT OFF.
In Gn37:12-36 when Jacob was told his youngest son Joseph was killed by a wild animal, [Gn37:35 And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For **I will go down into the grave [Hades] unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.] Jacob thought Joseph’s body was devoured by an animal (Gn37:33) not buried. Therefore, Jacob could not have thought Joseph’s body was in a grave, or Hades=Sheol=Hell as you say, where a dead body is placed.
If Jacob thought Sheol was only a grave, where a body is placed, how could Jacob say he will go down to Sheol to his son, knowing his son was not buried in a grave, thinking his son was in the belly of animal? Only in soul=spirit could he go down to his son in Sheol. Where all souls went after death, before the ascension, as our Lord reveals in Lk16:19-31 Lazarus and the rich man. All that Joseph’s brothers brought back was Joseph’s coat, soaked in blood, Jacob didn’t say take me to the place you buried his remains, or go look for his remains, that we may bury them. Jacob nor anyone mentioned bodily burial, even as an option, yet Jacob said he would go down to Sheol to his son, obviously he did not mean a GRAVE for a body, because his son was not buried.
[Gn 49:33 And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and YIELDED UP THE GHOST, AND WAS GATHERED UNTO HIS PEOPLE.]
Joseph, Jacob’s son, had Jacob’s body embalmed, before leaving Egypt, Gn50:2-3, that took forty days, then the body was taken from Egypt to Canaan for burial in a cave where Abraham had been buried, but Jacob was gathered to his people when he died. Yet he was only finally, bodily, buried in a grave, cave, at lest two months later. Joseph said in Gn50:5 My father made me swear, saying, Lo, I die: in my GRAVE (QEBER 6913 Hebrew, burying place, grave, sepulchre) which I HAVE DIGGED for me in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou BURY (QABAR=Hebrew, bury, 6912) me. Now therefore let me go up, I pray thee, and BURY (QABAR=bury, 6912) my father, and I will come again. 6913/6012 Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, also Death and the Afterlife, by Dr. Robert A. Morey, Bethany House Publishers.
