We're guilty of the crimes that we have committed. We deserve this execution, but this man is innocent.

As soon as your eyelids close in death, and my eyelids close in death, we will be together,

but in paradise.

the course of his crucifixion much was said about the thieves that were crucified beside Jesus in the initial stages both of them joined in mockery of Jesus and with the crowds who were saying he saved others but himself he cannot save.

And if you really are the son of God, come down from the cross.

And finally, one of the thieves had more of this than he could stomach.

And something happened suddenly, transcendently,

supernaturally, as the spirit of God opened his eyes and he said to the malfactor that was being executed with him,

hey, we're guilty of the crimes that we have committed.

We deserve this execution, but this man is innocent.

Then he turned to Jesus and he said,

remember me when you come into your kingdom.

If ever there was a deathbed conversion, there it was that afternoon on the cross next to Jesus. And Jesus gave his personal assurance of salvation to the thief next to him, saying, I say to you, today you shall be with me in Paradise.

There are those historically who have argued that the souls of people who die in Christ do not go immediately

into the presence of God to Paradise or to Heaven, but rather they remain in a state of suspended animation,

a kind of psychoponiquea or soul sleep that endures until the last judgment when then they will be

finally restored to life and it will seem to them that it is all in a twinkling and of a eye just as when you go to bed at night

and wake up in the morning you have no real sense of how many hours have passed in that

intervening time. in that

argument by saying to the thief today, not simply after the

argument by saying to the thief today,

not simply after the last judgment, but today you will be with me in paradise.

...