In a world increasingly departing from the love of the truth of God’s revelation to man through His written Word, truth is being turned into a lie, and good into evil.  The liar and deceiver Satan has captured the hearts and minds of men and women created in the image of YHVH God, blinding them to the truth and glory of the gospel and of the righteous judgment awaiting every person by the Man Jesus Christ/Yeshua the Messiah.

The one true living God is not a deceiver, but the God of Truth.  His kingdom is the Kingdom of Truth.  The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth.  The words of the Father is Truth.  Jesus Christ is the Truth.  The Bible/The Scriptures are all inspired/God-breathed by the Holy Spirit.  God cannot lie; He cannot deny Himself.  

In a world gone “relative”, nothing is absolute, except, of course, unless you make your relativity absolutely right and give no room for questioning it.  The Word of God is still there, and will not be broken!  

In a couple of recent Bible studies we have discussed the notion that there is an “up”, and there is a “down” in the universe.  It was a bit amazing to see the faces and listen to the comments by some very intelligent young people who found it very difficult to comprehend what ought to be obvious.  They have grown up in a generation that has replaced truth with ever-changing theories, and a universe that “made itself” has become “a given”.  The Creator of the heavens and the Earth has been put aside, even if unconsciously, and His Word has been replaced by the “evolution” of thought of the “best and the brightest”. 

The world calls this progress and enlightenment; YHVH calls it falling away and blindness. 

The Scriptures — the Bible; the written Word of God — describe a cosmos that the Creator Himself has described to us, that He alone would know.  The world describes a cosmos and its history that is more the figment of science fiction imagination, since much of it contradicts what God has said, which the Prophets believed; Yeshua/Jesus Himself believed (and by Him all things were created!); and the Apostles believed.  The grand scope and scale of the universe has nothing to do with whether there is an up and a down, since God is bigger than what He has created, and tells us that there are ups and downs.  His heavenly throne is above the universe that He created, from whatever direction and from any location. 

Surely there is good science that can reconcile this in the light of God’s Word, rather than hypothesizing theories and their conclusions as if they are the light which God’s own knowledge and words must be subjected to!  God’s word will judge us, not the other way around.  He will always be found righteous and true. 

Every time that we want to look at the moon and the stars, we look “up”, not sideways or horizontally.  Yeshua came “down” from Heaven, and went back “up”, where He is now until He comes back “down”.  Come, Lord!  God created the heavens and the Earth and the seas, and all that is in them.  The place of dead bodies is in the grave, a few feet under the surface; but the place of dead souls is in the “lower parts of the Earth”, in what is called in Hebrew, Sheol, and in Greek, Hades. These are real physical places “under” the earth, not some nebulous place floating around somewhere in space or wherever else those would say who do not let God’s word be true.  (And we will still not fully grasp it; but His word abides, nonetheless, and gives us information of what He alone can know.)  Lk 16:19-31  

All there are awaiting the resurrection, whether those “with the Lord” in the first resurrection of the righteous to everlasting life, or whether those whose eternal destiny is “away from the Lord” in the second resurrection of shame and everlasting abhorrence. (Rev 20:4-6;Dan 12:2)  The objection that Yeshua/Jesus took out those whose faith was in the promise of HIS coming to Paradise, or to Heaven, with Him, has difficulties:  when He told the repentant thief on the cross that “today, you will be with Me in Paradise”, that day Jesus’ body was buried in a cave and by the Spirit went down to the lower parts of the Earth to declare His victory.  More than that, Paul writes decades after Yeshua ascended back to Heaven that “… this we say to you by the word of the Lord: that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will be no means precede those who are asleep.  For the Lord Himself will descend with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God.  And the dead in Christ/Messiah will rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.  Therefore comfort one another with these words.” (1Thes 4:15-18)

“And every creature which is in heaven and on the Earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying:  
“Blessing and honor and glory and power to Him who sits on the Throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever!”

Jer 8:7-9 From where comes wisdom?:
“Even the stork in the heavens
Knows her appointed times;
And the turtledove, the swift, and the swallow
Observe the time of their coming.

Above/Beneath:  
Dt 4:39  
Therefore know this day, and consider it in your heart, that YHVH Himself is God in Heaven above and on the Earth beneath; there is no other.

Dt 5:8 
You shall not make for yourself a carved image — any likeness that is in heaven above, or that is on the Earth beneath, or that is the water under the earth. 

Jer 31:37 
Thus says YHVH:

And it shall come to pass
That whoever calls on the name of YHVH (Yeshua/Jesus, under Heaven) 
Shall be saved.’ 

Ja 3:13-18 
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom.  But if you have bitter envy and ^a]self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth.  This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic.  For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.  But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.  Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. 

Sheol/Hades:  
Mt 12:40 
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the Earth. 

Eph 4:7-10 
But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.  Therefore He says:

 (Now this, “He ascended”—what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth?  He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.) 

1Pt 3:18-20 
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit,  by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison,  who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. 

2Pt 2:4 
For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment;

Lake of Fire: (not written where this might be) 
Mt 25:41 
Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels’: 

Rev 20:13-15 
The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works.  Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.  And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.