(Photo of "Gates of Hades" at Caesarea Philippi, Israel taken by Randy Heaton, October 2019)

“...and I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.” Matthew 16:18 NASB

Travelling in Israel in October, 2019, I saw the “Gates of Hades”, or at least where most scholars have identified to be the place where (or in view of where) Jesus spoke these words in Matthew 16.

This is where a geography lesson is helpful so that we don’t spiritualize the text unnecessarily. I know it helped me to see it in person. “The Gates of Hades” was to Jesus’ audience, one of the most recognized pagan sites in Israel. This is a huge rock, hundreds of feet long and high. At the base is a cave, thought to be the passage into the underworld; the place of the gods. It was common to everyone that this was the entrance to death, the gates kept guard; no one could escape death. (Or could they....?)

We read it as ‘hell’ in English, but “Hades” is a Greek term for a mythological underworld of the dead, ruled by the gods, who were fickle and intended harm to humans who were their slaves. The Hebrew counterpart word for hades is She’ol and was meant as a term for the place of the dead, a synonym for the grave. The pagans gathering at the base of the cave might have revered (or feared) the place, but for Jesus and the other Jews, they knew the meaning of the term gates of She’ol as a poetic way of speaking of the passage between life and death, where the gates prevent passage back into life. In Isaiah 38:10 King Hezekiah asks God to spare his life : “In the middle of my life, am I to enter the gates of Sheol? Am I to be deprived of the rest of my years?”

The biggest take home message of the verses in Matthew is that Jesus says those gates “will not overpower” his ekklesia, the Greek word we’ve translated “church”. His ekklesia will break through and return to life!! This is a clear reference to the resurrection of the dead for the ekklesia.

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:20-26)

The gates of hades will not prevail means that one day all the enemies of God will be conquered, with death being the final enemy that is overcome. "For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his" (Romans 6:5). On that day, death will finally lose its power. And these gates where pagans worship in vain will not have a hold on those in Messiah.

Side note: Whether Jesus stood directly at the mouth of the cave, or away from it and above it within site of it when He spoke is a matter of debate. Some say He would never have defiled Himself to be in such a pagan place in the first place, but rather was standing up above it with His audience, looking down. That latter view is the one I prefer, and it was fun to discuss this on location last October with some very knowledgeable bible scholars.

Because of the significance of the location, it’s not a bad place (or a view of the place) for Jesus to ask, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers and Jesus comments on the “rock.” Here’s a big question: What rock? On the “rock” Petros (Peter), who made the statement? That’s the prevailing interpretation in the Catholic church and her protestant sister churches. But that word play only fits if everyone was speaking Greek. Ah, but what if they were speaking Hebrew? What other rock could He mean? Some say the statement itself is the “rock,” i.e. “You are the Messiah.” But that ignores the significance of the location where this conversation took place and it ignores the greater message: resurrection of the dead. Here they were at the supposed place of the gated entrance to the world of the dead. Jesus is proclaiming concerning this rock that those who are His will overcome death, something that the gods could not do for anyone, only the Hebrew God.

So what does ekklesia mean to the original audience? Would it surprise you to know that in Greek, ekklesia [the word translated “church”] is never used for a religious assembly? It was never used to describe a building, or an organization with property ownership, or a hierarchy of officer or leaders/elders, such as we think of today when we see the word “church.” In classical Greek, ekklesia is a political or social gathering, not a religious one. Had the intent been to denote a religious gathering, the Greek word synagoge would have been used. This goes to show us that we shouldn’t assume a word we read in the scriptures originally meant what it does in modern times today.

Jesus isn’t talking about anything that could be easily confused with the pagan religious assemblies that would have been gathering right then and there when He was talking. He is talking about the Kingdom of God that is at hand. I love how Skip Moen describes the Kingdom of God: “the recovery of God’s reign and rule in the hearts and actions of men and women. Yeshua is not building a church; not a building, not an organization, not a religious institution and certainly not an ethnic or nationally oriented claim on God’s favor. He is reconstituting the reign and rule of the Father as it was established at Sinai. After all, it is His assembly, the same assembly called to hear the word of God at the base of the mountain.”

Here’s a sobering thought: are you part of a religious assembly built on the idea that Jesus came to start a new religion, rebelling against His Father, and turning people away from the Father’s Ways (Deuteronomy 13)? Or are you part of the ekklesia that always was, the one spoken of in Acts 7:38, referring to the ekklesia in the wilderness? Make no mistake. His ekklesia will prevail over death, because He did!