I was taught that Elijah and Enoch would be the two witnesses during the tribulation because they never died..God took them. But after some research into this I believe that they did die and were in paradise(a compartment in Hades) when Jesus set the captives free.
I believe the righteous people who died before the cross all went down to the Paradise compartment in Hades. But then how do we explain what happened to Elijah?
"As they [Elijah and Elisha] were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind." (2 Kings 2:11)
This verse says that Elijah went up to "Heaven" in a whirlwind. Since Elijah was a righteous man who lived before the cross, shouldn't he have gone down to the Paradise compartment of Hades?
If we interpret 2 Kings 2:11 (above) as saying that Elijah went directly up to the "third Heaven" (where God lives) then we run into problems with other passages of Scripture. For example, notice that Paul said that we will all be "changed" ("translated") from mortality to immortality when Jesus returns at the Rapture because flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God:
"I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed--in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality." (1 Corinthians 15:50-53)
"But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." (Philippians 3:20-21)
These passages say that our mortal bodies will be "glorified" or "changed" or "translated" when Jesus returns for us at the Rapture and takes us up into Heaven. The implication is that we can't go into Heaven in our mortal flesh-and-blood bodies, so how could Elijah have physically gone into Heaven in the whirlwind? The only way to explain it would be to say that he was "translated" and given his glorified, immortal body, but how was it possible for Elijah to become glorified and immortal before Jesus' death and resurrection? After all, the only reason why humans are able to gain entrance into Heaven is because Jesus made this possible, yet Elijah was carried up to "Heaven" long before Jesus was born.
Another problem is that Jesus specifically said that no-one has ever gone into Heaven:
"No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven--the Son of Man." (John 3:13)
Jesus said that no-one other than Himself had ever gone into Heaven, so why does 2 Kings 2:11 (above) say that Elijah went up to "Heaven" long before Jesus was born?
Sometimes people interpret John 3:13 (above) as meaning that no-one had ever ascended into heaven and then returned to talk about it. However, Jesus specifically said that no-one had ever gone into Heaven. In fact, Jesus also said:
"No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known." (John 1:18)
"No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father." (John 6:46)
Consider that God the Father lives in Heaven (the "third Heaven"), so if no-one had ever seen the Father then this means that no-one had ever gone into the "third Heaven" (because if we believe otherwise then we would need to prove that a person could go into the "third Heaven" and not see God). Since Jesus said that no-one had ever gone into Heaven, and He said that no-one had ever seen God, then Elijah could not have been taken up into the "third Heaven" where God lives.
Here's another explanation of 2 Kings 2:11 (above) which resolves these apparent contradictions, and which fits with the rest of the evidence in the Bible concerning Paradise and Hades. Recall that Bible scholars say that the ancient Jews considered the "first Heaven" to be the sky, and they considered the "second Heaven" to be where the stars are, and the "third Heaven" was considered to be where God's throne is. Since the word "Heaven" has different meanings, it's possible that Elijah was simply carried by the whirlwind up into the "first Heaven" (the sky). Notice that the prophets from Jericho who witnessed the whirlwind sent 50 men to search for Elijah (2 Kings 2:15-17). They didn't find Elijah's body, but it's interesting that they did not assume that Elijah had been taken up into the "third Heaven." Instead, they said that "Perhaps the Spirit of the Lord has picked him up and set him down on some mountain or in some valley" (2 Kings 2:16). So even the prophets who witnessed this event did not assume that Elijah had been taken up into the "third Heaven," but instead they thought that his body might have been taken somewhere else on earth.
Based on all of the evidence, perhaps Elijah was lifted up into the "first Heaven" (the sky) by the whirlwind, and then Elijah's spirit was taken to Paradise in Hades (we're not told what happened to his body). Or perhaps he was carried by the whirlwind and then deposited alive in some other location. Either explanation fits with all of the Scriptural evidence.
