Many evangelicals have labeled Kenneth Hagin a heretic for saying, “When you preach the cross, you're preaching death, and you leave people in death.” Hagin, in his attempt to emphasize the victory we have in Christ and the resurrection life, made a very harsh and incorrect statement here. The Bible does make it clear that “the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18). Therefore, Hagin's words here are certainly not representative of the majority of faith churches.

In terms of your comments on the atonement, I also agree that atonement was purchased on the cross upon Christ's PHYSICAL death, primarily due to the following verse:

Heb 10:10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

However, I do concur with John Calvin that Christ, before dying physically, tasted the “powers of hell and the horrors of eternal death” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II.16.10) . We can not take the matter lightly that God forsook Christ on the cross. Though this was not an infusion with a sinful nature as some faith teachers may advocate, it was an imputation (or legal reckoning) as a sinner. This is when Christ was made sin (2 Cor 5:21); a concept too deep to even comprehend. Martin Luther said that the Father saw Christ as the “worst sinner in the world” on the cross. This imputation led Christ to temporarily be alienated from the Father, which led to His agonizing cry, “Why has thou forsaken me”. Some faith teachers call this the spiritual death of Christ, because is very closely identified with the separation between the unregenerate and God. The unregenerate man is “dead in trespasses and sins”. Since this wording may falsely attribute a sinful nature to the “spotless lamb”, I rather call it a “forsaking” due to imputation of sin, as a most evangelicals would.

I do not personally believe that Christ descended into hell to suffer any more. The “offering of the body” (Heb 10:10) was enough to obtain our “redemption through his blood” (Eph 1:7). I am compelled by the fact that the thief on the neighboring cross saw him in paradise “that day”. However, Hagin's teaching cannot be disproved by Luke 23:43 alone. Some translators place the comma as follows: “And he said unto him––Verily, I say unto thee this day: With me, shalt thou be in Paradise” (Rotherham), placing the phrase “this day” with the “saying” rather than with the “being in paradise”. Grammatically, in Greek there is no way to prove whether the comma should be before “today” (I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me) or after “today” (I say unto thee today, thou shalt thou be with me). All other verses with similar wording use the conjunction “that” (Gr. hoti) to clarify where the comma should be (eg. “I say to you today that you will be...”, or “I say to you THAT today you will be ...”). However, the immediate context naturally puts the comma in the correct place. The question in the previous verse was concerning the time of an afterlife event -- “remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom”, and Jesus was answering the “when” with “today”. That's why most translations have the comma before “today”. It makes the most sense.

Though I agree that atonement was purchased on the cross immediately following the death of Christ, we still must ask the question, “What was finished when Jesus said 'It is finished'“? Obviously there was still more to be done -- His death! If He hadn't died yet then atonement could not have been finished. Atonement requires death. So the atonement for sin was complete immediately after Jesus died -- not immediately before. The ultimate sacrifice was not yet complete. Therefore, it is more likely that the phrase “it is finished” is referring to something other than the atonement itself. There is no grammatical antecedent for the pronoun “it”. Thus to say “it” means redemption is unfounded. We can only speculate what “it” means based on context. There is strong evidence that the “it” was His obedience to carry out the Fathers will on the Earth as the prophecies foretold. This is very conceivable since just a few verses earlier, the Gospel of John tells us “After this, Jesus knowing that all things now have been finished, that the Writing may be fulfilled, saith, I thirst” (Jn 19:28, Young's Literal). Right after this He drank and then said “it is finished”. The verb for “finished” is same word as “finished” in 19:28, and obviously the atonement wasn't the thing finished in 19:28. The Fourfold Gospel commentary states:

“He had come, had ministered, had suffered, and had conquered. There now remained but the simple act of taking possession of the citadel of the grave, and the overthrowing of death. By his righteousness Jesus had triumphed in man’s behalf and the mighty task was accomplished. “

Christ's obedience to minister, suffer, conquer, and fulfill all the things written in the Law was finished. There now remained but the simple act; His death, which alone could purchase redemption.

What about 1 Corinthians 15:17, which states: “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins”? Jesus could have paid for sin whether He rose or not, but there was a clear necessity for Him to raise from the dead! First and foremost, since He had no sin, death could not hold Him (Acts 2:24). Secondly, according to the book of Hebrews, Christ needed to present finished work to the Father to validate and appropriate what was done on cross. “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having [already] obtained eternal redemption” (Heb 9:12). Though He already obtained redemption, the formal presentation of His blood to the Father fulfilled all of the Old Testament types and appropriated the validity of the this redemption. Therefore, we should never downplay the importance of the resurrection. Thirdly, it was a public validation that Jesus’ death accomplished all he said it would, and He said that the sign of Jonah would be the only sign to that generation (Mt 12:39). Fourthly, it is a guarantee of our new birth. 1 Peter 1:3 states, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Christ’s resurrection has a direct identification with our spiritual resurrection. According to Ephesians 2:5, “Even when we were dead in sins, [God] hath quickened us together with Christ”. Fifthly, it provides the hope for our future physical resurrection (1 Corinthians 15). Sixthly, it gives encouragement that the power that raised Christ is the same power that works in us (Eph 1:19-20). Lastly, it has ethical implications. Just as Christ was raised to a new kind of life, so also have we, in which the power of sin is broken and there is no place for its on-going mastery in our lives (Romans 6:4, 10-11). These reasons make the resurrection an essential part of saving faith (See Rom 10:9).

So where was Christ during the time between His death and resurrection? Certainly He was not in Heaven with God. For Jesus told Mary, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father” (Jn 20:17). It is much more plausible to believe that He had descended into Hades (i.e. the abode of the dead), which was thought to be in the depths of earth, per the following verses:

Mt 12:40 “so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”
Eph 4:9 “He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?”
Acts 2:31 “His soul was not left in hades”
Rom 10:7 “Who shall descend into the abyss ... to bring up Christ again from the dead.”

The more rare view is the traditional Word of Faith view, which teaches Christ’s post-death torment in Hell. They believe Isaiah’s statement, “thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin,” literally means His Spirit will be the offering for sin in Hell. They also hold to the view that Christ was suffering pains just before being raised, since Acts 2:24 states that He was loosed from the “the pains of death”. When it said Jesus had to taste death for every man – this would have to be a full identification, including spiritual death, and torment in Hell.

As I already demonstrated, there are clear verses which teach the sufficiency of the “body” and “blood” (Heb 10:10, Eph 1:7). Therefore, I hold to the traditional Pentecostal view that Christ went to Hades to Proclaim His victory to two different categories of people. First, He proclaimed the victory to the disobedient people in Hell. Remember in Luke 16, the story of the rich man and Lazarus, there was a good side called Abraham’s bosom where the righteous dead went prior to the current Heaven, and a bad side where the rich man went. The disobedient would have been in the bad side. A few verse references make this compelling to me:

1 Pet 3:18 Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: 19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; 20 Which sometime were disobedient ...

Col 2:15 “having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”

He then proclaimed victory to the obedient saints. They would have resided in Abraham’s Bosom, which most scholars would believe this is a reference to Paradise. Jesus had told the thief, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” We are also told that as He ascended, “He went up on high, taking his prisoners with him…” (Eph 4:8, BBE).

This is only speculative due to the lack of information concerning the events from the cross to the throne. I do not necessarily believe that WoF teachers have been heretical on this issue. I think they have tried to systematize something that is lacking information in an attempt to stress the awesome victory that was obtained.