DEATH, THE INTERMEDIATE STATE, THE RESURRECTION AND THE FINAL DESTINY — page 10

Prison

The unrighteous in “hades” (sheol) are in “prison” (1 Pet. 3:19). It is a condition of torment (Luke 16:23). The “prison” is a “holding tank,” so to speak, of the ungodly outside the body. Although their condition in “prison” is temporary, their state of torment is eternal. It is a fixed condition. Once a person leaves this world in their sins, they are in a lost eternity, and so no amount of prayer can benefit that person! Job said: “For I know that You will bring me to death and to the house of meeting appointed for all the living. Yet He will not stretch [out His hand — truly no prayer will help when He stretches out – JND] His hand to the grave, though they cry out in His destruction.” (Job 30:23-24 – ACF). The Lord Himself said that He had power to forgive sins only on earth (Matt. 9:6). Once a person draws their last breath and passes into a lost eternity, the mighty power of Christ's forgiveness cannot reach them there. How solemn!

Isaiah 24:21-22 says: “In that day Jehovah will punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. They will be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and will be shut up in the prison, and after many days they will be visited.” The “host of the high ones on high” is Satan and his fallen angels. Shortly after the Appearing of Christ, they will be taken and cast into the “pit”. See also Revelation 20:1-3. The “kings upon the earth” are the armies of the nations that will be gathered in the land of Israel. They will be judged at that moment. They will be killed and their soul and spirit placed in “prison”. They will be kept there for “many days” (during the Millennium) and then “visited” by a later execution of judgment and then assigned to the lake of fire.

Since Acts 2:27 says that the Lord's soul entered hades after He died (but before He rose again), some have imagined that He descended to the “prison” and preached the gospel to the spirits of bodiless men, giving them a second chance to get out of there. The verse used to support this idea is 1 Peter 3:18-20. It says: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God; put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit; in which also He went and preached to the spirits [that are] in prison; who formerly were disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared; in which few (that is, eight) souls were saved through water.”

This, however, is a distorted use of the Scriptures. It is wrongly assumed that hades is exclusively a condition of suffering. And on that false premise, people wrongly conclude that after the Lord died, He entered that state in which the spirits of wicked men are outside the body and preached to them. That is not what the passage in 1 Peter 3 is teaching. Peter is speaking of the Lord's resurrection, not of His spirit in the bodiless state. He is referring to the work of the Holy Spirit, saying: “In which (the Spirit) also (the Lord Jesus) went and preached to the spirits [that are – JND] in prison.” The point of the passage is that the same Spirit who raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead was also active in the days of Noah, when he preached to that antediluvian world. Speaking to men on earth through the Holy Spirit was the way the Lord worked in Old Testament times. He warned: “My Spirit will not strive with man forever” (Gen. 6:3; Ps. 139:7). Peter, in the first chapter of his epistle, affirms this, telling us that “the Spirit of Christ” was the power at work in testimony throughout Old Testament times.

The “spirits” of those men to whom Noah preached long ago are now in “prison” because they refused the message God gave them when they were alive on earth (1 Pet. 4:6). So as not to make a mistake about when Christ preached by the Spirit to those people, Peter adds: “who formerly (previously) were disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah.” This proves that it was in the days of Noah, not when Christ was outside the body in the interval between His death and resurrection. There is not a word in the passage indicating that the Lord, in His bodiless state, went and preached in the “prison”. Nor does it say that these people were bodiless spirits when they were preached to; the preaching happened when they were alive on earth (in the body) in the days of Noah.

This interpretation is irrational and raises more questions than answers. It is absurd to think that when the Lord died, of all the people in “prison”, in hades, He would single out that generation of people – relatively few – and offer them a second chance. And the people who lived during other periods of the Old Testament? Why did the Lord not give them a second chance too? And those who died and went to the “prison” after the Lord rose from the dead – during this present Church period? Why did He not give them a second chance too? And how would they have that chance if they died after He rose from the dead? The Lord would have to die again to descend to the “prison” in hades to preach to them. That is absurd. If the doctrine of a second chance after death were true, why would the apostle Paul say: “behold now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation”? (2 Cor. 6:2) Why all the need for urgency in the gospel?

Scripture is clear: when a person dies and passes into this state of torment because their sins have not been atoned for, their state in that condition is "fixed". They will come out of the prison when they are resurrected, but they will not come out of that state of torment. This is emphasized in the account of the rich man and Lazarus. "And besides all this, between us and you there is fixed a great gulf, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us" (Luke 16:26 – TB).