842.—THE SPIRITS IN PRISON.
WILL you please give an explanation of I Peter 3:18–20. Some say that Christ preached to those who had been drowned by the flood. ANS.—This question is fully considered, and answered, in the book “Here and Hereafter,” pages 93-100, to which the reader is referred. But a few points may be presented here, which will tend to help the mind of our correspondent:— 1. If the word “spirits” refers to the people drowned by the flood, their probation had ended, and according to the popular view, when a wicked man dies, he is immediately judged, and sent to hell. 2. Then, if this refers to the wicked antediluvians, they had been nearly twenty-four hundred years in hell when Christ in His disembodied spirit, while His body lay in the grave before His resurrection, went and preached to them. 3. But why should Christ go down to hell to preach to those judged and condemned spirits there? This question staggers the popular view. When was the preaching done?—It was done while the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah. How was it done?—By the Spirit of Christ through Noah. It was while repentance and salvation were possible to them; for this is always the object of preaching. But if the antediluvians could find repentance and salvation in hell, the Romish doctrine of purgatory is established. And a doctrine worse than the Romish purgatory,—namely, the modern heresy of a new probation after death,—is proved, which takes away every motive for repentance in this life. But if Christ preached to the antediluvians through Noah, how were they “in prison”? God had told Noah that a flood was determined, and that man’s days should be limited to one hundred and twenty years. Thus they were shut up in prison. But until the flood came and took them all away, the hope of salvation was still held out to them.