Spirits in Prison by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 21, 1883

Spirits in Prison.

By Editor

A FRIEND has permitted us to read an article in an Eastern journal on the subject of "Christ in the Intermediate State." This journal is professedly published in the interest of science and religion, or perhaps more strictly scientific religion. The author of course lauds science to the skies; uses words of almost fulsome flattery when speaking of those who are opening the doors of "scientific theology;" and says, "as usual Germany leads the way."

The German theology of the present century has been well called "a system of accommodation." The Bible is to be understood only by the light of science, and of course the opinions of these German philosophers are the sole standard of science. If the Bible cannot be bent to their ideas it must be broken or removed out of the way. Under their manipulation the record of creation in Genesis is a beautiful allegory, the meaning of which can be learned by exploring the bowels of the earth; Moses was a remarkable Egyptian or Arabian mountebank; the prophets were highly imaginative poets; the records of the miracles of the New Testament were stories similar in frame-work to those of the "Arabian Nights," accommodated to the ignorance of the Jewish people. This is undeniably so, inasmuch as miracles are both unnecessary and impossible. Impossible, because matter was never created but eternally existed; of course what we call the laws of nature were never made or ordained by a Supreme Being,

as they necessarily inhere in matter, and are as eternal as the matter; and being inherent in matter their contravention or suspension, which would be necessary in case of a miracle, would involve the very existence of matter. Of course when the Bible says that an ax (Heb. iron) swam on the water, it is a story fit to amuse infantile minds. The miracles of Christ and the apostles were such in appearance; but not in fact; magical wonders palmed upon an ignorant and superstitious people. Conclusion: the Bible is a passably good book, not hurtful to anybody if taken as explained by science and philosophy! This is the truth of the whole matter in a nutshell.

The writer in question says: "The way is now thronged with pious pilgrims and scientific adventurers, who wish to explore the valley which intermediates between death and the resurrection of the body." Well, thousands are entering that valley continuously, and what do they report? "Silent as the grave," is the reply. Spiritualism professes to bring reports from that valley, but its claims are proved to be fallacies and its professed reports are deceptions. Just what we might expect, too, if the evidence of the Bible is reliable, for that book says, "The dead know not anything." Eccl. 9:5; that if there be no resurrection "they which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." 1 Cor. 15:18; and if the dead rise not there is no advantage in fighting the Christian warfare; "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." Verse 32. The Bible gives the only reliable testimony on that subject.

But our author takes the Bible also; from 1 Peter 3:19 he draws the conclusion that Christ "preached deliverance to the captives" in hades in the interim between his death and resurrection. Of this work he thus speaks:

"The sermon in the sanctuary of hades on that last and significant Sabbath in the calendar of Judaism, was nothing less than the power of His personal presence in the intermediate state. Its eloquence was in the demonstration of the spirit, and told powerfully in breaking the bands of captivity for the pious dead."

This argument is a twofold acquisition to modern theology: it is a help both to the Catholics in their doctrine of purgatory, and to the Mormons in the doctrine of probation after death. It is one of Satan's "sugar-coated pills," causing the sinner to rest complacently in the hope of "another chance" in a world where repentance will be easy, because the pleasures of this life will have forever passed away. Under such circumstances salvation, distasteful with its present requirements, is well-nigh assured in the world to come. Here the way to life is narrow; there it widens out amazingly. It is a genuine theological song of "Rock me to sleep, mother."

Now Peter's testimony on this subject contains two important points which our author, with all of his faith, entirely overlooks, namely of agency and of time. He says that Christ was put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison. The relative, "by which," they entirely overlook. The time was "when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing." Having the evidence of the Bible so plainly given, it matters not much with us what men may think. Yet we have find ourselves in agreement with able critics. No less an author than Dr. West, in no less a journal than the Princeton Review, argued this point at considerable length, some years ago; and the Interior, the influential Presbyterian paper of Chicago, strongly indorsed it. We have not room for very large quotations. The Interior says of the passage: "Those who are boldest in referring to it are those who are confident that Christ preached in hades after his crucifixion, to the antediluvians," and adds that it is time that "it should be taken out of the hands of those who use it as a locus classicus in proof of a revolting dogma." It gives an illustration of the meaning of Peter's words as follows:-

"The next mistake of interpreters is that of supposing that the passage teaches that when Christ preached to the antediluvians they were in prison. But it does not. Suppose one should say, 'Many a time have I played with the poor wretch in prison, and I remember what a disobedient boy he was, and how he taxed his parents' patience.' Would anybody think that he went into prison to play with the criminal? Would it not rather occur to every one that the time of the playing referred to the time of the disobedience, and that it was after that period that the imprisonment occurred? This, then, is what Peter means: Christ preached to the antediluvians when they were in a state of unbelief, and particularly when Noah was building the ark."

We read in Genesis that of these people God said, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man, . . yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." God's Spirit wrought with the preaching of Noah, "while the ark was preparing;" but the hearers "were disobedient." This is the statement of Peter.

The following from Dr. West may be considered a summing up of the results of his inquiry:-

"To say, then, in face of all these facts of grammar, history, and theology, that Christ actually went into phulake to preach, when Peter says no such thing; that the preaching Christ did to the contemporaries of Noah was subsequent to the crucifixion, when Peter says it was in the days of Noah; that it was more than two thousand years after the ark rotted, when Peter says it was when the ark was building; that it was to the disobedient, A. D. 33, when Peter says it was to the disobedient, B. C. 2377; that it lasted one day, or a day and a half, when Peter says it lasted one hundred and twenty years; that the consequence of it was a deliverance of the disobedient out of phulake when Peter shows that the consequence of it was a putting of them into phulake; that, again, it was to pious spirits the preaching was sent, when Peter makes mention of none there save the impious; that it was made in a subterranean cavern—'tenebrosa cavositas'—in hades, when Peter says it was done in Eastern Asia, or on the Armenian plateau between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea; that it was done by the human soul of Christ, or by a semi-pantheistic ubiquitous soul and body together, when Peter says it was done before Christ ever had a human soul or body either; that phulake is a place where pious antediluvians went when the flood arose above their dwellings, when Peter says they went into the ark, and were saved by water; that it was a place of holy repose and expectation for the Old Testament church, when forty times out of the forty-five in the New Testament, it means a jail or place of penal detention, and the other five times a watch or police; to say that God's longsuffering toward the antediluvians extends over into another world, when God says it was given, one hundred and twenty years in this, and then forever withdrawn—to assert all this in face of the reformed critics and theologians, some of whom towered in intellectual grandeur even above the loftiest of the church fathers and the schoolmen, and in face of the best modern critical apparatus, is not only to set at defiance all established principles of interpretation, but unconsciously to wage war against the laws of the Greek language and the usus loquendi of the Sacred Text."

The Interior said of the above: "It will be as hard to answer that sentence as it is to read it through in one breath." We think so. There is another text in the connection, 1 Peter 4:6, which is often quoted to prove the same thing. It reads thus: "For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead." When a Mormon preacher once quoted this text to us to prove that salvation is offered to the dead, we greatly astonished him by declaring that we had not only heard the gospel preached to them that are dead, but had actually preached it ourselves to them that are dead. He ceased his arguing when we explained to him that they "are dead," as the text says, but they were not dead when the gospel "was preached" to them. The text does not say that the gospel was preached to them that were dead, nor that it is preached to them that are dead; but it was preached to them that are dead; but they were not dead when it was preached to them.

When viewed aright these passages afford no help either to the Catholics for purgatory nor to the Mormons. But the "Rev." gentleman to whom we referred at the beginning of this article has given them as handsome a "send off" as they could ask. And Spiritualism builds its whole system of abominations on the same foundation. And Universalism and Restorationism can take a rest, as they seem to be doing, as their work is being done without any effort on their part. We unite heartily with the Interior in calling the popular conclusion drawn from Peter's words, "a revolting dogma." And we are strong in the belief that all who tremble at the word of God, and prefer "the law and the testimony" to the dogmas and traditions of men, will accept the truth on this important scripture.