SPIRITS IN PRISON by Ellet Joseph Waggoner

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 11, 1889

SPIRITS IN PRISON.

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

SOMEBODY, we do not know who, asks for an explanation of certain texts which he thinks seem to conflict with the doctrine of the sleep of the dead. We herewith answer the last text that he mentions; the others will receive attention at another time. He says:—

"It has been suggested that the preaching to the spirits in prison, referred to in 1 Peter 3:19, 20, was done by Christ between his death and his resurrection. Please explain through the SIGNS OF THE TIMES."

We wish first to say that a suggestion does not prove anything. The man who reads a plain declaration of the Scripture, and then listens to suggestions of doubt, will have all the opportunity that he desires for doubt. Satan is always ready with suggestions against the truth of God, and those who entertain them do so to their own ruin. If suggestions were to be considered as worthy of comparison with plain, positive proof, nothing could stand; for it is possible to suggest anything.

Following are the verses referred to, together with the eighteenth:—

"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened [made alive] by the Spirit; by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water." 1 Peter 3:18-20.

Now let us read this carefully, to see just what it tells us. After stating that Christ, the Just One, once suffered for the sins of the wicked world, it tells us how he suffered—"being put to death in the flesh." Next it tells us that he was made alive by the Spirit; then it says that it was by this same Spirit that he went and preached to the spirits in prison; and lastly, it tells us when this preaching was done—"when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing." There you have the whole story. There is not a hint that the preaching was done by Christ between his death and his resurrection. On the contrary, it is stated that the preaching was not done at all by Christ, but that he did it by the Spirit. Now turn to Gen. 6:3, and you will see that in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, the Spirit of God was working among the people: "And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."

The preaching, then, was done by the Spirit, the same Spirit which brought Christ again from the dead. But how about the spirits being in prison? How were they in prison? A few texts will answer this. First, we remember that the antediluvians were exceedingly wicked. The Bible says that "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Gen. 6:5. But sin is a bondage, as the wise man says: "His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins." Prov. 5:22. And the apostle Peter, speaking of those who by their deceitful wantonness seduce those who have escaped from the snare, says: "While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage." 2 Peter 2:19.

The work of Christ is to save men from the bondage of sin. Matt. 1:21; Gal. 1:4. Read also Paul's account, in the seventh of Romans, of his bondage to sin, and of his deliverance. And it is by the Spirit that this deliverance is effected. When Christ stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth, he read these words, which he said were fulfilled in him:—

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Luke 4:18, 19.

In the passage from which Christ read (Isa. 61:1), it says plainly, "the opening of the prison to them that are bound." Bound with what? Why, with the cords of their sins.

Read now Ps. 102:19, 20, where it says that the Lord "hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from Heaven did the Lord behold the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoners; to loose those that are appointed to death." From this we learn that those to whom the Spirit preaches deliverance are not dead, but are only "appointed to death."

And now read Heb. 2:14, 15, where the apostle says of Christ:—

"Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that hath the power of death, that is the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage."

Whom did he come to deliver? Those who all their life-time were subject to bondage? How were they thus in bondage? Through fear of death? What is it that brings the fear of death? It is sin; for "the wages of sin is death." Rom. 6:23. So then, Christ came to deliver them who were held in the bondage of sin. This is just what he came for, and this he does by the Spirit, which both convicts and converts. It was this same Spirit by which the gospel of deliverance was preached to the antediluvians; but they rejected it, and so were lost.

This is just what we learn from 1 Peter 3:18-20. It is Scriptural and reasonable. In an article in another column, entitled "Charging God Foolishly," we shall show how contradictory and dishonoring to God is the theory that the preaching referred to was done by Christ himself, in the interval between his death and his resurrection. W.