Will you please explain the meaning of 1 Peter 3:19? That was referred to me as a proof of the immortality of the soul. The meaning of this text can much better be learned by taking into consideration the context. Read from verses 18 to 20. Let us question the text. What has Christ once done?—"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust." Why did He do it?—"That He might bring us to God." That He might do this what did He pass through?—"Being put to death in the flesh." After this what was wrought for Him?—"But quickened [or made alive] by the Spirit." What did He do by that Spirit?—"He went and preached unto the spirits in prison." Who were these spirits in prison?—Men "which sometime were disobedient." When were they disobedient, and when did He preach to them?—"When once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah." What period of time was spent in that preaching to the disobedient ones?—"While the ark was a preparing." What was the result of the preaching?—"Wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water." Through whom did He preach?—"Noah, . . . a preacher of righteousness." 2 Peter 2:5. How did Noah obtain this righteousness and this commission?—"By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." Heb. 11:7. The "spirits in prison" were in the prison-house of sin, bound by sin. The purpose of our Lord in giving Himself, and of God in giving His Son, was to save men from that prison-house of sin. See Isa. 61:1; Luke 4:18. God's law shuts every sinner up into sin, the only deliverance of which is the Gospel of Christ. Gal. 3:23. It was our Lord who preached through Noah as declared by Peter himself in his first epistle, 1:10-12. It was the Spirit of Christ by the prophets of old which testified of Jesus, so that when our Lord went and preached to the spirits in prison it was by placing His own Spirit upon Noah; and the time when that generation needed the preaching, was when the ark was preparing.