To Whom Did Jesus Preach—and When?
Obviously, Jesus preached throughout His public ministry to the multitudes as well as to individuals. But the question under consideration here concerns what Peter wrote in 1 Peter 3:18-22. Everyone understands the suffering of Jesus to which the apostle refers in verse 18 and His having risen from the dead and ascension into heaven in verse 22. But to whom did Jesus preach in verses 19-20—and when? Who are “the spirits in prison,” and when did Jesus preach to them?
Robert Faid wrote two books that would be classified as “Christian evidences” in the mid-1990s. The first was titled, A Scientific Approach to Biblical Mysteries; it contains some good scientific information and some that is questionable. This article deals with a chapter from his second book, A Scientific Approach to More Biblical Mysteries, in which he attempts to analyze the passage under consideration. Faid called Chapter 21, “What Did Jesus Do Between the Cross and the Resurrection?”
He answers by proposing three alternatives: that Jesus was in heaven, in hell, or in the tomb. He rightly discounts that Jesus was in heaven, based on what Jesus said after He was raised from the dead—that He had not yet ascended to His Father (John 20:17). He next explains that, while Jesus’ physical body was in the tomb, His spirit was not. But Faid does not explain very much about Paradise—the place where Jesus promised the thief on the cross they would both be the same day they were crucified (Luke 23:43).
Paradise is the name of the good place in the realm of the dead—Hades, translated “hell,” but it must be distinguished from the place of ultimate torment—Gehenna, also translated “hell.” Jesus was not in Gehenna, which is also referred to as the Lake of Fire (Rev. 20:10). But He was in Hades, which has two sections: One is a place of temporary torment, which was where the rich man found himself after death (Luke 16:23); the other is called Paradise, or Abraham’s bosom, where Lazarus was (Luke 16:22). This is the place to which Jesus and the thief also went.
The Doctrine of a Second Chance
Faid assumes that Jesus went to the Hadean realm and preached there, which is not necessarily the case; we will return to the meaning of that later, but let’s follow the author to his destination. He thinks Jesus preached to those in the section inhabited by the rich man and those of Noah’s day who perished in the Flood. (We thoroughly disagree, but let us see where he is going with this approach.) He does not have Jesus preaching to the righteous—but rather to the ungodly. Therefore, he asks, what message would He be presenting them. He can only think of two. The first is that he is mocking them by “reminding them how wrong they had been in rejecting God” (184).
Faid rejects that possibility and moves on to the second alternative. He suggests that Jesus was giving them “an opportunity to accept His sacrifice for their sins and obtain forgiveness for their sins” (184). This is one of many doctrines offering a second chance for men to be saved. Premillennialism offers a second chance to accept Jesus as Savior; the doctrine of re-incarnation offers several chances; Mormonism’s baptism for the dead can allegedly save all of one’s forefathers. No doctrine of a second chance is valid. It is “appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27).
So, according to Faid, Jesus goes to the Hadean realm and preaches to those of Noah’s day, giving them a second chance for salvation. He affirms that Jesus “must have descended into hell to also call sinners to repentance” (185). How can anyone think this description is in any sense possible? Let’s take the Biblical information we have and see how this idea fares. What do we learn from Luke 16?
The rich man woke up “in torments,” as we already observed. How bad was it? It was so intense that he cried out to Abraham, who was on the other side of the great gulf between the two sections: “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he might dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame” (Luke 16:24). Abraham refused on two grounds. Before the deaths of Lazarus and the rich man, the latter had enjoyed numerous comforts in his life while Lazarus had suffered. Now their positions were reversed. A second reason for the refusal was that, because of the great gulf, no one could travel back and forth between the two realms (Luke 16:25-26).
Why didn’t Abraham say, “Sure, you can have relief any time you want it”? Or, “Just hang on. You’ll have a second chance pretty soon”? Suppose Abraham had offered the rich man a second chance—a do-over for a life not well lived? What are the odds that the rich man would say, “No thanks, I don’t really want a second chance”? He would accept such an offer “in the wink of a young girl’s eye” without any hesitation whatsoever. How do we know that? The suffering he experienced was so fierce that he asked for Lazarus to be sent to warn his brothers (Luke 16:27-28). That request was likewise denied because they had already had sufficient warning.
And so did the people of Noah’s day. They had a full century to listen to Noah’s preaching, but they refused. The Flood occurred about 2,500 years before Jesus died and was buried. Imagine being in torment for two-and-a-half millennia when Jesus comes to preach about salvation and deliverance from their torment. Only the most dense person in the universe would say, “No thanks. I’ll just stay here.”
What are, then, the implications of this interpretation? Universalism. Every one of the people who perished in the days of Noah are now saved. The people whose every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually (Gen. 6:5) have been saved by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Those who had filled the earth with violence (Genesis 6:11) will be in heaven forever. What marvelous assurance for the wicked and ungodly! But why stop with those folks?
How about the people of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim? They too lived before the cross; surely no one could deny them a second chance. Having gone this far, we certainly cannot deny God’s own people, the Israelites, another chance, can we? Achan and his family have probably suffered enough. Oh, and we wouldn’t want to overlook Queen Jezebel or her wicked daughter, Athaliah. If the people of Noah’s day get a second chance, every other person who lived in and practiced iniquity ought to get the identical opportunity.
In other words, who in the Old Testament, living prior to Jesus’ death on the cross would have been lost? If they all had a chance to hear about Jesus’ sacrifice for sins and given an opportunity to repent, then they all would be saved—even though they had been in torment for centuries. This is universalism—a concept which Jesus denied in Matthew 7:13-14. The majority of people are going to be lost despite God’s best efforts to save them from their sins. Only a few will be saved. How fair would it be to give everyone living the 4,000 years before Christ salvation, but from that point on only the righteous would be rewarded? In that case, salvation would depend upon the time someone was born into this world. If you get to earth before Jesus died on the cross, you get a second chance, but afterward, you only have one chance, and the chances are you make the wrong decision. What a bad break!
A principle long recognized by Bible students states: Any doctrine that implies a false doctrine is itself false. In other words, the doctrine of a second chance implies universalism. But we know that universalism is an error (Matt. 7:13-14). Therefore, the doctrine of a second chance is itself false. Another example would be: All who believe are saved. Many of the rulers believed on Jesus. Therefore, they were saved. Yet they were not saved because they refused to confess Jesus out of fear of the Pharisees, and the Bible says of those who do not confess Jesus that He will not confess them before His Father in Heaven (Matt. 10:32). Therefore, the doctrine that “all who believe are saved” (which implies a false doctrine) is itself false.
The Meaning of 1 Peter 3:19-20
Verse 18 ends with the fact that Jesus was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit, referring to the Holy Spirit. Now it was in that same Spirit that He went and preached to the spirits in prison. But when were they in prison?
They are now in prison, but they were free people when they were preached to. The prison they now occupy is the place of torments in the Hadean realm—where the rich man is. They did not listen to the preaching that was for their benefit; they died in rebellion and disobedience against God in the Flood. Hence, they were cast into prison and have remained there ever since.
When did Jesus preach to them? He did not preach to them after He Himself died. He could not preach the gospel to them then, for they had already made their decision, and there is no gospel of the second chance. Jesus spoke to them through the Spirit—in other words, in a figurative sense. If things worked the same way in the Old Testament as it does in the New Testament era, then the Father gave the message to Jesus (John 12:49-50), Who communicated it to the Spirit, Who inspired Noah to preach to the people while the ark was being prepared. These people are now in prison, but they were not prior to the Flood. They had the ability to repent at that time, but they refused.
Peter, the Lord’s apostle, would probably be aghast that anyone would claim he was giving the ungodly of that era a second chance. Jesus, through the power of the Spirit, preached via Noah to the people. This example Peter cites was their one and only chance to be saved, but they drowned in the Flood, while those inside the ark were saved. Those below the water drowned and were lost; those in the ark were saved by the water.
The Flood was a type, and baptism is the antitype. Today, those who go under the water are completely covered by the water and are saved. Those who stay dry and out of the water are lost. Water saves the immersed but not those who refuse to go down into it (John 3:5; Rom. 6:3-5; Acts 22:16; 1 Peter 3:21).
When Jesus’ spirit descended into the Hadean realm, we do not know what He did during His time there. Maybe He comforted Lazarus and thousands of others. It’s possible that He spoke to the thief, who thanked Him for keeping His Word. It could be that He spoke with David about the prophecy He was about to fulfill from Psalm 16:8-11. Did He do any preaching? He might have—to those in Paradise. He had no message of hope for those in torments, but He might have offered a great deal of encouragement to all in Abraham’s bosom.
He might have told them that He had fought a good fight, finished His task (John 19:30), and kept the faith without ever sinning (1 Peter 2:22). The hard part was over. Resisting the devil had been a lifelong project, but He overcame him. Nothing could stop Him now; He had the power to lay down His life—and the power to take it again, just as He had foretold (John 10:17-18). Jesus could have preached a number of messages on fulfilled prophecy (Luke 24:27) and other matters. But He need not have uttered a word because His very presence there eloquently proclaimed all of these truths. Unless our Lord returns first, we shall all join that blessed and confident group once we depart from this earth.