Bible Question: Hank, Thanks for your detailed answer. Your view point seems more likely to me as in 1 Peter Jesus says He addressed the disobedient spirits in the days of Noah. That doesn't sound like he's talking about the righteous dead to me. I am beginning to see from some of the answers I've been getting that there are two view points on who Jesus is addressing. Some believe it's wicked spirits as you do and some think it's the righteous dead. A brief thought. Could Jeus have addressed two different groups of people during the 3 days in the center of the earth? Could he have referred to the righteous dead in Matthew 12:40 and the wicked spirits in the days of Noah? I don't know, what do you think? Chusarcik |
Bible Answer: Hi Chusarcik, If a distiction of the greek words for Hell (Hades) and Tartarus is not taken into consideration, wrong conclusions will be drawn. Tartarus is a prisonlike, abased condition into which God cast disobedient angels in Noah’s day. It is found but once in the inspired Scriptures, at 2 Peter 2:4. The apostle writes: “God did not hold back from punishing the angels that sinned, but, by throwing them into Tartarus, delivered them to pits of dense darkness to be reserved for judgment.” The expression “throwing them into Tartarus” is from the Greek verb ta·ta·ro´o and so includes within itself the word “Tartarus.” A parallel text is found at Jude 6: “And the angels that did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place he has reserved with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day.” Showing when it was that these angels “forsook their own proper dwelling place,” Peter speaks of “the spirits in prison, who had once been disobedient when the patience of God was waiting in Noah’s days, while the ark was being constructed.” (1Pe 3:19, 20) This directly links the matter to the account at Genesis 6:1-4 concerning “the sons of the true God” who abandoned their heavenly abode to cohabit with women in pre-Flood times and produced children by them, such offspring being designated as Nephilim. From these texts it is evident that Tartarus is a condition rather than a particular location, inasmuch as Peter, on the one hand, speaks of these disobedient spirits as being in “pits of dense darkness,” while Paul speaks of them as being in “heavenly places” from which they exercise a rule of darkness as wicked spirit forces. (2Pe 2:4; Eph 6:10-12) The dense darkness similarly is not literally a lack of light but results from their being cut off from illumination by God as renegades and outcasts from his family, with only a dark outlook as to their eternal destiny. Tartarus is, therefore, not the same as the Hebrew Sheol or the Greek Hades, both of which refer to the common earthly grave of mankind. This is evident from the fact that, while the apostle Peter shows that Jesus Christ preached to these “spirits in prison,” he also shows that Jesus did so, not during the three days while buried in Hades (Sheol), but after his resurrection out of Hades. 1Pe 3:18-20. Likewise the abased condition represented by Tartarus should not be confused with “the abyss” into which Satan and his demons are eventually to be cast for the thousand years of Christ’s rule. (Re 20:1-3) Apparently the disobedient angels were cast into Tartarus in “Noah’s days” (1Pe 3:20), but some 2,000 years later we find them entreating Jesus “not to order them to go away into the abyss.” Lu 8:26-31 Truthfinder |