DEATH AND BEYOND

cleansed. Sinners who have clung on to their sin in defiance of God will be caught up in the fires and will be eradicated forever, never to arise again. Psalm 37:20 says, ‘They (the wicked) … shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.’ Sinners will go up in smoke. This implies that they will not be seen again and sin will be finished once and for all. The punishment will be complete and eternal. It will not be unending punishing.
Another Bible example is Sodom and Gomorrah. They suffered the ‘vengeance of eternal fire’. But they are not still burning today. Those fires, sent by God with burning brimstone, burned till their work was done and now the area is a barren waste.

1 Peter 3:19. This verse speaks about Christ going to preach to spirits in prison. Was He preaching to the dead? Please explain!
Here is the full text and the context of verses 18 and 19. ‘For Christ also hath suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened 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 preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.’

This is talking about those who lived in the time of Noah. Those believing in an immortal soul often teach that, when Christ was in the grave, He went and preached to others in Hades, that at His resurrection He freed them and they ascended to heaven with Him. Because of a general belief in the separation of body and soul at death, they believe that Christ’s soul was also immortal and that it was this soul that went and preached to sinners from long ago to give them a second chance and freedom from the fires of hell. It is necessary to be clear that Jesus did not have a soul that was alive when His body was in the tomb. Christ died for us, Without a genuine death, He could not have been our Saviour.

It would not have been a true sacrifice if He had really been alive somewhere else all the time. We need to know that Christ was really dead or we lose all the benefits of His death for our salvation from sin. The credibility of the character of God is lost and we could put no trust in His promises and statements. There are religions groups today that scoff at Christians over the death of Christ; they teach that he did not really die saying that we believe a myth and a sham. It is essential that the same is not done by teaching that He had a spirit that remained alive while His body was in the grave. This would be to deny that He truly died for us. ‘The wages of sin is death and Christ took that death for us.’
The Bible talks about Him being raised from the dead. It uses the word to ‘quicken’ which means to make alive, make alive from the dead. This is clear that Jesus our Saviour really died and rested in the tomb until raised up by the Holy Spirit. Romans 1:4 speaks of His resurrection ‘from the dead’. Another word often confused with ‘soul’ is ‘spirit’. When Christ died,

He commended His spirit to His father. His spirit was His breath. His body plus His breath made Him alive. At His death, His body and His breath separated and He trusted His Father with His life breath until the time of the resurrection. ‘He yielded up the ghost’ (breath) Matthew 27:50. ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.’ Luke 23:46.
After His resurrection, He stated, ‘I am He that liveth and was dead and behold I am alive for evermore.’ Revelation 1:18.

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