The last three days of this year, that
would be December 28th, 29th, and 30th, I
expect to be one of the preachers, and
from the looks of the program, they've given
me a tremendous amount to do.
And speaking to the...
Honestly, I don't know that I even know
the name of the organization, but they meet
in Illinois University for what's that group?
Foreign Missions Fellowship.
And they tell me there are thousands come,
they come from all over the United States
and Canada.
And I'm going with a good deal of
fear and trembling.
It seems the Lord always keeps me on
tender hooks, never lets me go with any
confidence.
Last week, I was complaining to Brother McAfee
that I had to go and speak at
a conference of Brethren in Christ, and I
didn't know them.
And I was to speak to the publication
board hour and the Sunday School hour and
the Christian education hour.
And I didn't know anything about any of
those subjects.
Brother McAfee said, Your invariable custom is to
worry about it before you get there and
then come back and report a glowing experience.
I said, when I came back, I guess
I fell in line with your prediction.
But we had a most wonderful time at
Messiah College at Grantham, Pennsylvania, Brethren in Christ.
Incidentally, this hymn book is their hymn book,
and I had a hard time making the
publication secretary of the Christian Missionary Alliance, who
was present there by one of the guests,
understand why we were using this instead of
our own Alliance symbol.
But I don't know when I had been
with a fellowship that was sweeter, more cordial.
Some of those dear old brothers would merely
shake my hand off my shoulder, telling me
how they appreciated my simple talks.
And they were plain dressers, plain livers, simple
people.
And I didn't know there were people like
that left in the world.
But I was very happy to find it
out.
The women's hairdress was simple, pulled back and
tied behind with a little white hat on,
and they looked surprisingly neat and beautiful.
I told them that the way the women
wear their hair now, all of these women,
they had their ears.
And I said, I had forgotten in twenty
-five years, I had forgotten women had ears.
But I was delighted to find they still
had ears.
And they are lovely people.
I enjoyed it immensely.
I expect to enjoy the time down at
the University of Illinois.
But being who I am, I suppose I'll
worry a little about it until the time
comes for me to get down there.
Now we are continuing in 1 Peter, and
I am trying to be honest and teach
all of it, and not do like the
commentaries do, skip the hard places.
This that I bring to you today is
a hard passage of scripture.
Peter might very well have had himself in
mind when he said that Paul was in
the habit of writing things very hard to
be understood, in which the unstable and the
unlearned rested it to their own destruction.
Paul said, Peter said that about Paul, but
he might have said it about himself, because
he did give us something very difficult here.
Let me read it.
Verse 18 of chapter 3.
For Christ also hath once suffered four 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 the prison, which sometimes were
disobedient when once the longsuffering of God was
in the days of Noah.
While the ark of God was a prepared,
very few of his eight souls were saved
by water.
The life-signal were in communion and baptism,
that also now save us, not the communion
of the present flesh, but the answer to
good conscience for God, by the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and
is in the right hand of God, angels
and authorities and powers being made subject unto
him.
Verse 6 of chapter 4.
For for this cause was the gospel preached
also to them that are dead, that they
might be judged according to men in the
flesh, but live according to God in the
Spirit.
Now, verses 21 and 22, where it tells
us about baptism, being a figure and good
conscience toward God and the resurrection of Christ.
Verse 22, it tells us of Christ's ascension
and his high place of authority over angels
and powers.
These I am not going to mention in
as much as we have dealt with this
quite fully.
So I am to speak about Christ preaching
to the spirits in prison, verse 6, that
are dead.
And I will say that there is more
in this, this morning, for the curious than
there is for the spiritually hungry.
But I am still not going to pass
it up for a number of reasons.
One is that the passages here, by divine
inspiration, and as it had not been intended
that we should expound it, or attempt to
expound it, or attempt to understand it, it
would not have been put here.
There are obscure passages in the scripture, but
even those obscure passages were divinely inspired and
for that reason need to be treated with
respect, even if we are not able fully
to understand it.
The second reason that I am going to
courageously attempt an exposition here is that I
want our people to be fully informed.
We cannot be informed fully if we skip
the hard places.
And there is no joy in the scriptures
that can be understood.
And third, and I think this is the
most important of the three, that false teachers
specialize on difficult texts.
Heresy always thrives in obscurity, or on obscure
passages, and dies when the full light of
God reaches it.
Let us take such a passage as 1
Corinthians, where it talks about the baptizing for
the dead.
Now, it tells us there that, verse 29,
"...else what shall we do that shall baptize
for the dead, if the dead rise not
at all?
Why are they then baptized for the dead?"
Now, Paul put that there, and nobody knows
exactly what is meant by it.
And certainly he did not approve it.
He only used it casually as an argument
point for a future life.
But there are those who practice baptism for
the dead.
And if you object to it as being
unscriptural, they quote you that obscure and difficult
passage from 1 Corinthians 15.
And they say, why would you object when
there were those in Corinth that baptized for
the dead?
So they make a whole doctrine to rest
upon one verse.
Let me give you a good working rule
for the understanding of scripture.
If you haven't more than one verse to
support it, don't teach it.
Because if it isn't found in more than
one verse of the Bible, then chances are
it isn't found there either.
And that what you think is a passage
teaching a certain thing, does not teach it
at all.
Now, suppose that I were going to argue
for the future life, and I were writing
to people who practice masses for the dead.
And I were to say to them, how
can you deny the future life when you
practice, say, mass for the dead?
I would be saying to them, in effect,
now you yourself admit a future life because
you are acting as though those persons who
had died were still in existence.
Therefore, you yourself believe in a future life,
and your very practice of saying masses proves
it.
But that wouldn't mean that I approved saying
masses for the dead.
It would only show that I was arguing
that they believed in a future life by
the fact that they attempted to help people
in the future life.
Now, that's all Paul meant here.
Paul did not in any wise practice baptism
for the dead, nor did he exhort anybody
to do it.
There is that one line in the Bible
that teaches it.
But he appeals to something that already some
of them at least did and believed to
show how inconsistent they were in saying that
there was no resurrection.
And it's obvious that the same persons who
said there was no resurrection were the same
ones who practiced baptism for the dead.
And then take that famous passage, I will
give unto you the keys of the kingdom
of heaven.
Now, that's obviously an obscure passage.
I have never heard it satisfactorily explained.
I will give you the keys of the
kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you open will stay open.
Whatever you enclose will be closed.
Now, isn't it clear that our Roman Catholic
friends will deny that the Bible has any
authority over the Church on the grounds that
the Bible came out of the Church and
not the Church out of the Bible?
And they will deny whole sections of scripture
because they say, well, you don't understand it,
and besides that it isn't binding upon us
because the Bible is the daughter of the
Church and not the Church the daughter of
the Bible.
Therefore, the Bible has no authority over the
Church.
But if you complain that the Pope is
not Christ's vicegerent on earth, they will run
to that obscure passage, I will give unto
you the keys of the kingdom, and they'll
say, how dare you deny the Bible.
Well, the Bible says, I will give unto
you the keys of the kingdom, and that
was Peter and this Pope is a descendant
of Peter.
I don't know how we get that way,
but false teaching always hunts an obscure passage,
always hunts an obscure passage, which reminds me
of the Mormon missionary that was traveling and
somebody said, you believe in a plurality of
lives, how do you deal with that passage
that says, let a bishop be the husband
of one wife?
He said, that means at least one.
He had it explained anyhow.
Well, heresy always hunts obscurity, and false teaching
always hunts the difficult taste.
You see, my brethren, it is like if
I were to take you to my farm,
if I had a farm, and I would
say to you, now here you will find
apples and peaches and grapes, and here are
watermelons and cantaloupes and sweet potatoes, and I
would name 15 or 20 edible fruits or
vegetables or grains and say, now this is
all yours, take over.
And I would come back a month later
and find my guests half-starved, and when
I would say to them, what's the matter,
you look undernourished, they would say, well, we
are undernourished, because we have found a plant
that we can't identify.
There is a plant behind the old oak
stump, back there near the end of the
far field, just over the hill, and we
have spent one month trying to identify this
plant.
But I would say, you are starving, you
look sick, you will get TB.
What's the matter with you?
And they would say, well, we are worried
about this one verse, this one plant.
And that's exactly what a lot of God's
children do.
They starve themselves to death, knee-deep in
toil, because there is one little old plant
back of a stump in the rear end
of the field that they can't identify.
And heretics always starve you to death, while
they worry you to death about that one
obscure passage of scripture.
So I'm going to leaf out this passage,
and let nobody come and worry you with
it, and say that they know what it
means, and therefore try to prove that you
are wrong.
Now, what this verse doesn't teach, or these
verses do not teach, they do not teach
universalism.
We know universalism is the belief in the
restitution of all fallen beings to a state
of blessedness.
Some of them believe only in the restoration
of all human beings to blessedness, not only
Christians, but all human beings finally to blessedness.
Then there is another kind of more exhaustive
universalism, which teaches not only the restitution of
all human beings, but the devil and all
the fallen angels.
They're very generous in taking everything, every human
and every creature that has fallen and sinned
against God.
Now, this is a dream born of desire.
And this universalism, the teaching that every moral
creature would finally be saved, is a dream
born of desire.
And it springs from humanitarian motives, no doubt.
Humanitarian themes, within the best, lead us to
desire the salvation of all.
But it is not taught in the scriptures.
The Bible specifically states, that except the repentant
shall all likewise perish.
And it pictures us of how good the
devil and his angels are, and how all
that are not found in the book of
life are finally consigned.
So the teaching of the Bible is definitely
not universalism.
And whatever this passage teaches, which I have
already been hearing, it does not teach universalism.
And second, it does not teach a second
chance.
Now, the Russellites, I do not call them
the holy witnesses, because I do not want
to soil that holy name by identifying it
with any false teacher.
But the Russellites teach that there is a
second chance.
They say that everybody that dies will have
a chance in the future world.
And then, if he turns down that chance,
he will be annihilated.
He will cease to be.
When a sinner dies, he sleeps in the
earth, body and soul, in a state of
deep unconsciousness.
And then, when the resurrection comes, he will
be raised and given another chance.
If he turns down that chance, then he
will be annihilated and cease to be, and
there will be no hell.
Now, that is what the Russellites teach.
And of course, they will hold up in
passages like this.
But this arrow flies on difficult texts.
It cannot stand the full bright light of
the Bible.
It cannot stand the teachings of Jesus.
It cannot stand the book of Romans.
It cannot stand the book of Hebrews.
It cannot stand the book of Revelation.
It cannot stand the four Gospels.
And this harrassment cannot possibly stand up under
all the light of the Bible.
It is a night-blooming plant, and blooms
in the shadows of human thought.
But as soon as we turn the whole
Bible loose on it, it withers and dies.
Now, what it does mean?
It means that there are lost souls.
There is a scripture called, spirits in prison,
then there are dead.
And some of these in the passage are
identified as being the earth's population at the
time of Noah's flood.
They heard the message preached, and they denied
or refused it, rejected it, and the result
was that they perished along with their evil
deeds at the coming of the flood.
And it teaches us that these all went
to the place of the dead.
Hades in the New Testament, Noah in the
Old, the place of the dead, and that
Christ's body when he died lay three days
in Joseph's new tomb.
But that his spirit was not in his
body, but separated temporarily from his body, and
in that spirit he went and preached to
the spirits that were in Hades, the spirits
in prison.
You remember the Apostles' Creed, that we used
to quote it around here sometimes, but we
sort of quit, we all believe in the
Apostles' Creed.
It says this about our Lord, that he
was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of
the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was
crucified, dead, and buried, and the third day
he arose again from the dead.
Now, that's the way we Protestants had it.
But the old Apostles' Creed reads like this,
that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin
Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead,
and buried, and descended into Hades, and the
third day he arose again from the dead.
Now, that is only saying what Peter said
here, and what Paul said, as we'll notice
later.
That when Jesus Christ's spirit was freed from
the crucified body, that spirit did not like
coercing, or to hover over the tomb.
Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, in his spirit,
had a work to do, and so the
work he had to do was to go,
descend in the air, that is, descend not
into the fires of hell for punishment, but
descend to the place of the dead, and
there preach the word to those that had
died, and whose spirits were confined there.
So he preached the psalmist of Noah's position,
and he told them why judgment had come,
and he justified the ways of God to
man, and explained what had taken place, in
order that they might know that they were
being treated as intelligent beings.
Always remember, brethren, that God treats every human
being as an intelligent being.
You may not be as bright as Einstein,
but you're morally intelligent, and God will never
violate your intelligence, and he never means that
you should simply shut your eyes and gulp
and swallow what's ever given to you.
He means that you're an intelligent, moral being,
and therefore he will not violate your intelligence,
nor will he treat you like a moral.
There's a certain healing evangelist who goes up
and down the country, and when anybody comes,
he says they feel they've got a demon
in them, and he wants to pray for
the demon of God.
He tells everybody in the congregation, now don't
you open your eyes and look, for if
you do, the demon will go on you.
That kind of intimidation, that kind of trickery.
Why, the average magician who does tricks for
money on a stage wouldn't be so cheap
that if Jesus Christ is casting out devils
and healing the sick, I don't dare look
lest the demon will jump on me.
Where do you find that in your Bible?
Where is that in the New Testament?
Where is that any place within the confines
of the word of God?
Nowhere.
That's cheap trickery.
And I'd have no hesitation to look in
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, I never did anything in a
corner.
I never did anything with people's eyes shut.
I never had to do anything in a
house.
All religious activity should be an open book.
Everything from the treasures receipt book up and
down the scale in the Church of Christ
should be open to the eyes of mankind.
There's never any place in the Bible where
God prints me as if I didn't have
good sense.
So that even the spirits that were in
prison, the those who died and are in
the place of the dead, our Lord went
to them in his spirit and preached to
them and explained how to inquire in order
that justice might be done.
You take an ordinary English or American court,
something like this goes on.
The evidence has been heard.
The jury goes out and deliberates.
They come back in.
They pronounce the defendant guilty.
And the judge says, will the defendant please
rise and face the court?
The defendant rises and the judge says something
to this effect.
Mr. Swansall, the evidence has been heard and
a jury of your peers have decided from
the evidence that you have been guilty of
such and such a crime.
Before you are sentenced, is there anything you
want to say?
In other words, we're about to sentence you,
but we're not advocating your intelligence.
We're not treating you like a robot.
You are an intelligent human being, and you're
able to judge us, and if we as
a judge enjoy along you, you judge us.
Therefore, I want to clear this whole matter
up.
Have you anything to say?
Usually they don't have.
But if there was anything that this intelligent
sinner could say to the judge, the judge
would give it respectful consideration.
For in theory at least, American and English
courts are not going to roll your name
to the electric chair of a prison.
They're going to do it according to the
rule of justice, with all the gears showing
and all the processes open before the eyes
of mankind.
So God says that all the wicked will
swept away by a flood and hurled to
the place of the dead, and they will
never see the blessedness of heaven or know
God.
But we're not simply going to swoop them
out as if there were no bits of
proof.
They're human, they're intelligent, they're moral creatures.
They're capable of exercising judgment on their own
right.
Therefore, the everlasting Son of God went before
the spirits in prison and preached to them
there, preached to them that they were living,
and because they were spirits they were alive
in their spirit.
They had sinned in the flesh, and they
were to be judged for the days they
lived in the flesh, and their whole house
was owed in to the judgment of God.
Now, my brethren, if you don't believe this,
let me give you some scripture.
It shows why Christ descended into the place
of the dead, into hell, as it says.
Ephesians 4, 8 to 10.
Turn to that if you will for a
moment.
It says, Therefore he said, when Christ descended
upon high, he led captivity captive, and gave
gifts unto men.
Now that he ascended, what is it but
that he also first descended into the lower
parts of the earth?
He that descended is the same also that
ascended up far above all things that he
might feel.
All heavens that he might feel all things.
We are told here that when Jesus Christ's
body lay in the grave, his spirit went
to those captives in the place of the
dead, and preached the release to them.
And when he arose, he took with him
all the redeemed spirits of the lonesome men
that had been shot in the place of
the dead.
Here it is.
You remember Jacob said, I will go down
unto Sheol, Hades, down unto Sheol, mourning for
my son.
And when Samuel, the dead man, came back
from the dead, he came up out of
the earth.
But after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and
after Christ had taken the redeemed ones with
him to heaven, to the place of paradise,
Paul said, I was caught up in the
paradise to the third heaven, was no longer
down but up.
The Lord himself, the Lord of life and
death, had taken his ransomed ones out of
the place of the dead.
But that place of the dead contained not
only the redeemed ones, but it contained also
those that were not redeemed.
Separated, however, by a gulf, a great gulf
that was fixed.
Lazarus and the rich man explained that.
When the rich man died, he went to
the place of the dead.
And when Lazarus died, he went to the
place of the dead, this time Abraham's bosom,
with a great gulf fixed between.
So when our Lord descended after his death,
he descended into Hades, he took all in
Abraham's bosom with him up to heaven, and
left the rest there.
But in doing it, he explained it and
preached in the spirit to all those that
were in the place of the dead.
Now, if that isn't enough, let me give
you Philippians 3, 9 and 11.
Therefore God also hath highly exalted Jesus, and
given him a name which is above every
name, that upon him of Jesus every knee
should bow, for things in heaven, and things
in earth, and things under the earth.
And that every tongue should confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father.
So that not only those in heaven and
those on earth, but those in hell are
forced to confess with their tongue that Jesus
Christ is Lord, and this they do to
the glory of God the Father.
So you see, my brethren, that passage that
Peter gives us here doesn't teach universalism.
It teaches only that Jesus Christ our Lord,
while his body lay in the grave, went
in the spirit to shield the place of
the dead, and there he preached deliverance to
the ransomed, and in judgment to the lost,
took his ransom down to him, and left
the lost to the judgment of the great
day.
But everyone, those under the earth and those
on the earth, and all creatures everywhere, admit
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory
of God the Father.
This Jesus Christ our Lord is not going
to rule over any that do not willingly
submit to his rule.
He will not enforce his rule over one
human being, or one moral creature, but he
will force from the unwilling tongues of even
lost ones the fact that he is right,
true and righteous are thy judgments, O Lord.
It will be the only text in hell.
The only text in hell, and I'm not
sure it won't be cut against the tablatures
of that terrible place.
True and righteous are thy judgments, O Lord.
In order that that might be known to
all the three worlds above and on the
earth and beneath, there had to be a
declaration of the whole just plan of God,
those that are dead as well as those
that live.
But there is not one sentence, not one
phrase, not one word, not one letter in
the Bible that teaches that Jesus ever preached
the gospel to the dead.
He said, come unto me.
He said, come unto me to the living.
But he never preached the gospel of redemption
and gave an invitation and said, come!
It is appointed unto men once to die
and after that to judge.
The preaching to the dead was done in
order that the dead as well as the
living, the lost as well as the saved,
might know how true and just and righteous
our God is.
And how impeccable is his character, how holy
are his ways, and that he doeth all
things well.
I admit that this is not the kind
of a message to send you out with
moist eyes, but you need to hear this
and you need to know this, so the
next time someone comes pushing your doorbell with
a phonograph record to play to you, you
will be able to smile and say, I
know what the Bible teaches, thank you, good
-bye.
Quietly close.
Never slam it.
Don't slam it, that's not nice.
Christians never slam doors.
But close it rather crisply, I would suggest.
Because the false teachers are growing and their
numbers are growing, they're leaps and bounds.
Last month we had in Chicago our fifty
-seventh annual missionary council.
We had how many?
Eleven hundred?
About eleven hundred of us.
That summer when I was preaching at Keswick
out in the east, we were held up
forty-five minutes getting through Lincoln Tunnel.
You know why?
The traffic was so heavy on the road.
You know why it was so heavy on
the road?
Jehovah's Witnesses were gathering at Yankee Stadium.
One hundred thousand strong.
After fifty-seven years of missionary enterprise, we
got eleven hundred.
They had one hundred thousand present.
So you need to know these things, even
if they don't bless you.
At the time.
So you have a shield of truth to
raise against the fiery dots of error.
Father, bless thy word, and pray thee that
thou wilt help us to see how wondrous
are thy good in our way past finery,
to receive with bowed heads and reverent minds,
to hide obscured things as well as the
easy-cleaning things.
We thank thee, Lord, that the easy-cleaning
things outnumber the others perhaps a thousand to
one.
Bless thou the word given this morning, for
Jesus' sake, amen.