I Peter 3:19-20

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“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 a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.”

Are these “spirits in prison” evil people who “went to hell” that Christ “preached to” during the three days and three nights He was supposed to be in the grave? This view is easily and properly corrected by using these keys:

(1) The preaching occurred “when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah”—not during Christ’s 72-hour period of death!

(2) The word translated “prison” is not eternal hellfire somewhere under the earth where the “damned” are roasting. Rather, it is the Greek word phulake, which means “a place of restraint or prison.” That place is earth—to where Satan and his demons (Luke 10:18, 20 “spirits”) have been cast down.

During some of the 120 years of Noah’s preaching—the Bible does not say for how long—Christ simultaneously preached to the fallen angels who followed Satan. II Peter 2:4-5 is a helpful reference, because the word translated hell there is really the Greek word tartaroo, which has been explained earlier in this book.