1039. Is There Salvation After Death?

Is There Salvation After Death?

"He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him" (Joh_3:36)

There are many who seem to believe and teach that the wicked will have another chance for salvation. This has led to a number of fancied vagaries.

1. There are those who pray for the dead, that they may rest in peace. Certainly, if the wicked can never pass from hell to Heaven, there is no need to pray for them. Nor do we find any Scripture which allows such a thing. There is one passage which sometimes is used to try to enforce this fallacy.

1Ti_2:1 : "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men."

In this passage we are exhorted to pray for all men, but the "all men" does not include dead men; because the next verse explains that the "all men" includes "kings and all that are in authority," and the objective of the prayer is that we may "lead a quiet and peaceable life in all Godliness and honesty." Certainly praying for the dead would not help us to lead a peaceable life here.

The 1st verse instructs us to pray for all men; the 4th verse says that God would have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the Truth; but once more He is talking of the living, and not the dead.

2. There are those who believe that Christ Himself preached to the dead. The passage which supposedly teaches this is 1Pe_3:18-20 : "For Christ also hath once 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 a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water."

The passage does not say that Christ preached to the spirits while they were in prison. These spirits were once disobedient in the old time, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, and at that time, through Noah; the same Spirit preached unto them, Who quickened Christ after He was put to death in the flesh.

This seems to us the correct interpretation, but if there be those who insist that Jesus Christ Himself preached to these spirits during the three days of His abode in Paradise; they cannot thereby state that these spirits in prison were given a second opportunity of salvation.

3. There are no plain Scriptures anywhere which teach that the wicked, after death, will have an opportunity for salvation. We will, however, mention two Scriptures which are used sometimes to bolster up the theory.

(1) Eze_16:55 : "When thy sisters, Sodom and her daughters, shall return to their former estate, and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their former estate, then thou and thy daughters shall return to your former estate."

The passage is not speaking of Sodom and her daughters who have died, and of Samaria and her daughters who have died, coming back to their former estate. The passage is simply foretelling a revival of the cities of Sodom and Samaria. How striking it is that in the Book of Revelation, the very conditions which were in Sodom are revived; because even Jerusalem has reached so terrible a state of sin, that it is spiritually called Sodom.

(2) 1Pe_4:6 : "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."

This passage does not at all teach that the Gospel is preached unto people after they are dead. Surely this verse means, that the Gospel was preached unto those who are now dead. However it was preached unto them while they were alive.

All of these tales about the purifying purgatorial fires are false. There is no such thing as a wicked man going to hell and then, through his own repentance or through the prayers of living saints, being ultimately changed and saved. The Word of God positively teaches that "he that believeth not the Son shall not see life." It gives no ray of hope to the man who passes out without having accepted the Lord Jesus Christ and having become a partaker of eternal life.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR