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Help for Bearing Up Under SufferingChoosing the Best Way of Life
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In this state also he went his way and preached to the spirits in prison,
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Help for Bearing Up Under SufferingChoosing the Best Way of Life
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34. Because of his record of faithfulness, what was Jesus Christ able to do in connection with wicked spirits?
34 Because he came off the victor through faithful endurance, the Son of God, as a spirit person, was able to proclaim a message of judgment against the “spirits in prison.” Since the disobedience of these spirits is linked with the time of Noah, they must be the angelic sons of God who left their original dwelling place in the heavens and took up living as husbands with women. (Genesis 6:1-4) They are spoken of as “spirits in prison” because their punishment included a form of restraint, being forever debarred from their original place among the faithful angels. The words of Jude confirm that only a message of condemnatory judgment could be directed to these fallen angels: “The angels that did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place [God] has reserved with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day.” (Jude 6) It was Jesus’ faithful endurance to the very death that entitled him to be restored to life and thus put him in a position to preach or proclaim such a condemnatory judgment to the fallen angels.
35. Why can the fact about Jesus’ preaching destruction to the “spirits in prison” encourage us to endure faithfully?
35 This preaching of destruction for the wicked spirits should encourage us to endure faithfully when having to undergo affliction. Why? Because such wicked spirit forces are largely responsible for stirring up mankind alienated from God against the disciples of Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us: “The god of this system of things has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, that the illumination of the glorious good news about the Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine through.” (2 Corinthians 4:4) “We [Christians] have a wrestling, not against blood and flesh, but against the governments, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the wicked spirit forces in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12; see also Revelation 16:13, 14.) Hence, the fact that the resurrected Jesus Christ could preach a message of judgment against the wicked spirits provides the assurance that, eventually, their hateful influence will be totally abolished. (Compare Mark 1:23, 24.)
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