I've been wondering about this for a while but no one has seemed to be able to give me a satisfactory answer. I've gotten quite a few "You just have to trust that God wouldn't forsake them all" kind of answers... which i really don't think is good enough.
So then i started my own research... but now I'm stuck which is why i thought that you guys could help me? Or perhaps have your own conclusions and why you think what you do?
So... this is what I've been able to dig up so far:
1Peter 3:19-20
"... he [Jesus] went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built..."
The "spirits in prison" are thought to have been either:
1. fallen angels from 2Peter 2:4; Jude 6 also possible reference to bits in 1Enoch and also Gen 6:1-4 (although the "sons of God" here could've just meant Godly men or sons of royalty that were pretty much considered Gods)
2. the sinners of Noah's time i.e. the pre-flood era
If it were the latter option then that would possibly explain those who were born before and around the time of Noah...
1Peter 4:5-6
"... judge the living and the dead. For this reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit."
The weak argument against this was that it meant that it was preached before they died, as in the in past when they were alive but are now in the present dead.
The reasoning behind this being that there will be no opportunity to be saved after physical death apparently according to
Heb 9:27 "Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment"
... which i really don't think says that there won't be any opportunity after death... it just says that you'll be judged sometime after you die.
SO seeing as i couldn't find anything else against 1Peter 4:5-6 (please tell me if you do) then i guess the next question is....
Can a spirit think and feel? Can a human Spirit without the soul/body make the conscious decision to accept Christ?
I thought a good starting point was to define "spirit" and "soul" which proved to be much harder than i thought... because they overlap quite a bit, in both Hebrew and Greek... at least in the way the biblical writers used them. Please see the below post for my definitions. I ended up only defining the soul because it pretty much also defined spirit. And i got pretty much nowhere? There isn't a clear line between the two? Which seems to me seems to suggest that it could possibly have emotion/thought.
And so i tried a different tactic next - analyzing spirits. so in 1 Samuel 28 Saul goes to a "witch" who supposedly uses necromancy to raise the spirit of Samuel. I do believe in necromancy, i think that the fact that it was condoned meant it was harmful and obviously considered real (Lev 19:31 Deut 18:9-14)
The explanations though are:
1. She was faking it ... she must've been very well educated and connected because all the witches were banished from the country... and also knew about Saul and his past relationship with Samuel.... basically i think this option is pretty much impossible
2. God allowed his spirit to appear - in which case it shows that Samuel's spirit has a thought process/is aware of their surrounding situations/has memory
3. woman was deceived by another spirit who took the form of Samuel - still shows that spirits have thought/can make decisions as they, for whatever reason chose to deceive her. Also means that they can change shape O_o... and actually have shape to begin with.... but that's completely irrelevant ... but coolish
4. she used telepathy/clairvoyance etc... to read Saul's thoughts and picture Samuel in her mind... but this is again unlikely for the reasons stated in the 1st option.
So what can be concluded from that is that spirits most likely can think and therefore can decide to accept Jesus after physical death.
Although i still don't think it's enough. I'm currently looking for more spirit cases that come up in the bible...
So what do you guys think?
Can you choose to accept Christ after death?
Were all those OT people condemned because of bad timing?
[edit] MY goshh i almost forgot the whole not going to heaven/hell straight after death thing.
Basically very very briefly, my reasoning behind that is that you can't really judge both the living and the dead on judgment day if the dead are already in heaven/hell and therefore have already been judged.
