Dr Paul Allen

Do unbelievers get a second chance at salvation after death? Can you explain 1 Peter 3:19–20 and 1 Peter 4:6, this idea that the gospel was preached to the dead? Some go so far as to imply second-chance salvation. Is there one?” I don’t have complete confidence that I know what Peter is referring to when he says that Christ in the spirit preached to those who are now in prison. Here’s what that verse says so everybody can be up to speed with us. Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which [that is, in that spirit] he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal ...

For you know that it was not with incorruptible perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors. ( 1 Peter 1:18 ) Not all the wealth of the world can redeem a single soul, for gold and silver are merely corruptible elements in a world under “the bondage of corruption” ( Romans 8:21 ). Everything in the physical creation is decaying and dying . In fact, one day all these “elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” ( 2 Peter 3:10 ). Even the very seeds that transmit life are “corruptible seed” ( 1 Peter 1:23 ), and all mankind is “corruptible man” ( Romans 1:23 ). Modern science recognizes this universal principle of decay as one of its most basic laws—the law of increasing entropy. Even in this corruptible world, however, some things are incorruptible. There is the “incorruptible . . . word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” ( 1 Pe...