Mt. 16:18 “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell (Hades) shall not prevail against it.”
So those locked away in Hades (Hell) are to be liberated by the Church? Hmm…
Yes, yes, YES! That’s how I’ve looked at it ever since I embraced universalism. There’s an allusion to that in the Gospel of Thomas, I think, if only a possible addition to it… I’m not sure, it’s been years. But anyway in the apocrypha somewhere, the disciples ask if the inhabitants of hell will ever be rescued, and he replies that after so many ages, the children of God will go down and rescue them. Dangit, I wish I could find that again!
Anyway, even if we can’t accept everything in the apocrypha, I really want to believe that this was a true saying of Jesus passed down by the Christian communities.
Wow! This travelling through various worlds by Christ showed up a couple times in my poetry before… which has often been shown to have been deeply prophetic. 
So, the gospel of Nicodemus, eh? I have to read this!
I’m going to have to make “the gates of hell shall not prevail” my motto. That is pretty encouraging!
I heard someone, once, trying to explain away 1 Peter 3:19 as being people of faith in Abraham’s bossom, that were going to be saved and needed to hear of Christ. Doesn’t make much sense since it specificly mentions it’s disobedient people that he’s going to. How do most Christians explain away this text, that would seem to give hope that God does work after the grave?
I’ve been thinking about this lately. Thanks for bringing it up Sherman.
It’s an interesting passage. Thanks for your notes Stellar. A friend of mine, a prophetic type pastor does much intercession. She shared with me that there have been times when she’s travailing in prayer for the salvation of others that in the Spirit she sees people who have died in their sins being delivered from Hell. The Lord confirmed to her in some pretty neat ways that what she was praying was really from the Lord. And she had never even considered UR before.
And Amy, concerning the 1 Pet. 3:18 & 4:6 passage, most Christians have never noted it before, and those who have grappled with it usually relegate it to being a “difficult” passage to understand and thus dismiss it because it doesn’t fit into their paradigm.
Another passage that is interesting is Jonah’s deliverance from hell. He died and in the torment of his soul in Sheol cried out to God who raised him to life and gave him a second chance. Interesting, very interesting!
I’ve always understood Christ to be referring to death and the grave by his expression “gates of Hades” rather than some post-mortem locale of punishment (cf. Job 17:16; 38:17; Ps 9:13; 107:18; Isa. 38:10, where death and the grave are spoken of as having gates). Christ is, I believe, simply declaring that death would not prevail against his church. That is, his church would not vanish from the earth as a result of the violent opposition that would inevitably be coming against it.
While it’s possible that God was revealing to this woman a profound truth in a way that she could understand at the time, I have to admit that I’m pretty skeptical of such “visions” of the afterlife. I’d be interested to know what kind of “hell” she saw these people being delivered from. Did she say? Was it a place of fire and scorched tongues (like in Jesus’ parable), or something more akin to the hell envisioned by CS Lewis? Or something else entirely?
Regarding 1 Pet 3:19, I don’t think this verse refers to a post-mortem reality, and thus don’t see it as being either for or against UR. In the context, Peter is referring to the corrupt people of Noah’s generation (v. 20). They are spoken of as “spirits in prison” because their “spirits” (i.e., their mental disposition or thought pattern - cf. 1 Cor 2:11; Eph 4:23; Phil 1:27; 1 Pet 3:4; 1 John 4:1-3) were in bondage to sinful desire (cf. Isa 42:6-7; 61:1). But Jesus didn’t personally preach to these people; rather, it was the prophetic “spirit of Christ” which was in Noah (who is called a “herald of righteousness” - 2 Pet 2:5) that preached to that wicked generation many years before the birth of Christ (see 1 Pet 1:11; 2 Pet 1:21). It was by means of the Holy Spirit given to people such as Noah that they were able to speak as though Christ were actually present at the time (cf. Eph 2:17, where Christ is represented as having preached to people to whom he didn’t personally preach).
That’s very interesting Aaron. Lots to think about! I’m always amazed at how many different understandings there are.
Aaron, I go all the way with you in believing that we will be resurrected and dwell on earth forever as God creates it anew. Do you think it’s possible, though, that these experiences are emotional ones at the very least? You believe that spirits of the just go back to God whom created them until the resurrection, right? Wouldn’t that be the truest definition of heaven? What about spirits of the unjust? Do they go back to God too? I’m not totally sure what you believe. But anyway, a sort of foggy spirit world makes sense to me as a holding place for people in the meantime between now and resurrection. At the very least it would seem that some kind of consciousness would hang on.
No prob, I enjoy it as much as you do! 
That. is. freaking. awesome. What a sensitive woman! Thank God for people like her.
Hi Justin,
Actually, I’m more inclined to believe that our post-resurrection abode will be in heaven (i.e., what Paul calls the “third heaven”) rather than on the earth (this, I believe, may be inferred from verses such as John 14:2-3; 1 Cor 15:48-49; Phil 3:20-21; 1 Thess 4:13-18; and 2 Tim 4:18). I see the “new heavens and earth” as being a present reality rather than a future one, and as signifying a new covenant-defined world for God’s people during the ages of the Messianic reign. This, I believe, became a reality when the old covenant (and its “heavens and earth”) vanished away in 70 AD.
As far as the Hebrew and Greek words translated “spirit,” I believe they can mean different things in different contexts. The “spirit” that departs from us at death is, I think, simply the “breath of life” that is described in Gen 2:7 as being breathed into Adam by God (hence in Eccl 12:7 it is said to “return” to God who gave it). But if this spirit returns to God who gave it, do you think it was a conscious thing before he gave it? For example, when Adam died, he breathed out the same “spirit” that was breathed into him at creation. But was this spirit that was breathed into Adam a conscious thing before Adam became a “living creature?” If not, then I don’t see why it should be understood to be a conscious thing after it “departed” from Adam. Human consciousness, I believe, depends on a functioning brain, and cannot “hang on” without one. When our brain dies, I believe our consciousness is “put on hold” until the resurrection.
I’m not really sure about what you call a “foggy spirit world” between death and the resurrection, as I don’t see such a world revealed in Scripture. It certainly sounds less appealing to me than “sleeping” until the resurrection (for according to my understanding of Scripture, our next conscious experience after death will be after we’ve been made immortal!).
I don’t recall the detail to my friend’s vision. I will ask her to send me a written account of her experience.
And concerning post-mortem existance and ressurrection, I tend to view such as terminology that is tring to explain in temporal terms eternally present realities. When we die we shed our temporal realities and our physical bodies and rise, so to speak, in our spiritual bodies and enter into full consciousness of the present eternal spiritual realm. The bodies that we sow in death are not the same bodies that rise in life, much like the plant is not the same in form or function as the seed that died to germinate it. So to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. These are “olam” beyond site and transcending our understanding. The more I study scripture, the more I understand scripture to be written from the perspective of living in the present, “Repent for the kindgom of heaven is at hand (within reach)”.
I also see “the gates of hell” in relation to death and the grave, but according to a spiritual truth as it relates to “lying lips” and a “false tongue” (etc). 
I think, however, that most orthodox Christians would take it to mean that Hades won’t prevail against the church only 