Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and, behold, the Lord GOD called to contend by fire, and it devoured the great deep, and did eat up a part.
(Amos 7:4) KJV
The longsuffering of God waited in the days before Noah. Noah’s flood saw the waters of the deep (tehom), being boiled out from under the Earth creating the open space that Jesus referred to as the great gulf (sheol).
Hell was made ready for the devil and his angels because they were spirits which could be bound with Mosaic gravity in the molten core of the Earth. The difference between them and the people who lived on Earth before the flood is that some of them were believers, godly men and women who were in a terrible situation. They weren’t going to be condemned into everlasting chains of darkness, but they couldn’t go to heaven either because this was before the crucifixion and the price hadn’t been paid for their redemption.
They had to go to await the messiah in sheol, the underworld realm of the dead. The thing is, up until the flood it was filled with water. It was only after the flood that it became a great gulf of open space.
They’re dead, physically, but their souls and spirits are alive. They’re in the same prison that the rebellious angels are in. However, they may be in the midst of hell, the lower mantle; or they may be in the pit, the molten core of the Earth. It depended on their attitude towards God at the time when they died.
Salvation
- Call upon the name of Jesus Christ,
- believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
- confess your sin.
