Tartarus: A Prison For Angels


Deep within Hades is an even lower compartment at the center of the earth’s core, known as “the bottomless pit” in the book of Revelation. It’s called “Tartarus” in 2nd Peter 2:4, which is translated “hell” in our English Bibles. It’s the deepest abyss anywhere found within Hades. The Greeks believed that it might have even been seperate from Hades as exemplified in Homer’s work, “The Illiad And The Odyssey” where he described Tartarus as being as far below Hades as Heaven was above the earth.

Tartarus is a prison where the fallen angels who sinned in Genesis 6 are presently bound in chains of darkness. If the study of Genesis 6 is new to you, it’s a rather intense study that requires far more depth than I’m going to be able to give it here. But for the sake of context, I’ll do my best to summarize it.

All angels who are fallen are obviously in rebellion. But there’s something special about the rebellion of the angels who sinned in Genesis 6. They were guilty of an especially grievous sin that was far worse than anything the satanic hosts had ever attempted before. It’s what eventually led to the Great Flood of Noah’s day. They were genetically altering the DNA of all flesh on the earth, both human and animal, in an attempt to replace the human race with another race created in Satan’s image. Their purpose in doing this was to prevent Jesus from being born.

God's first prophecy of the coming Messiah was declared by God to the Serpent in Genesis 3:15. God told him that the seed of the woman (Jesus born of a virgin) would destroy the seed of the serpent (the Antichrist). Satan took that threat seriously and began to sanction the corruption of the genetic line of the human race so that God couldn’t keep his promise.

This sin committed by the angels is as close to getting in God's face as you can possibly get. God had created everything the way he wanted it, including man. But these angels thought, “Let's play with the DNA and make mermaids and men with horse heads. Let's breed different species of animals into monsters and then splice their DNA with humans to see what happens. God won’t breathe life into them since they aren’t his creations, so we’ll be able to inhabit them and people will worship us as gods.”

These fallen angels got away with this madness for centuries. By the time the flood came, Noah and his family and the animals on the ark were the only living creatures left on earth with pure DNA. It was the strangest time in earth history. Genesis 6 barely covers it with only a handful of verses. The ancient records of Sumer and Mesopotamia record this time in great detail. The world did indeed worship these beings as powerful gods and the human race was almost completely overtaken by them.

According to Bible prophecy, the dangerous sin of DNA splicing and the corruption of man and animal DNA is going to be repeated again before Jesus returns. It may be happening already. The so-called alien abduction phenomenon seems to be centered around the human reproductive system and the extraction of human DNA. It's equally disturbing to read today’s scientific journals contemplate the benefits of improving human life through the incorporation of selected animal DNA into human DNA. They're already testing this on animals. We’re not talking about transplanting organs and body parts. We’re talking about hacking into the software of something that the hardware manufacturer never intended.

The angels who sinned in Genesis 6 were imprisoned in Tartarus, which is the deepest place in Hades that there is. As we discussed earlier, we know according to Ephesians 4:8-10 that Jesus went into Hades after he died on the Cross to lead the Old Testament Saints into the 3rd Heaven. But now we find out according to 2nd Peter 2:4 that before Jesus left Hades, he preached to the spirits who were imprisoned in Tartarus. I’m sure this wasn’t a sermon on repentance or salvation, but rather a sermon on prophecy starting with Genesis 3:15.

Because Jesus went into Tartarus and Hades between his death and resurrection, and because Tartarus and Hades are both translated “Hell” in our English Bibles, many Christians have unfortunately come to believe that part of the suffering that Jesus had to endure to atone for our sins involved the suffering of Hell. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus bore the full weight of our sin in his flesh on the cross so that when the flesh of Jesus died, the atonement was immediately provided. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” he really meant it. As the body of Jesus was being pulled off the cross and carried into the tomb, his spirit and soul were traveling deep into the bowels of the earth to declare victory and to escort the Old Testament Saints into the 3rd Heaven.

Tartarus is mentioned again later in the book of Revelation although not by name. It’s called the abusso in the Greek and it’s translated “the bottomless pit” in our English Bibles. The demonic locusts of Revelation 9, the fallen angel which rules over them, and the Beast of Revelation 11:7-8 all come from out of the bottomless pit when it’s gates are opened during the reign of the Antichrist. Ultimately, the bottomless pit is where Satan will be bound in chains for a thousand years according to Revelation 20:1-3.


PREVIOUS ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES:
Lazarus Crossing Over
The Erroneous Doctrine Of Soul Sleep
There Really Is A Twilight Zone
A Place Hidden In The Twilight Zone
Abraham's Bosom