7 Jun 2012
II Peter 2:4
II Peter 2:4: “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;”
The word “hell” in this verse is actually unique. It is the word “tartarus”, and the only place it is found in the entire Bible is in this one verse. This verse is not speaking about the normal place of damnation that the rest of the Bible warns of. This Hell is quite different.
Long ago, in the days before the Flood, fallen angels intermarried with human women and produced the Nephilim – terribly powerful and terribly wicked men. God took the demons that committed this sin, bound them, and placed them in the Hell that is mentioned in this verse. No human is cast into that place; it is a holding cell, reserved for fallen angels that committed sexual sins with human beings. There are a great many demons that are allowed to roam the Earth, awaiting judgment, but what these demons did was so horrible that their judgment could not wait. They had to be put away and held so that they could not corrupt the human line again.
I’ve discussed this topic more fully elsewhere so I won’t repeat it all here. But it is worth nothing that there are actually two Hells, not just one. There is the one where the lost go when they die without Jesus, and then there is this place – reserved specifically for demons who committed a very specific type of sin, and who are bound there awaiting judgment.