Kenyon believed and taught that Jesus' physical death was not enough to atone for sin. According to Kenyon, Jesus went to Satan's domain, or 'hell', and suffered there at the hands of demons, until God brought him back to life. That sounds like an epic story, but is it found in Scripture? No. In reality this fantastical event is not recorded in Scripture, not by the Old Testament prophets, and not even by the New Testament apostles. Don't you find it odd that not one peep of this cataclysmic event, that Jesus supposedly endured for the saving of our souls, is found in the entire Bible?
" For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison,..."
Did you see there how the Scripture makes it clear that Jesus' flesh was put to death and not his spirit? And now if we continue on in Peter's letter, we can see that he connects the days of Noah to this statement, and he does the same thing in 2 Peter as well. But in the 2 Peter verse, he includes another vital piece of information that was not included in his first letter, that being his mentioning of the angels who sinned and were cast into Tarturus.
1 Peter 3:19-20
By which also he went and preached unto the spirits [angels] in prison;
Which sometime were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls[men/mankind] were saved by water. [emphasis mine]
2 Peter 2:4
For if God spared not the angels [spirits]that sinned, but cast them down to hell [Tartarus], and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person [soul/souls], a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;
[emphasis mine ]
For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham.
Hebrews 2:16
So again, because the word for "spirits" is really angels, why would Jesus preach to the angels who are chained in prison [Tartarus] who have no hope of salvation at all, and not to the lost souls, who really had no hope of salvation either? He preached to the angles in Tartarus in order to 'lord' his victory over them; that victory being his bodily death through his willful sacrifice, that paid the ransom the LORD required for sin, the victory that sealed their upcom-ing and eternal doom.
Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it [the cross]. Colossians 2:15 [amplification mine]
Scriptures, from the O.T. to the N.T. indicate that bodily sacrifice (and nothing more) is what is required for the forgiveness of sin --blood--more specifically. Find me a Scripture in both the O.T and the N.T. that states a soul, or spirit must suffer in 'hell', or sheol as a means of atoning for sins, and then I'll gladly stand corrected. The fact that Scripture never mentions Jesus' spirit suffering in "hell" should be clear enough to show that the foundation of the
Word of Faith theology is heresy, according to the Bible, and really blasphemy. According to the Bible, they actually preach another Jesus, one whose spirit had to suffer in hell, and one whose blood was not enough to atone for sin. Also (to name names) Kenneth Copeland, the Word of Faith's most prominent blasphemer, even goes a wicked step further, and says that Jesus' sacrifice was made to Satan and not to the LORD. Wow! Were we not warned by the apostles that false prophets and false teachers would get worse and worse, as they try to "one-up" each other with their false teachings?
But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
2 Timothy 3:13
Hell - Satan's Future Prison
This notion is even some what promoted within the JDS doctrine (another leak in their theological cistern), to a lesser degree, in which they actually teach that Satan is enthroned and rules from Hell. He may not be sporting the horned red pajamas, nevertheless, his ruling hell is far from being biblical truth.
Dear reader, this notion comes to us from Dante, and his Divine Comedies, which is a treatise against the Catholic Church and their abuses, and not from the Bible. How do I know all of this? The word Peter uses in 2 Peter 2:4 that is translated as "hell" is the Greek word Tartarus.
This is rather odd since Tartarus, in Greek mythology is an exceedingly dark prison deep in the earth, reserved for the Titans and other vanquished gods. Later it came to be known as a place of torment, like what we refer to as "hell." The Bible says that hell, or more accurately, the lake of fire, is the future prison of torment that the Almighty had made for Satan, his fallen angels, and all the souls of men who refuse Jesus' blood atonement. 'Hell', is not somewhere any of them want to go, but they will all soon reside there after the great white throne judgment. Scripture clearly states that Satan is currently the prince of the power of the air, and the god of this world, or age, not the ruler of hell [John 12:31; 2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:2]. The bible actually uses several different words in the Hebrew and Greek to describe the English word hell, like Sheol/Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus. All of which have their own distinct meanings.
So who are we going to believe, a blasphemous man or the LORD's inerrant word? We had better cling to the LORD's inerrant word and reject man made false teaching, and the doctrine of demons if we want to make it to the end and hear our Lord say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."