I don't think that the fallen angels are christians. No need to preach to them if they aren't christians.
And I don't think that they who are with satan makes them to be in prison. They are higher than saved christians.
Even the orthodox church believes that demons (which they say are the fallen angels) are not judged now and they judge the humans after death in the ariel toll houses.
The dead need our prayers, but why if they cannot become more spiritually?
For sure God is not righteous if he let the righteous to go to hell before Christ died. Who says the other religions aren't true?
1. No one is burning in the lake of fire yet - see the lake of fire teaching in Rev 20
2. The 1 Peter 3 text works better if you quote it -- in context.
1 Peter 1 for context
10 As to
this salvation,
the prophets who prophesied of the grace that
would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, 11 seeking to know what person or time
the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.
THAT is the "Spirit of Christ" preaching to the living in the OT at the time when they were alive.
So now - "in context" we have 1 Peter 3
17 For it is better, if God should will it
so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong. 18 For
Christ also suffered for sins once for all time, the just for
the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 19 in which He also went and
made proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20 who once were
disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is,
eight persons, were brought safely through
the water. 21 Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you—
not the removal of dirt from the flesh,
but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
It is specifically speaking of the preaching AT the time Noah was building the ark -- people who were alive were hearing the Gospel
2 Peter 2:5 and did not spare the ancient world, but protected
Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
So then Noah was an example of one of those prophets in the OT - where "
the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow" - as we was himself "
a preacher of righteousness,"
===================
From:
1 Peter 3:19 Commentaries: in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison,
He went and preached unto the spirits in prison.—There are two main ways of interpreting this mysterious passage. (1) The spirits are
understood as being now in prison, in consequence of having rejected His preaching to them while they were still on earth. According to this interpretation—which has the support of such names as Pearson, Hammond, Barrow, and Leighton (though he afterwards modified his opinion). among ourselves, besides divers great theologians of other countries, including St. Thomas Aquinas on the one hand and Beza on the other—it was “in spirit,” i.e., mystically speaking, our Lord Himself who, in and through the person of Noah, preached repentance to the old world. Thus the passage is altogether dissociated from the doctrine of the descent into hell; and the sense (though not the Greek) would be better expressed by writing,
He had gone and preached unto the spirits (now) in prison.
In what sort of prison are they in now –
2 Peter 2
5 And spared not the old world, but saved
Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;
…
9 The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to
reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished:
Hos 13:14
“
I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will
redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes” (Hosea 13:14)
Rev 1:
18 and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and
I have the keys of death and of Hades.
Job 3
13 For now I would have lain down and been quiet;
I would have slept then, I would have been at rest,
14 With kings and counselors of the earth,
Who rebuilt ruins for themselves;
….
16 Or like a miscarriage which is hidden, I would not exist,
As infants that never saw light.
17 There the wicked cease from raging,
And there the weary are at rest.
18
The prisoners are at ease together;
They do not hear the voice of the taskmaster.
19 The small and the great are there,
And the slave is free from his mster.
============================
Matthew Henry
1 Peter 3 - Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible - Bible Commentaries - StudyLight.org
1. For the explication of this we may notice, (1.) The preacher - Christ Jesus, who has interested himself in the affairs of the church and of the world ever since he was first promised to Adam, Genesis 3:15. He went,
not by a local motion, but by special operation, as God is frequently said to move, Genesis 11:5; Hosea 5:15; Micah 1:3. He went and preached,
by his Spirit striving with them, and inspiring and enabling Enoch and Noah to plead with them, and preach righteousness to them,
as 2 Peter 2:5. (2.) The hearers. Because they were dead and disembodied when the apostle speaks of them, therefore he properly calls them spirits now in prison;
not that they were in prison when Christ preached to them, ... (3.) The sin of these people: They were disobedient,
that is, rebellious, unpersuadable,
and unbelieving,
as the word signifies; this their sin is aggravated from the patience and long-suffering of God
(which once waited
upon them for 120 years together), while Noah was preparing the ark,
and by that, as well as by his preaching, giving them fair warning of what was coming upon them. (4.) The event of all: Their bodies were drowned, and their spirits cast into hell, which is called a prison (Matthew 5:25; 2 Peter 2:4, 2 Peter 2:5); but Noah and his family, who believed and were obedient, were saved in the ark.
1 Peter 3 Barnes' Notes
Albert Barnes Commentary
(b) He refers them to the patience and an age of great and abounding wickedness, when
in the person of his representative and ambassador Noah, he suffered much and long from the opposition of the guilty and perverse people who were finally destroyed, and
who are now held in prison, showing us how patient we ought to be when offended by others in our attempts to do them good,
1 Peter 3:19-20.
