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2 Peter 2:4
4 For [gar] if [ei] God [theos] spared [pheidomai] not [ou] the angels [aggelos] that sinned [hamartano], but [alla] cast them down to hell [tartaroo], and delivered [paradidomi] them into chains [seira] of darkness [zophos], to be reserved [tereo] unto [eis] judgment [krisis]; KJV-Interlinear
4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; NASB
God does not withhold judgment when judgment is due.
God is however, merciful and gives you lots of room with which to form your life. And given that room, or time, over the course of your life, when you finally arrive at its end, then you have no excuse for the decisions you have made during your life.
At life's end, all the tears, all the pleading, all of the emotional genuflexing (knees bent to the floor in total humility) you may try in order to give yourself another chance, will fall on deaf ears.
Peter goes through several historical examples of this principle. God gives us all time, enough time to get our life in order. During our life, we establish a pattern of a lifestyle for our life and though we may deviate from that pattern from time to time, the overall pattern will stick with us because our decisions and attitudes and so forth, establish that pattern of thought.
None of us are perfect. All of us fail from time to time. Even if you pursue your spiritual life with a vigor, you will still stumble from time to time. But God does not evaluate you based on your occasional failure, but on your overall life.
Likewise if you ignore your spiritual life, and occasionally recognize a Biblical principle from time to time, this will not result in your spiritual growth, nor cancel Gods bad evaluation of you. Your choices in life are what you subscribe to over the long term.
Therefore, do not think that you can ignore God all of your life and then suddenly go off to heaven and make your changes there, in order to get better grades, as it were.
Peter’s first example comes from the angels that sinned. The reference comes from Jude 13.
Here, Peter uses a word that has its roots in Greek mythology. ‘Tartaroo,’ is a Greek word that refers to a place where anyone who is extremely disobedient, is sent. It is a place of deep darkness and is located deep in the bowels of the earth. In our study of Hades, Tartarus is one of the four compartments located in Hades.
Hades is a broad term referring to the underworld. Hades has four compartments within it – Paradise, Torments, Tartarus, and the Abyss.
Paradise used to be the temporary home of Old Testament believers called prisoners, who were led out of captivity by Christ after the event of the Cross. They are now in heaven and Paradise is now empty.
Torments, is and remains the temporary home of unbelievers from all of human history. There they remain waiting their final judgment at the Great White Throne, which will occur at the end of the Millennium.
The Abyss houses the badest of the bad, of all fallen angels. They have been there for a very long time even prior to the beginning of human history. They will get a temporary release during the Tribulation (two-hundred million demons, Rev. 9:16, released under their general Abaddon), and they will cause tremendous terror and death to humanity. Upon their release, their sole purpose, immediate and without hesitation, is the destruction of the human race as one-third of the human race will be murdered, Rev. 9:18. They will again be jailed by Christ for the same one-thousand years as Satan is jailed, and there await their final judgment at the Great White Throne.
By the way, we do not know anything about these demon angels. Only that they are extremely bad, and have been locked up during all of human history. Presumably, so they could not interfere with humanity.
Tartarus, houses those fallen angels of Genesis six. These are the angels in focus in our current verse. They disobeyed God and had relationships with human females, producing the monsters or half breeds of human and angel offspring . Those half breeds (half human and half angel) are the heroes or famous people of whom the stories of old came from. You might want to review Gen. 6.
Those angels, disobeyed God, by breeding with humans, which implies that they were not supposed to breed with humans. That should be obvious. They were rounded up and cast into a pit of darkness, which is called Tartarus.
There they remain until their final judgment, which again is the Great White Throne, which is the final appearance before Christ for all the condemned. The Lake of Fire is their sentence.
Now there are only three groups of folks imprisoned. Unbelievers are in Torments for their unbelief. The disobedient angels are in Tartarus for their disobedience and interference with human history. And, then we have the angels who are bound in the Abyss. Those Abyss occupants may (only guessing here) very well be imprisoned for their disobedience in prehistoric history.
Now, I offer a bit of speculation here. I know that some do not like my speculation, but it can be fun just to wonder about various things.
Since we know that the dinosaur age pre-existed our human age, and that the dinosaur age was destroyed. And, given that we have to incorporate the fall of Satan and his angels into that dinosaur age, somehow, then we can speculate that it may have been those bad angels, who are in the Abyss, who had something to do with the demise of the dinosaurs. What impact they had, what relationship they had to earth’s history, we haven’t a clue. Were they incarcerated for their interference?
Somehow, I don’t think that they were just observers of prehistoric life on the earth. But then, how they interfered is anyone's guess.
In Genesis 1 the earth was created along with the universe and it was created perfect, then it became null and void (destroyed) and Satan was blamed for this result. So I believe that these angels had a part in this destruction.
Anyway, back to our verse.
What is the whole point of all of this? Whether speculation of reality, we know that disobedience is punishable and when punishment is decreed, it is not removed or cancelled out.
The angels in Tartarus have been there since before the flood of Noah, and there they remain until their judgment, which Peter herein states, they are reserved for. They are on hold, waiting the execution order of their sentence.
And by the way, they are in chains of darkness. This is a reference to an extreme darkness, in which there is no light. Chains, which is the darkness itself, are thick and heavy and from which there is no escape, and no rescue is possible.
God is light, and when you have been removed from His light, then there is total darkness, no orientation, no frame of reference, no knowledge, no wisdom, nothing. There is only total aloneness and captivity. And from this captivity there is no quality of life, nothing. Even the angels who have been allowed to wander on this earth, express fear, to Jesus, of this place. So it is an extremely fearful place. One in which we cannot imagine.
Peter states this so that you will know that your disobedience, your indifference, your playing games with God now, your being argumentative, in this life, is a big, big, big, big mistake.
There is a greater history and precedence before you ever existed. Don’t presume that you are above any of that.
