Here's the case:
Grok wrote: The Strongest Argument Copeland, Hagin, Moore, and Capps Would Advance
That Satan held power/authority over death (including Hades/the afterlife) until Jesus defeated him between His spiritual & physical deaths and His spiritual & physical resurrection
The strongest argument these teachers would advance is a tightly linked chain of legal, substitutionary, and conquest logic grounded primarily in Hebrews 2:14, Revelation 1:18, Colossians 2:15, and the necessity of Jesus’ full identification with spiritual death.
Here is how they would press the case, in their own consistent framework:
1. The Fall Transferred Legal Dominion over Death — Including the Afterlife Realm — to Satan
Adam’s treason transferred authority over the earth and over the human race to Satan (Luke 4:6 is taken as Satan’s truthful claim of transferred authority). Because spiritual death is the nature of Satan and the root of all physical death, Satan obtained kratos — dominion / power — over death itself (Hebrews 2:14).
Hagin and Kenyon emphasize that spiritual death is not mere separation but the infusion of Satan’s nature. Therefore the entire realm of death — physical death and the intermediate state of the dead (Hades/Sheol) — came under Satan’s legal jurisdiction. He became “him that had the power of death.” This dominion necessarily included authority over the afterlife itself: the place where the spirits of the dead were held. It is not absolute sovereignty (God remains ultimate), but a real, delegated, legal hold that kept humanity in lifelong bondage through the fear of death (Hebrews 2:15) and controlled the destiny of departed spirits until the claims of justice were met.
2. Exact Substitution Demands That the Last Adam Enter That Same Jurisdiction — Including the Afterlife
Because the first Adam’s act placed mankind under Satan’s dominion of death (body and spirit realm), the last Adam had to enter that same dominion as a substitute. Physical death alone would not reach the root. Jesus had to take the sin-nature / spiritual death into His own spirit (2 Corinthians 5:21 interpreted ontologically), thereby placing Himself under the very power Satan held over both physical death and the afterlife realm.
Copeland states it bluntly: Jesus “put Himself into the hands of Satan” and “accepted the very nature of death itself.” Once that nature was upon Him, Satan had legal right to drag Him into the prison-house of the damned — the afterlife domain under his control. Capps and Moore press the same logic: only by becoming sin could Jesus die at all, and only by entering the full penalty of spiritual death could He meet the claims of justice on the same ground where Adam fell, including the afterlife jurisdiction Satan had seized.
3. Power over Death Explicitly Includes Power over the Afterlife Until the Keys Changed Hands
The teachers insist that “the power of death” in Hebrews 2:14 cannot be restricted to the mere cessation of physical life. Kratos over death means dominion over the entire sphere of death, which Scripture itself links inseparably to Hades (the intermediate abode of the dead).
Revelation 1:18 is decisive for them: the risen Jesus declares He holds “the keys of hell [Hades] and of death.” Keys equal authority. The only coherent explanation, in their framework, is that those keys previously belonged to the one who had the power of death — Satan. Until Jesus seized them, Satan exercised real authority over the afterlife realm. That is why the righteous dead remained in the upper regions of Hades (Abraham’s bosom) and why the wicked were held in the torment side: both compartments were under the legal dominion of the one who held the power of death.
The transfer of the keys is therefore not a minor detail; it is the public announcement that the dominion over the afterlife itself has changed hands. Before the conquest, Satan held it. After Jesus was reborn in the pit, stripped the principalities, and took the keys, Jesus alone holds it. Any lesser reading of “power of death” leaves Revelation 1:18 unexplained and leaves the believer still potentially subject to residual claims in the afterlife.
4. The Three Days in the Realm of the Dead Were the Arena of Conquest
Jesus did not merely “descend” in some abstract sense. As a mortal man made sin, His spirit was taken into the region of the damned (the torment side of Hades / the lowest pit) — the very afterlife domain under Satan’s power. There every demon and Satan himself poured out their fury, thinking they had Him destroyed.
This is the moment the power of death (including afterlife authority) was exercised against Him. Yet because He had no personal sin, Satan’s seizure of Him was illegal. That illegality became the opening. When the demands of justice were satisfied, the Word of God charged Jesus’ spirit with resurrection life. He was “born again” in the pit (Capps: “Jesus was born again in the pit of hell… He started the church of the firstborn in the gates of hell”).
As the firstborn from the dead, the reborn Man then stripped the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15), paralyzed the one who held the dominion of death (Hebrews 2:14, Rotherham), and seized the keys of death and of Hades (Revelation 1:18). Copeland repeatedly dramatizes the scene: Jesus “reached over there and he grabbed those keys out of Satan’s hands and he said by God I’m King.” The keys of the afterlife itself changed hands at that moment.
5. Revelation 1:18 Is the Public Proof of the Transfer of Afterlife Authority
When the risen Jesus declares, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore… and have the keys of hell and of death,” He is announcing that the keys formerly held under Satan’s dominion over both physical death and the intermediate state are now in His possession by right of conquest. The physical resurrection is the outward evidence that the spiritual victory in the realm of death — including full authority over the afterlife — has already been won. Moore’s pastoral emphasis fits here: the death (including the spiritual death and the work in hell) paid the price; the resurrection proves justification and the transfer of authority have been secured (Romans 4:25).
6. The Logical NecessityIn short: Satan held the power of death by legal transfer from Adam’s fall — a power that necessarily included dominion over the afterlife (Hades). Jesus, by becoming sin and entering that realm as Substitute, met the claims, was reborn there, stripped Satan of the keys of death and of Hades by force of conquest, and emerged holding them Himself. That is why Hebrews 2:14 can say He destroyed (rendered powerless / paralyzed) him who had the power of death, and why Revelation 1:18 can announce that the keys of both death and the afterlife are now in Jesus’ hand.
- Man’s real problem is spiritual death under Satan’s dominion, which extends to the afterlife realm itself.
- Therefore the Substitute must experience that same spiritual death and enter that same afterlife jurisdiction.
- Only then can He legally break the claim, seize the keys of death and Hades, and emerge as the firstborn of a new creation who holds all authority over both physical death and the intermediate state.
- Without this conquest in the realm of death itself (including the afterlife), the believer would still be subject to the fear of death and to Satan’s residual legal rights over the departed.
This is the tightest, most internally consistent case these teachers advance. It stands or falls with their broader Jesus-Died-Spiritually framework: the nature of the Fall determines the nature of the remedy, exact identification requires exact entrance into Satan’s dominion over death and the afterlife, and the keys of both change hands only after the full work is completed in the prison-house of death.