Biblestudy: Lazarus and the Rich Man

A Castigation of Pharisaism
#BS-1022
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 04-Dec-10; 74 minutes

We all know the world's beliefs about what happens to a person after he or she dies. We have all seen it portrayed in movies or on television shows, perhaps we have read of it in books. But the classic understanding is that once the individual breathes his last, his soul then departs from his body and if he has been a good person, he sees a white light and he starts going toward the light. He rises into it and he is gathered into bliss with his departed family members and those that he knew and loved in life. And of course, this is called that he has "gone to heaven."

And perhaps the way it was portrayed that comes to my mind is from the movie Ghost. You remember back in 1990, Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, when he died and finally went to heaven, he went off into the light and there were all these kind of amorphous beings up there. You could not quite tell who they were, but they all welcomed him with great joy into heaven because he was such a good guy. But this is kind of the typical way of looking at that.

The movie also depicted what happens to those who do evil. If you remember that part of the movie, the murderous villain upon his very grisly death is grabbed by merciless ghouls. They are all black and making these strange noises and he is dragged, kicking and screaming, into this utter blackness of what you think is probably hell. And he just goes down into this and gets sucked up never to be heard from again. And there in hell, as is popularly believed, the condemned are imprisoned for all eternity and unceasingly tortured by fire, thirst, whips, the rack, and evidently waterboarding.

Satan of course, is the master of hell. He is the Hades of Hades you might say, and he and his demons delight in causing sinners to feel suffering and excruciating pain till the end of all things or maybe forever and ever.

Now, we have to admit that a great deal of this is a product of pagan influenced Medieval Christian imaginations, spurred by the reality of such things as the Inquisition, famine, plague, commonplace brutality, and the things that go bump in the night. These are the things that they thought about and they considered that this would be a fitting reward for those who do evil. And the Catholic Church, and later, the Protestant churches, declared that this was what the Bible taught, these pagan/semi-pagan/Christian beliefs about the afterlife. They would say that these came from the Bible and the priests and other clergy would pull out their proof texts to anyone who needed convincing.

And the one that they referred to the most was Luke 16:19-31. That is the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. So that is what we are going to be going over today, Lazarus and the Rich Man. And if we read this parable alone, if we make it a proof text, if we just do not look at anything else in the Bible, then we might believe what the rest of Christianity believes regarding the afterlife. You know, in heaven and hell, of there being this great divide and the people who have been bad go to hell where they are tormented for all time, and where the good go to heaven where they are in the bosom of Abraham for all eternity.

But as you know, we do not make doctrine from one verse or even one passage in the Bible, especially if that verse or passage does not seem to square with the rest of Scripture. Mr. Armstrong taught us that one of the principles of Bible study is to allow the clear scriptures to explain the more ambiguous ones. So you do not make a doctrine on something that can be interpreted in different ways. You make doctrine from verses that are pretty dogmatic and straightforward and then you allow that to influence the ones that are not quite so clear.

So we will do this today as we go through the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. We will see that, despite what preachers and commentaries and other things say about this passage, it fits quite well with the rest of the Bible's teachings on the afterlife and the timeline of future events, what prophecy says is going to happen in the future. But before we get to the parable, we are going to begin in some pretty common verses so that we can just lay the groundwork for what is said in the parable.

First, we are going to start in Ecclesiastes 9, verse 5. We need to have these principles down pat before we get to Lazarus and the Rich Man so we can see what the truth is and where the Catholic Church, Protestant churches, and others have gone off the track.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.

So very clearly when a person dies, he has no more consciousness, he knows nothing.

Ecclesiastes 9:10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you were going.

This expands upon what verse 5 says, not only is there no knowledge, the dead do not know what is going on on earth, they do not know what is going on anywhere. They have no consciousness. It says here that they do not do any work. There is no device, no implementation of anything, no knowledge or wisdom in the grave. There is nothing. When one goes to the grave, nothing happens. One is dead and buried and that is that.

Let us go to (keep your your finger or a bookmark or something in Ecclesiastes, we will be right back) a memory scripture here in Ezekiel 18, which says simply, "The soul who sins shall die." It says more than that, of course.

Ezekiel 18:4 "Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine; the soul who sins shall die."

Ezekiel 18:20 The soul who sins shall die.

So this is another truth that must be considered in the light of this parable, that a soul can die. As we have gone over in those last Bible studies that I have done, that the soul is the life of a person. The soul comes from the word nephesh and it means a living being or a living creature. Sometimes it talks about dead nepheshes, meaning dead creatures who were once living. But in every case, it is talking about a living being, a thing, a person in whom is life, and God says very clearly here in Ezekiel the 18th chapter, that a person can be made nonliving, not to live, life can be taken away. That is very clear. Souls die. They do not go on living after the body dies.

As we saw in the last Bible study (seems like forever ago), we found that Paul broke it down into body, soul, and spirit. There is a body, there is the life—the living being himself—and then there is the spirit, the spirit in man. And then of course, God wants us to have a fourth component, which is His own Spirit. But in any person, there are these three things and for there to be a complete person, all three have to be there: a body, life from God, and a spirit, a human spirit in particular that gives us intelligence and all those sorts of things.

So a soul then can die as we see here.

Back to Ecclesiastes, this time in chapter 12. He had just been talking through the first six verses about remember your Creator before you die. That is essentially what it is. You know, remember your Creator before your teeth fall out and your knees give out, your hair turns gray. And then verse 6, "Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed." It is a metaphor for life, before your connection to life, your connection to this world is loosed or broken or cut. So then he says, once this happens,

Ecclesiastes 12:7 Then the dust [of the body, that the body is made of] will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.

What is assumed here is that the life has been extinguished and so he goes on to say what happens to the body, the dust. It returns to earth. And what happens to the spirit? Well, it goes to God and He stores it for future use. But the life is already gone. There is no life beyond the grave until the resurrection from the dead. But in this case, the resurrection has not happened yet. And so what Solomon is showing here is that life is over at death, the body decays, and the spirit goes back to God for safekeeping. And as we saw in chapter 9, nothing happens until God changes us in the resurrection or raises us to new life.

So the spirit is not conscious. We saw that in the last Bible study. The spirit is like a computer, the spirit is like a hard drive, let us say, with all of our experiences on it. And it also has an operating system, you might say, that gives us the ability to think and be logical, to be creative, to have language, and that sort of thing. But it itself is not conscious, it needs to be linked up with life from God and a body. Then there is consciousness.

Now to Matthew 10. We are still laying the ground work here. There is another little tidbit here in verse 28.

Matthew 10:28 [Jesus tells them there] "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

The Greek word here is psyche or psuché, whichever way it has been transliterated. This is opposed to the word "body." In this case, Jesus is not necessarily breaking things down into three as Paul did. He is just breaking things down into two: body and soul, and soul stands for the immaterial part of a human, what you cannot see that makes a person human. You can see his body, but you cannot see the spirit and the life. So psyche here, or soul, refers to a person's being, his life and all that makes him what he is, which would then include the human spirit. So He is kind of combining those two together, the life and the spirit, just in this word.

And normally psyche corresponds directly to the Hebrew nephesh, which means a living being or a living creature and identifies God's gift of life. So Jesus is saying that men may kill a person physically and he will be raised to life again. As it says in Ezekiel 37 in the Valley of Dry Bones, most men will die, but they will be raised to life again and given an opportunity for salvation. So men can kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul because God will do something to cause them to have eternal life eventually. But He says to be careful, that God is able to not only kill the body, but He can kill the soul permanently, that there is no coming back after He makes His final judgment. And He would do this in Gehenna fire or the Lake of Fire. So only God is able to permanently destroy a being, a physical being. That us what He is saying here.

Back to the Old Testament. Proverbs 1, verse 12. A lot of good stuff in the Proverbs.

Proverbs 1:12 [this is another aspect] Let us swallow them alive like Sheol, and whole, like those who go down to the Pit.

Let us go to Isaiah 38, verse 18. We are now getting into the idea of hell, Sheol, the grave.

Isaiah 38:18 For Sheol cannot thank You, death cannot praise You; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your truth.

Remember (I hope you all read the CGG Weekly that came out yesterday and Joey's article on poetry in the Bible and particularly parallelism), that is what is being shown here in both places, Proverbs 1:12 and Isaiah 38:18. That there is a parallelism between Sheol and the pit in the one and Sheol, death, and the pit in the other. They are all speaking about the same thing. And we could also include here Hades, as it is in the Greek, because Hades in the Greek is the exact equivalent of Sheol in the Old Testament Hebrew.

So what we have here is Sheol and Hades, the pit, the grave, and death. They are all basically the same concept. I wanted to show that to you here so we can understand that when it talks about Lazarus being in hell that it is essentially saying he was in the grave or he had been in the grave; he had been in the pit, he had been in Sheol, he had been in Hades. He was dead. You may recall from the booklet that Mr. Armstrong wrote on Lazarus and the Rich Man, he talked in there about people a few centuries ago talked about putting their potatoes in hell for the winter. It did not mean they were roasting them. It meant that they were putting them in cold storage. And so they would dig a pit or put them in a place that was covered in the ground for them to last throughout the winter time and then be able to use them through the winter and into the spring and summer until the next crop was grown.

So in English, hell was a place in the earth, a pit that was dug in the earth. And in fact, I looked it up, the word hell comes from a root that at its most basic means covered or hidden. It is a hidden place or a covered place and that is certainly what a grave is. A grave is covered with earth. It is hidden from our sight in the earth. And most people have used this method in order to bury their dead. And so it just came out over time that we use this word hell to cover the grave, a pit, just like the Hebrews did. It was not a place of torment or punishment from its original meaning, but it was just a covered place, a hidden place, a place in the earth.

A couple more little pointers here before we get to the parable. I am laying this groundwork now so we do not have to go back and forth to it later as we get to the parable. Acts 2, verse 29, just to pull out another principle. Peter is speaking to the assembled people there who are wondering what was going on on that day of Pentecost. He says,

Acts 2:29 "Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day."

Acts 2:34 "For David did not ascend into the heavens. . ."

And we do not need the rest. All we need to know is these three facts: David is dead; David is buried; David did not ascend into the heavens. So this squares exactly with what is we have learned from the Old Testament that when one is dead, he is dead until God brings him up in the resurrection.

Let us go to John 3, verse 13. Some might say, well, surely David was raised to heaven or ascended to heaven after Christ ascended to heaven. Did that not open the gates of heaven? Well, here we have something written in the 90s AD by John the apostle and he says in verse 13,

John 3:13 "No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven."

So very clearly, once again, we have attestation from the Bible that no one has gone to heaven, but Christ, not even David who was a man after God's own heart. He is still dead and buried and his sepulcher is still there to this day. Well, he has done rotted and gone into nothingness. But that is what Peter said so I thought I would say it. (It sounded cool. Just kidding.)

Another last one in Hebrews 9, verse 27. We all know this from Mr. Armstrong. He repeated it time and time again. It says,

Hebrews 9:27 And it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.

So what we see from this is that everyone dies, all souls die, and everyone will be judged. And our judgment, our final judgment occurs upon death. And when that judgment becomes a reality, is a matter of when one's particular resurrection occurs, which is covered in Revelation 20. We will not go through Revelation 20 for lack of time. But we do know that the way it is set down there. That the first resurrection of the firstfruits to spiritual and eternal life will occur at Christ's coming. The second resurrection to the uncalled who will be raised to physical life occurs after the Millennium. And then the third resurrection of the unrepentant, who will be raised to eternal death in the Lake of Fire, occurs at the end of the White Throne judgment period.

Jesus summarizes this in John 5, verse 24. I just want to read that quickly.

John 5:24-29 "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. [He is talking about coming into condemnation there.] But assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice come forth—those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation."

This is a summary of the resurrections. As I mentioned at the Feast, you can get all three resurrections out of this section. So, what we have learned is, if I can just summarize very quickly, the dead are not conscious, nothing occurs in death. Souls die, bodies decay. The human spirit returns to God for safekeeping. Time passes. Hell is nothing more than the grave. It is not a place of torture or punishment. No one has gone to heaven but Christ. We know from places like Matthew 5:5 and Romans 4:13 that the elect will inherit the earth, not heaven. God will resurrect the dead at a future time, some to eternal life and others to eternal condemnation.

This lays the background for Lazarus and the rich man. Let us go and read the parable. We are going to read the whole parable first.

Luke 16:19-31 "There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. So it was that the beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. Then he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in cool in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'

But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us' Then he said, 'I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.' Abraham said to him, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' But he said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.'"

Clear as mud, right? Like I said, at the beginning, if you took this just straight it sounds like the world's conception of heaven and hell, but perceptions can be wrong.

The first thing I want to show you in verse 19 is that the parable starts with the same phraseology as the Parable of the Unjust Steward. In verse 1, "He also said to His disciples: 'There was a certain rich man. . .'" and He goes on. This one starts as: "There was a certain rich man. . ." What we have here is that it indicates that Lazarus and the Rich Man is indeed a parable. So we have got to understand that He is talking about something that did not actually occur. It is a parable, it is a teaching vehicle to show some sort of spiritual truth. Because actually some commentators contest this saying that Jesus is telling a story of what actually occurred to some guy named Lazarus and a rich man who they all knew and He was just *wink, wink* we know who He is talking about. However, the weight of the evidence is that it is a true parable and most commentators, as they have studied this down through the years, really do agree that it is a parable.

We are just going to take this verse by verse, so we may jump from one topic to another to another pretty quickly.

In verse 19 here the description of the rich man, who is sometimes referred to in the older commentaries as dives, divas. The word is Latin for rich man and they just took it straight from the Latin Vulgate. They thought that was his name. Most of them did not know Latin in the Middle Ages and they thought that was his name, but it was actually a description: rich man. So if you see that in a commentary and they call the rich man dives or divas or whatever his name is, you will know who they are talking about.

Jesus really did leave him nameless. He is just the rich man and he is filthy rich. He is so rich he has got just about anything anybody could want. He wears clothing that only the most wealthy could afford. Purple; purple was very, very expensive. They had to take the purple dye from the mollusk and you kill a lot of mollusks to make enough dye to do one robe. And it was so expensive that normally only princes and kings and those sorts could actually afford it. So the rich man was certainly wealthy. He also wears linen, fine linen. Not just linen but fine linen, the kind priests wore. Only the very best of linen.

And basically what Jesus says here about his eating habits is that every meal was a feast. You know, he did not have two eggs and bacon in the morning. He had the full hilt, full table of food. I was trying to think of that from IHOP. What was it? The Rooty-Tooty-Fresh-and-Fruity. He had the big, big, big dinner, big, big breakfast.

Verses 20 and 21. This is where Lazarus comes in to the picture. Let us contrast Lazarus with the rich man. And by the way, the word Lazarus means "God helps" and boy, did this man need God's help. He is described in the New King James version as a beggar, but this is an interpretation. The word in Greek really means "poor man." Remember, we were contrasting two people here. So it was rich man and poor man. But they made him a beggar because he was lying there at the rich man's gate. So it would really be better, poor man. He was, in fact, desperately poor, so poor that he was absolutely destitute. He did not have two shekels to rub together or two drachma or two anything. He was penniless.

He had ugly oozing ulcers. And this has led some people to believe that he was not only poor, but he was ill. He was crippled or something where he could not get around at all and so he had, essentially, bed sores all over his body. And it was so bad that he could not work. He probably did not even have the strength really even to beg. He was just there hoping for the charity of anyone who might come come by. And certainly the rich man would have been the one who would come by most often because Lazarus was lying there right by his front door. So he existed entirely on the charity of others.

And we get the impression that though he desired the scraps from the rich man's table, he rarely or never got them. And how do we know this? Well, he died. He was so poor, so weak, so crippled, so utterly destitute that he was unable to beat off the local mangy curs that came and licked his sores, he had no strength to fight them off. So in addition to him being poor and sick, perhaps crippled and full of these sores, he was also considered unclean. I mean, what could be more unclean than have a dog licking your open sores?

So Lazarus was in a state and there is no wonder that in verse 22 that he dies. I should also just note here from what we have read in going through the parable, that Lazarus is taken to Abraham's bosom, as it says here in verse 22. Now this shows me that Jesus' judgment of Lazarus was that he was a good person. That even though he had ended up his life, poor, sick, crippled, begging, whatever, he had had a very hard life; however, he had spent his life well. He was a good person. He was you might even say in the parable here, he was converted. He passed the bar of Christ's judgment and was granted entrance into the Kingdom of God.

Notice how this is phrased here in verse 22. "So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom." Notice that He did not say that the beggar died and was buried, and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom, Uh huh! He went straight to heaven, right? He died and his body just dissolved there like Obi Wan Kenobi and he went straight to heaven. Right? No, that is not what Jesus meant. People are spiritualizing it too far away. If you are ill, poor, do not have two minas to rub together or whatever; you are lying there on the street, the dogs are licking at you, can you expect a funeral and a burial place? Evidently he was alone as well. There was not anybody to care for him. No family. Where would people like this be buried?

The best you could probably have thought was that Lazarus was put in a pauper's grave, just in a communal grave. What if he was not buried at all? What if the dogs got him? What if he was put in Gehenna, you know, the Valley of Hin, as trash? I think what Jesus is actually saying here is that Lazarus was considered of such low account by everyone that nobody even sought to give him an honorable burial or anything like that. He was just dismissed. Not even the rich man lifted a finger to dispose of his body. So Jesus skips over that detail to make us think (I think), about how he was treated. Even in death he was treated badly, by the rich man specifically. But at some point, he was carried away to Abraham's bosom.

Now we have to think about this because this is an interesting phrase. It is used really nowhere else in the Bible that anybody was ever carried away to Abraham's bosom. So, aha! This must mean that he went to heaven, right? That Jesus is giving us a profound mystery about the afterlife and that when one dies, if he has been good, he will go straight to Abraham's bosom. But we need to look at this. I mean, they carried him to Abraham's bosom. Sounds like some sort of saccharine movie dialogue from the thirties or the forties or something that would be in It's a Wonderful Life or something. The angels ringing their bells.

But believe it or not, this phrase has a biblical basis and we need to look at that. And actually, when you see it in its biblical context, it proves our belief. First, we will break it down into "carried by the angels" and then "to Abraham's bosom."

First "carried by the angels." Let us go back to Matthew 24. Uh huh! Matthew 24, we are talking prophecy now.

Matthew 24:30 [notice the phrasing here] "Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory."

So we have the time setting. Jesus is coming. This is His second coming. He is on the spot. He is arriving, you can see Him in the air.

Matthew 24:31 "And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."

Aha. The elect are carried by the angels. We could also go to Mark 13:26-27 where it says essentially the same thing. So we have the timing down as Christ's return at the end of the age and that is when the angels will gather the elect when the first resurrection occurs.

So what Jesus says in the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man ties directly to the prophecy of His second coming. And what happens at His second coming? The first resurrection. And the first resurrection in this case, is seen as being carried by the angels, carried away by the angels. So what Jesus is doing in code language that only people with God's Spirit can really understand, is that Lazarus is being resurrected to eternal life and glory in His Kingdom. He is part of the first resurrection because that is when the elect are carried by the angels.

Now, let us go to the phrase "he was carried to Abraham's bosom." We are here in Matthew, let us go to Matthew 8. We will see some something He said that was very similar.

Matthew 8:10-12 When Jesus heard it [this is in the healing of the Centurion servant and the Centurion is showing his faith here], He marveled, and said to those who followed, "Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel! And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven [hmm, interesting]. But the sons of the kingdom [He is talking about Israelites here] will be cast out into outer darkness. [He is saying there is some of the physical seed of Abraham that will probably not make it, they will be cast into outer darkness.]. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

So in essence, what we have here is a very shortened version of what He is teaching in Lazarus and the Rich Man. Because is not the rich man one of the Jews? Is he not, evidently? And so is Lazarus, but he is an unclean person. But the unclean one ends up going into the Kingdom of God and the rich man ends up in the fire. And so he is saying something very similar here.

But notice in verse 11, He said that they would go and "sit with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom." Now we have to understand how they ate at that time. They ate reclining on their left elbow. And so they would all be sitting around a low table or they would have the food, you know, on a low spot and they would have cushions and they would all be sitting there around that little table, reclining on their left elbow because you needed your right hand to eat. And so when you leaned back, you were leaning back on the bosom of someone just because the way you were arrayed around this oval or round table. Any time anybody would lean back, they would be in someone else's chest area. That is just the way they did it. It was not till later that they actually used chairs and tables, but they reclined and they would be like, in the the last supper John was able to lean back and he was in Jesus' bosom and was able to ask him a question very quietly so no one else would hear.

And so what is being pictured here in Luke the 16th chapter is that Lazarus was in the Kingdom of God, enjoying an intimate relationship with Abraham. That he was eating with him in the Kingdom of God. And Lazarus, being such a wonderful person that he was, was judged to be able to be an intimate of Abraham. And how great was Abraham? He was the father of the faithful. So Lazarus was considered to be quite the saint.

So putting these two figures together, we have that Lazarus was raised in the first resurrection. And he became on intimate terms with Abraham, the father of the faithful. What Jesus is showing is that Lazarus is the hero of this story, that he had done things right. And even though he had lived in very bad conditions in this world, at the gate of the rich man, he had been a good person and that he was worthy of being in the first resurrection and worthy of being a close associate of Abraham. He was drawn into his embrace in his family.

We have to remember that Abraham was the father of the faithful. And Lazarus, then, was welcomed into the same relationship with God that Abraham had. We could go to Galatians 3:29 and Romans 9:6-8. In both places, it says,

Galatians 3:29 If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Romans 9:6-8 basically says that not all of Abraham's descendants are his spiritual seed, but those who are converted are the ones that are Abraham's seed, the true Israel.

What Jesus is saying is that Lazarus was one of these true sons of Abraham. And then we find out that the rich man was not. Even though he was a physical descendant of Abraham, he was not a spiritual descendant of Abraham.

Verse 23. Now notice here, we also should mention in verse 22 the rich man also died and was buried. And you can imagine that having all of his wealth, that his burial was one of pomp and splendor. And he was probably put in a fine newly-hewn tomb in a prominent location. So you see the difference here. Lazarus died and there is no mention of his burial, but it is mentioned that he is in the first resurrection and he goes to have a relationship with Abraham. But the rich man, he dies and he is buried and that is it. His accolades only go that far.

Luke 16:23 "Being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom."

Notice, Jesus does not miss a beat here. He just continues right on. There is no indication of a passage of time. And the reason is because we are supposed to know that there is a passage of time from Ecclesiastes 7:9 and Ecclesiastes 12, and from Ezekiel 37, and from all these other places that we have studied to know that when one is buried, he is buried. He is dead and there is time that goes by and he stays dead and nothing happens until the resurrection. And so He does not need to say, a very long time passed and then he, being in torments. He does not need to say that because we are supposed to know that there is a great time between death and the ultimate judgment that God gives, that Jesus Christ Himself gives.

So the rich man dies and he regains consciousness and he is there and the fire is burning. It all seems to happen in an instant. But is that what really occurs? If we are looking at this from a human point of view, a person dies and he is not aware of that great passage of time. When the resurrection occurs, it will be to him like the next instant. And so Jesus is using that to come at it from the rich man's point of view. He thinks he died and was buried and the very next instant he is awake in torment.

Jesus is suggesting that the dead have no grasp of the passage of time.

The word "torments" here. He says, "being in torments." This is a translation that derives from the belief in an ever-burning torturous hell. They translate it torment because they expect that is what happens in hell. The Greek word is basanoi and it originally meant (this is kind of interesting), a touchstone. Do you know what a touchstone is? Well, originally a touchstone was a hard black stone used to test the purity of gold and silver according to the color of the streak left when the metal was rubbed against it. So if it was real gold or real silver, it would leave a certain mark on the stone. In that way, a person who is buying and selling, or doing some trading, could test the purity of the gold or the silver.

Over time, this word basanoi came to mean "to test," "to test the purity of," "to test the rightness of," "to test the actuality of." Or it also did mean "to put to the test," you put somebody to the test and admittedly sometimes this was meant under torture. People were put to the test by torture in those times.

However, The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says that before the New Testament, this and its related words were mainly used for testing afflictions, afflictions that test it. And also (this one is interesting) judicial sufferings. So somebody was basanoi when they were going under judicial sufferings, meaning the sufferings that occurred as a result of judgment against one.

And so what we are seeing here with the rich man is that he was in anguish, which is a better word, I believe. He was in anguish because he was beginning to undergo the sufferings of his punishment, the sufferings of his judgment. He was not being tortured, he was not being tormented. He was in the very first stages of being consumed by the fire. Now, like I said, I personally prefer the word anguish. It could also be translated pain, agony, misery, suffering, or distress, as well as torment and even torture.

But I think anguish here is best because he really was not suffering much physical distress upon awaking and finding out what his judgment was. He was going through the mental and emotional stress, the punishment, the suffering, because he knew that he was going to be thrown into the Lake of Fire straight away. The roaring Lake of Fire—it is right there, he is starting to feel the heat—produces both physical and emotional pain. So he is not being tortured by any demons or any kind of torturer. You know, Satan is not over him with a whip. He is just simply facing eternal death in the Lake of Fire and that inspires horrific fear.

And what happens when you experience sheer terror like that? Well, your bowels loose, your knees knock, you cannot stand up. And as Mr. Armstrong brought out in the booklet, your mouth and throat go absolutely dry. You are parched as you have never been parched before and you are just paralyzed in fear. And that is what has happened here with the rich man. And to add salt to his wounds, he sees Abraham in the far distance and who is with him but Lazarus, well, whole, and joyous in glory. I mean, that is a blow, a blow to his ego.

So the rich man in verse 24 calls to Abraham. He is banking on the fact that his being a physical descendant of Abraham will get him some mercy. It will work to his advantage somehow. But as Jesus says in John 8:39, in the Kingdom a child of Abraham is one who did the works of Abraham. And apparently the rich man had never done the works of Abraham. He had done evil works. He had gained all his money. . . who knows? Maybe it was all ill-gotten wealth and he used it all on himself and never gave to others, never even helped poor Lazarus. So it looks like from his treatment of Lazarus that he had never shown an ounce of compassion for anyone, not even Lazarus who was there at his front door. He just counted all his money and enjoyed all the finer things of life and the world could go hang.

Note that the rich man does not ask God for mercy. He asked Abraham; and what this tells me is that the rich man had no relationship with God. He did not know God. God was there. He had just judged him. He did not appeal for mercy from God because he had never known God in life. He did not know what kind of God He was and it was too late already. But he had been counting on his descent from Abraham all along and he is finding out here right at the end that that does not work.

Now why does he ask for only one drop of water from the finger of Lazarus? Simple reason. Probably because the agony he felt most was his terrible thirst, both from the heat of the Lake of Fire and the parched condition of his throat due to the terror of the second death. It is probably just a physical reaction, an emotional reaction. There is nothing terribly symbolic in it.

I just want to mention quickly that the word "in" here, that He says he is tormented in this flame. This is also in anguish or in pain. But the word "in," "in this flame," is the Greek word en which this is translated from, does indeed mean in but it can also mean "due to" or "because of" as well. So he may not have been in the flame. It may have been very close, but he was already in torment because of the flame. He was already experiencing some of the terror and anguish.

Verse 25. Abraham responds, telling him, "Look at the difference between your life and Lazarus' life. You deserve to be there. He deserves to be here from the way he lived." And he calls him child. He acknowledges that he is a physical descendant. But it is the spiritual things, the deeds that were done that were much more important than descent. Also, what this does, this response of Abraham here in the parable, it confirms that our period of judgment is this physical lifetime (I Peter 4:17). It is what we do in this life that we are judged by.

Also we should understand that the rich man represents one who should have known better. Amos 3:2, "You only have I known of all the people on the earth." He was under the covenant, he should have known better, but he failed.

In verse 26, Abraham talks about the great gulf between where he was and Lazarus was and where the rich man was, it is not a physical abyss by any means. It is not a physical separation but a spiritual one. It is the difference between immortality and mortality. It is the difference between corruption and incorruption. It is the difference between inheritance and condemnation. It is the difference between eternal life and eternal death. There is no crossing between them. If someone is given eternal life, there is no eternal death after that. If someone is made incorruptible, well, there is no going back to corruption. It does not work that way. It is one or the other. There is an infinite distance between them.

So once God has made His decision, it is final. And this is why we have the doctrine of eternal judgment. You are either eternally dead or you are eternally living. Once God makes His judgment, that is it. There is no mercy for those who have been judged to be condemned. And certainly the ones who were judged to have eternal life would not want it to go the other way. So everything is fixed at that point.

Verses 27 and 28. This is the rich man's request. He is beseeching Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers so that they would not meet the same end that he met. Clearly, the rich man has still not realized the passage of time because essentially he is in the White Throne Judgment period, at the end of that. The New Heavens and the New Earth are going to occur very soon. God is going to get rid of all that is evil and all that that are condemned and then He will move on to the next step in His plan as we see in Revelation 21, which is the New Heavens and the New Earth.

So by this time, his five brothers had already lived their lives and died and been judged, and who knows, some of them were maybe being thrown into the Lake of Fire at that very instant. Or they were also with Lazarus and Abraham in the Kingdom of God. And that is why Abraham replies as he does. Sending Lazarus back from the dead to warn them and preach to them was not only impossible, it would have had to have included time travel. But we know that everything was fixed by that time and it was too late.

Now in verse 29. When Abraham responds, "they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them," it is interesting that Abraham does not correct his misunderstanding. By this time, it was too late. There was no need to go into any deep explanation of the passage of time and all that had happened in between. He just goes on and simply tells him that the writings of Scripture would have to do for his brothers as they did for the rest of humanity.

Notice what it says in Luke 24. This is in the section on the Road to Emmaus.

Luke 24:25-27 [He is talking to those two disciples.] He said to them, "Oh foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" [verse 27 is what I wanted] And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

Then verse 44 to the disciples, all that were gathered:

Luke 24:44-45 He said to them, "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me." And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.

So what Abraham tells the rich man here is that everybody is judged according to the same standards and those standards are found in the Word of God. And sending anybody back from the dead was not going to be any more persuasive than what was in the Scripture.

Now, the rich man disagrees in verse 30, saying that surely they would believe and repent if someone they knew returned from the dead and told them all that they needed to do to be saved. But Abraham contradicts him right away. He declares that the witness of Scripture is by far more convincing and persuasive than any resurrection of a person from the dead. In fact, it actually happened. Lazarus, remember, was resurrected from the dead and he walked among the Jews and did that convince them that they should change their ways? Not in the least.

Let us notice John 11. This was right after Lazarus was resurrected—the real Lazarus.

John 11:45 Then many of the Jews who had come to Mary, and had seen the things Jesus did, believed in Him.

We do not know if they were necessarily converted, but the resurrection of Lazarus was enough to at least get them off the fence. But notice verse 46:

John 11:46-53 But some of them went away to the Pharisees and told them the things Jesus did. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council and said, "What shall we do? For this Man works many signs. If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation." And one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish." Now this he did not say in his own authority; but being high priest that year he prophesized that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for that nation only, but also He would gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad. Then, from that day on, they plotted to put Him to death.

In this case, the resurrection of Lazarus back to life, back to physical life, did nothing but galvanize them to kill the Savior. So it did not do them any good to see Lazarus alive again. It, in fact, pushed them the other way, to doing evil. Clearly miraculous sightings and miracles themselves are no guarantee of genuine repentance and belief. But as Jesus said in,

John 6:63 "It is the Spirit [that] gives life, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life."

That is why Abraham said they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. Because it is the words that are going to be essential in bringing them to eternal life.

That is basically the parable. And we have seen that at every point it squares with what the rest of the Bible says. The people in the world take it out of context and make it mean something that it is not. It is all clearly understandable from what we know from the rest of Scripture.

But let us look just for a moment at Luke 16, verse 14. And I want you to see why He gave this parable. It does not happen out of thin air. There was a reason for Him to give this parable. Remember, He had just given the Parable of the Unjust Steward.

Luke 16:14-17 Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him. And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God. [What you can see here is that they had turned everything upside down.] The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it."

He is saying, "Look, the writings were set down, the law and the prophets were given." He is saying that the word was there and that with the coming of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God was being preached. Its doors were being opened and there were people who were trying to get into it.

So He is saying that this is fish-or-cut-bait time. It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail. This is a warning. Jesus is telling the Pharisees there that if you do not really do what is written in the law and the prophets, all that I said of the bad things in the law that occurred to those who despise His Word will happen. And verse 18, He points out one of their big faults.

Luke 16:18 "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery."

He just pulled one thing out of the air to say. "Look, this is one place where you do not meet the standard, in the way you treat your wives." And then He gives the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man to show what is going to happen if you continue to follow your wicked ways, you Pharisees. These people you despise and that you run away from, that you will not meet in the street, these women who you will not talk to because they are unclean, they are going to go into the Kingdom and you are not. It was a very serious rebuke of them and a serious warning.

He was hitting these Jews, particularly the Pharisees, right between the eyes. Their judgment was cock-eyed and upside down. They did not know what God expected of them properly. They knew it from the words that were there, but they did not put it into their hearts. They did not live it. They did not get what God was aiming at in His law, which, as we see in the parable, is the love of God.

What were the Pharisees not doing in the person of the rich man? They were failing to care for the people, typified by Lazarus. Lazarus was a brother. He was the weak. He was the poor, he was the sick, he was the crippled. He was the one who did not have all the advantages and they were stepping over him and not giving him the time of day.

So what was He saying? He was saying, "You wicked Pharisees! I've given you so much. You have the riches of His Word." They were using it on themselves. They were not loving their brothers. And of course, in not loving their brothers, they were not loving God. It is a way that He was telling them, you are not living the two Great Commandments. You are not loving God with all your heart and you are not loving your neighbor. The fact that the rich man did not do anything for Lazarus showed that he had no relationship with God. And that is shown later on, that he did not even ask God for mercy. He did not know Him enough to do even do that.

But now He says with the coming of the Son of God, things were getting serious. It was time to make their decision. It was time to show their quality, their godly righteous character in their dealings with others. That was what He was looking for.

Is that not what He said in Matthew 25 in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats? "Come, you righteous. Sit on My right hand, you sheep. Those of you who helped the poor, who clothed the naked, who fed the hungry, who visited those in prison." And on His left hand were the goats, who did not do any of those things and there was weeping and gnashing of teeth, He says.

He is making this point: You can have all the Bible knowledge in the world, but if you do not love your brother, it does not do you a bit of good. So we need to make sure we take His meaning to heart.

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