People are deceived- and the nature of deception is NOT realizing
you are deceived.
Jesus is our LIGHT to the truth.
Jesus is the eye salve to cure our spiritual blindness.
Our hearts can be cleaned, our spirits renewed.
We dare not rest content with our knowledge but ever seek truth,
ever desire the wisdom only God can give to us, ever long for our hearts to
desire the love of our Savior, and only HIS love!
All by the grace, the mercy, the forgiveness and love of our God!
The Rich Man and Lazarus
By J. N. Andrews
Concluded…
Lazarus died a beggar. But he rests in hope, an heir to the
inheritance promised Abraham. Eternal life and endless felicity are his, and by
personification it is said that he is "comforted."
Dives(Rich Man) lives in the greatest splendor, and dies an
impenitent man. The lake of fire is to be his portion. personification, he is
represented as in it already. This is in accordance with the teaching of Paul,
when he says of God that he calleth things that be not as though they were.
That is, God speaks of things that exist only in his purpose just
as though they had a present existence; because they shall surely exist; even
as he called Abraham the father of many nations, when as yet he had no son.
Gen. 17; Rom. 4:16, 17.
This is the more clearly seen when we consider that to Lazarus, in
the silence of hades, there will not be a moment between his death, at the gate
of the rich man, and his resurrection to eternal life, and not a moment to the
rich man between the closing of his eyes in death, and his opening them in the
resurrection to damnation.
That we have done right in hearing the testimony of "Moses
and the prophets" on this subject, we have the authority of the parable
itself to show. And we have this further evidence of the truth of this
exposition that, without doing violence to a single text, we have a divine
harmony on the subject of the dead in hades, in all that is said by Moses and
the prophets and by Christ and the apostles.
That those who conversed together are not disembodied spirits, but
personified dead men, is further proved by the following facts:
1. Not one word is said of the spirit of any person named.
2. This conversation takes place in hades, which the sacred
writers affirm to be in the depths of the earth.
3. The persons named are men that had lived, the one clothed in
purple, the other covered with sores, and both were then dead. But these dead
men have bodily organs, as eyes, fingers, tongues, etc.
But the truth on this point is sealed by the fact that Lazarus
could only return to warn the rich man's brethren by being raised from the dead.
"Neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the
dead" -Gr., ean tis ek nekron anaste.
It was not whether the spirit of Lazarus should descend
from the third Heaven, but whether Lazarus himself should be raised from among
the dead ones. This shows that the conversation did not relate to the coming
back of disembodied spirits; and in fact that they were not disembodied spirits
that here conversed.
The parable of Dives and Lazarus does not therefore teach the
present punishment of the wicked dead. And as there is nothing else on which to
rest the doctrine, it must be given up as having no foundation in the Bible.
The testimony shows that the wicked dead are asleep in sheol, where they await
the resurrection to damnation. The following texts show that the resurrection
and judgement of the wicked take place before they are punished; a doctrine in
the highest degree reasonable, and sustained by many plain testimonies.
"The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of
temptations, and to RESERVE the unjust unto the day of Judgement to be
punished." 2 Pet. 2:9. The day of Judgment must arrive before the
retribution of the ungodly.
"The heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word
are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of Judgment and perdition
of ungodly men." 2 Pet. 3:7. The perdition of ungodly men comes at the
Judgment.
"The wicked is RESERVED to the day of destruction; they shall
be brought forth to the day of wrath." Job 21:30. The next scripture will
explain this.
"Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming, in the which all
that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that
have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil,
unto the resurrection of damnation." John 5:28, 29.
The wicked are first raised and judged, then afterward cast into
the lake of fire. Rev. 20:11-15.
Vengeance is taken upon all the ungodly together when the Lord
comes with his saints. Jude 14, 15.
The wicked are cast into the furnace of fire at the end, and not
before. Matt. 13:30, 39-43, 49, 50.
The
burning day is the time when the wicked meet their fate. Mal. 4; Ps. 21:9.
The wrath of God waits till the day of wrath. Rom. 2:5-9.
Tribulation to the ungodly comes in connection with the advent of
the Saviour. 2 Thess. 1.
The wicked dead are not punished till after the seventh trumpet.
Rev. 11:15, 18.
The Judge says, "Depart from me, ye cursed," and then,
for the first time, the ungodly enter the furnace of fire. Matt. 25:41.
*******
NOTE. The reader will
observe that texts are quoted in this tract with words sheol or hades, instead
of grave, or pit, or hell; which our English version uses. This is because sheol, or hades, is the word
used in the original Hebrew or Greek Scriptures. See the lists above.
Webster defines personification
thus: "The giving to an inanimate being the figure or the sentiments and
language of a rational being; prosopopoeia, as 'Confusion
heard his voice.'"
He defines personify thus: "To give animation to
inanimate objects; to ascribe to an inanimate being the sentiments, actions, or
language, of a rational being, or person, or to represent an inanimate being
with the affections and actions of a person.
Thus we say, the plants thirst
for rain. 'The trees said to the fig-tree, Come thou and reign over
us.'" Judges 9.
He defines prosopopoeia, or intense personification,
thus: "A figure in rhetoric by which things are represented as persons, or
by which things inanimate beings, or by which an absent person is introduced as
speaking, or a deceased person is represented as alive and present. It includes personification,
but is more extensive in its signification."
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