Interpreting the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus: It's Really Good News!

[Journeyman]

yes, creation testifies of Him.

and the creation He created which testifies of Him so happens to be one in which information and energy cannot be destroyed, but they only change forms. consciousness is not a physical process, but a non-physical one - and when a body dies, it doesn't simply disappear; it decomposes into the same dust that it was made of. and what happens to the consciousness? the 'personhood'? it wasn't a physical thing. who knows? the scripture says the spirit of a man returns to God, not that the spirit of a man is annihilated. God is the very opposite of annihilation: He is I AM, the eternally existing.

the information about that physical body of dust is never lost in this creation: if you had perfect knowledge of the positions and velocities of every piece of that dust over the whole course of time ((i.e. if you were omniscient)) you could completely reconstruct the body. you could identify & locate every atom that was part of it, and put it back together. you could identify and reclaim every single unit of energy that was in it, and restore it all.

that is the universe that God created in order to testify of Himself. it is a universe in which nothing is lost - nothing ceases to exist - but its continued existence can change forms in such a complex & profound way that only God can know it and resurrect it.

resurrection is not creating a fake copy of the original and pretending it is the original.
resurrection is gathering together what to ignorant, incapable men seemed lost, but to omniscient, omnipotent God was never lost.

When I was a kid the teacher said, "Matter can neither be created or destroyed" (meaning brought into or taken from existence).

Satan fancied himself as God. On judgement day, all will see what a mistake that was.

 

[Journeyman]

Too bad they aren't willing to accept truth as soon as they're confronted with it. They claim Paul as one of their champions of the faith, but they do not as Paul did.

When Paul's mind was completely blown when the voice came to him, "I am JESUS Whom thou art persecuting", Paul immediately accepted the truth. BUT, HOW INCREDULOUS WAS THAT TO HIM? It's the equivalent of Martin Luther crying out, "Who art thou?" and hearing the response, "It is I, the POPE".

Paul went immediately in the direction of truth, but these many here refuse to believe and will be fully deceived by "the spirits of devils working miracles" because they think the dead are still alive and conscious. Grandma and Grandpa will appear to them and tell them to believe the false Christ that has come impersonating Jesus and they will believe those lying demons that look "familiarly" like their dead loved ones instead of the Scriptures and there will be no mercy for them because they refused to "receive a love of the truth that they might be saved" so they will "believe a lie that they might be damned".

I was referring to Christians who are ignorant on a doctrinal issue. I didn't mean people who who enjoy sin.

 

[posthuman]

When I was a kid the teacher said, "Matter can neither be created or destroyed" (meaning brought into or taken from existence).

Satan fancied himself as God. On judgement day, all will see what a mistake that was.

and? did you hate knowledge? did Satan create the universe you live in?

mass in this universe is not destroyed. it can be converted into energy, or changed into another form of mass, but it does not cease to exist. i can burn a log - it doesn't cease to exist. it is converted into heat, and light, and ash, and smoke. if you eat a mango, the substance of that mango is not annihilated: it becomes strength for your body, that your body converts into actions, and you expel some of the mass once you have taken energy from it.

why does God create a universe that everywhere follows universally true laws?
why does God create a universe in which momentum, information, and mass/energy cannot be destroyed?
why does God put you in a universe in which you cannot be annihilated?
it was not in order to lie to you, Journeyman. it was to teach you of His invisible qualities.

 

[Phoneman-777]

"Unconsciousness" is a word we have invented to describe a state someone appears to be in from an outsider's point of view.

Really? "Unconscious" refers to "unaware of what is happening to you and around you" which is precisely why Jesus, David, Jeremiah, etc., used the word in reference to DEATH - no getting around that.

But the spirit is always awake; we dream when we sleep. But most people forget their dreams as soon as they wake up. This is confirmed in the psychological literature. Even when the body sleeps, the spirit is awake.

You say "spirit" and then "we" as if "we" exist in a spiritual form apart from the body - that is pagan bulldookey. Genesis 2:7 KJV plainly says "we" are the sum total of the union of the Body and the Breath of Life, which means that "we" are the "I", the "ego", the "self", the "whole being", the "living Soul".

I already answered that. To be in someone's bosom means to be close to them. It's a common Hebrew idiom. To be "in Abraham's bosom" means to be in the place where Abraham is, because one would be near him.

You can't in one breath claim the passage is literal - then proceed to argue it's full of idioms, like Abraham's bosom, the bodies of these three dead, the fact they possess these bodies long before the still-future resurrection of the Just/Wicked, the ability of Lazarus to go back and interact with the living (which Solomon and Job flatly deny is possible).

For emphasis:

““But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God: ‘I AM the God of Abraham, and the God of Issac, And the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”” (Matthew 22:31–32)​

Here, Jesus made the point that these patriarchs are examples of how people are living even while their body is "asleep". He is (currently) the God of Abraham, and He is (currently) the God of the living because Abraham is (currently) alive.

You've heard of Tyndale? Let's review his answer to Catholic Sir Thomas Moore's same position that you and the Immortal Soul crowd have:

"And when he (Sir Thomas Moore) proveth that the saints be in heaven, in glory with Christ already, saying, "if God be their God, they be in heaven, for He is not the God of the dead", there he stealeth away Christ's argument WHEREWITH HE PROVETH THE RESURRECTION: that Abraham and all the saints should rise again, and not that the souls are already in heaven; which doctrine was not yet in the world. And with that doctrine he taketh away the resurrection quite, and maketh Christ's argument of none effect."​

​

As I've said so often before, "protestants" today are so steeped in papal antichrist doctrine, why don't they just turn in their card and join the papacy and stop corrupting Protestantism?

The rich man (and the rest of the wicked) are awake and disembodied (until their resurrection).

Disembodied, yes, which proves the Rich Man and Lazarus MUST BE a parable. Awake? No, they "sleep the sleep of death" as David declared.

They are who Peter referred to when he spoke of how Jesus "went and preached unto the spirits in prison" (1 Pet 3:19).
Torment (in Hades) is their prison until judgment day.

Peter is obviously waxing poetic by "spirits in prison" to whom the Spirit of Jesus preached in referring to the Antediluvians who were "spiritually imprisoned" in the "prison house of sin", as the very next verse proves. Jesus suffered death and slept just before sunset on Friday and rose sometime before sunrise Sunday. He wasn't preaching to anyone anywhere - He was in the tomb as is David now who's "not ascended into heaven".

 

[Phoneman-777]

I was referring to Christians who are ignorant on a doctrinal issue. I didn't mean people who who enjoy sin.

Sadly, the church is filled with such people. It's why Isaiah says of the coming of our Lord, "The sinners in Zion are afraid. Fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who shall dwell among us with the devouring fire. Who shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh righteously..."

 

[Phoneman-777]

Creation as we now know it will be ser ablaze at the return of our Lord Jesus. He said,

as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

meaning God sent a flood on the unrepentant,

Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But 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.
2Pet.2:3-7

So our King reigns now. To those who reject his reign now he will say at his return,

But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and slaughter them in front of me!'"

The so called millennial reign of Christ is when he reigns over sinners in mercy and appoints ambassadors to do the same. When our sweet Savior returns, his reign in mercy over unrepentant sinners ends.

The Bible in several places depicts a coming period of total destruction and desolation of the Earth:

• empty
• uninhabitable
• filled with darkness
• totally silent
• unburied bodies of the wicked everywhere

I've said for years that all popular eschatological interpretations ignore these verses, claiming that there is constant human activity going on down here, from now through to the "rapture" and on through the "last seven years of tribulation" on through to the Second Coming, on through to the "1,000 years of God reigning over the wicked" on through to the white throne judgment of God in the descended New Jerusalem where the wicked are destroyed followed by the Earth made new and eternal kingdom on Earth...there is no account of this aforementioned period.

Does it find a place in your eschatological view?

 

[Nehemiah6]

Did anyone imagine over 7,000 viewing of this thread? Hades should never be this popular.

 

[posthuman]

Peter is obviously waxing poetic by "spirits in prison" to whom the Spirit of Jesus preached in referring to the Antediluvians who were "spiritually imprisoned" in the "prison house of sin", as the very next verse proves.

why do you think Peter was lying?

 

[Phoneman-777]

why do you think Peter was lying?

Why do you think I think Peter is lying?

 

[Phoneman-777]

Did anyone imagine over 7,000 viewing of this thread? Hades should never be this popular.

Well, it IS a hot topic bro

 

[Phoneman-777]

and? did you hate knowledge? did Satan create the universe you live in?

mass in this universe is not destroyed. it can be converted into energy, or changed into another form of mass, but it does not cease to exist. i can burn a log - it doesn't cease to exist. it is converted into heat, and light, and ash, and smoke. if you eat a mango, the substance of that mango is not annihilated: it becomes strength for your body, that your body converts into actions, and you expel some of the mass once you have taken energy from it.

why does God create a universe that everywhere follows universally true laws?
why does God create a universe in which momentum, information, and mass/energy cannot be destroyed?
why does God put you in a universe in which you cannot be annihilated?
it was not in order to lie to you, Journeyman. it was to teach you of His invisible qualities.

Why do you deny that in the beginning God stepped out onto nothing and spoke to nothing and from nothing came forth everything?

God can call forth from nonexistence every living Soul who has died if He wishes for them to exist again, which is what He intends to do in the Resurrections of the Just and Damned.

 

[John146]

No, I just showed you how you've been reading it wrong all these years. The Soul exists ONLY as a consequence of the union of the Body and the Breath of Life...SAYS IT RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU THAT THE SOUL ONLY BEGINS TO EXIST WHEN THESE TWO JOIN. Even a fool can see that once these to disjoin, the Soul cannot continue to exist.
You can't take the symbolism of the most symbolic book in the Bible and make it literal while ignoring the several verses which say the dead are in total silence. We call that "twisting Scripture". Would you like me to post all the texts that say the dead are in "silence" and "darkness" and are devoid of "emotion" and "knowlege" and "wisdom" and "device" and do "no work"? I got 'em for anyone who's willing to be an honest scholar.
[QUOTE' Isaiah 10:18 And shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body: and they shall be as when a standard-bearer fainteth.

Yes, the Soul is comprised of the Body and the Spirit. God is going to destroy the Body and the Soul, but the Spirit shall return to Him just as it was when it left Him, which means it don't LOOK like you, SMELL like you, SOUND like you, or has ANYTHING to do with you...it returns to Him just as it was when it went forth to enter your body and caused the Soul that is named John146 to begin to exist.
See above response[/QUOTE]

Funny how when a verse doesn’t fit your narrative you play the symbolism card. Btw, thanks for calling all of us fools.

 

[Absolutely]

I'm sure having ones shame exposed iwill be a painful experience, but that experience isn't eternal.

How long are they in the lake of fire?
What becomes of them afterwards?
What denomination believes this?

 

[posthuman]

Why do you think I think Peter is lying?

Because you clearly just wrote that you believe what he said is not true.

You misused the phrase 'wax poetic' to try to sugar coat your false doctrines, but we can all see quite plainly that it is your belief Christ lying in Luke 16 and now Peter was lying in 1 Peter 3.

Why do you think God is lying?

 

[Absolutely]

Yes the just wrath of God. He is a JUST God and a lifetime of sin (70 years) does not = eternity of punishment. If the sins of one person are great and the next person not so great but they both suffer eternal punishment that is not fair or just. Knowing my father or mother are in hell burning for ever and ever is not a nice thought to live with for eternal life to come. Justice = death for ever and ever. not suffering pain for ever and ever.
Eze 18:32 For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.

Actually it is backwards.
Sin has a horror to it.
We are warned of eternal consequences.
We have a choice.
We chose one or the other.
It is not a Fair vs unfair dynamic.

It is a remedy dynamic that delivers us from eternal punishment.

Jesus is the remedy and cure for eternal punishment.
Without him, we all would be there.
The atheist uses the fair vs unfair dynamic.
They say I cannot serve a God that drowns infants and puppy dogs.
And so we tip our hat to the atheist.
No we don't !!!!
Because heaven gives us the true perspective.

We see Noah leaning over the rail of the Ark and seeing thousands upon thousands of bloated bodies of humans and animals and saying ,"dear God the horrors of sin."

 

[posthuman]

Why do you deny that in the beginning God stepped out onto nothing and spoke to nothing and from nothing came forth everything?

Why do you make up things?

 

[Journeyman]

and? did you hate knowledge?

No, but the belief that matter cannot be created isn't true, because God created it. And scientists are also wrong when they say it can't be taken from existence. To them it's impossible.

did Satan create the universe you live in?

Of course not. He, along with sin and death, are not going to go on for eternity.

mass in this universe is not destroyed. it can be converted into energy, or changed into another form of mass, but it does not cease to exist. i can burn a log - it doesn't cease to exist. it is converted into heat, and light, and ash, and smoke. if you eat a mango, the substance of that mango is not annihilated: it becomes strength for your body, that your body converts into actions, and you expel some of the mass once you have taken energy from it.

I understand what you're saying my friend. All of this knowledge has led the scientific world to the belief that God isn't necessary for anything.

why does God create a universe that everywhere follows universally true laws?
why does God create a universe in which momentum, information, and mass/energy cannot be destroyed?
why does God put you in a universe in which you cannot be annihilated?
it was not in order to lie to you, Journeyman. it was to teach you of His invisible qualities.

I believe God wants people to be with him in paradice for all eternity. He doesn't want people tormented for eternity.

 

[posthuman]

Peter is obviously waxing poetic by "spirits in prison" to whom the Spirit of Jesus preached in referring to the Antediluvians who were "spiritually imprisoned" in the "prison house of sin"

you really, actually woke up this morning, thought you had understanding, and came here to announce to us all that "Jesus preached to the spirits in prison" is a euphemism for 'Jesus was annihilated' ???

i'm trying to understand what kind of mindset makes a thread claiming Jesus was lying, and now Peter was lying, and completely makes up things to accuse me when i confront you about it? and you think this is all a good idea and you are giving us valuable information with your crazy-talk?

 

[posthuman]

No, but the belief that matter cannot be created isn't true, because God created it. And scientists are also wrong when they say it can't be taken from existence. To them it's impossible.

understand it in its context. it is like Solomon saying over and over 'under the sun'

within the universe God created, momentum and mass/energy and information cannot be destroyed. it only changes forms. it can be rendered powerless & have all its glory removed ((the literal meaning of 'destroy')) or it can be made powerful & glorified.
that does not mean God did not create the universe -- it means that in the universe He chose to create in order to testify of Himself, The Truth, it is a fundamental fact of the universe He created that nothing is annihilated in it; things only change form, and if you are omniscient and omnipotent, you can always restore them: nothing within the universe God created can utterly cease to exist.

God created the universe with such characteristics on purpose. why?
by Him all things consist. He upholds all things. our existence - whether lost or saved, both - is fundamentally made of His existence. we are souls because His breath is in us. does His breath cease to exist? does He annihilate His own breath?

what does His universe teach you? He created His universe in order to teach you. does His testimony, His universe, teach annihilationism? absolutely not!

 

[gb9]

you really, actually woke up this morning, thought you had understanding, and came here to announce to us all that "Jesus preached to the spirits in prison" is a euphemism for 'Jesus was annihilated' ???

i'm trying to understand what kind of mindset makes a thread claiming Jesus was lying, and now Peter was lying, and completely makes up things to accuse me when i confront you about it? and you think this is all a good idea and you are giving us valuable information with your crazy-talk?

a mindset that follows ellen white and thinks she was a prophet.

seriously, he has stated this in the past.