The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus—No. 3
By A. R. Bell
[In previous articles, Mr. Bell has shown that the purpose of the parable was to rebuke the covetousness of the Jews; that the parable could not be made arbitrarily partly literal and partly figurative; that it can not be made to contradict other plain scriptures which teach that man is unconscious in death.] BUT whom does this rich man represent? As shown last week he represents the Jewish nation, that spoke against Jesus “in the gate”—the place of judgment—and that in their condemnation of Him judged Him worthy of death. In fact, the rich man represents that people who put the Son of God to death upon the cross. The rich man represents a covetous, self-righteous, wicked, stiff-necked people, who, resisting the Holy Spirit, had as “betrayers and murderers” slain “the Just One.” Then just as surely as this is true, the rich man has his part with the class of whom we read, “The rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.” Rev. 20: 5. That resurrection is the resurrection of the wicked—the “resurrection of judgment.” John 5: 29, R.V. We read in Rev. 20: 12-14: “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell [margin, “the grave”] delivered up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell [the grave] were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.” Now in the light of these scriptures, we can understand Luke 16: 23-25 clearly. When the rich man lifts up his eyes in the grave, and is in torment, the time of the resurrection of the wicked dead is reached. The grave—hell—delivers up its dead; and in the awful judgment of that hour, both the grave and death are cast into the lake of fire. Surely, then he is in torment, and conscious. But we are carried, in these scriptures, down past the second coming of Christ for a thousand years; and then, and not till then, is the experience of the lake of fire reached—the time of the punishment of the wicked. The apostle Peter brings to view this time, and the wonderful and awful events that belong to it. He says: “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 [“total destruction”—Webster] of ungodly men. . . . The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” 2 Peter 3: 7-10. Here we read that the wicked are to be destroyed by fire, and that the fire in which they are to be destroyed will be so great that the earth will melt and all the works in it will be burned up. The heavens—atmospheric—are in flames, the whole earth one vast lake of liquid fire. The mountains melt, and the world is dissolved like lead. Verses 11 and 12 tell us further, “All these things shall be dissolved. . . . The heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” So then we are carried, in the parable we are studying, in the consciousness and torment of the rich man, down to the final blotting out, by fire, of the sinner, and of sin, and of every vestige and evidence of it; and the torment of that hour is the torment that the evil spirit had in mind when he said to Jesus, “Art Thou come hither to torment us before the time!” Matt. 8: 29. Coming back to the story of the parable, Luke 16: 24-31 fastens the parable upon the Jews in their rejecting Christ, yet the application is for all. Like many other tremendous experiences through which the world and humanity have passed, and are yet to pass, some matters are scarcely touched upon, detail being left for other scriptures to point out and make clear. An illustration is given us in Isa. 61: 1, 2, where a connected and continuous prophecy is seemingly given. But when the Saviour, in His own life and work, and with His own word of mouth, shows to the Jews the fulfilment of the prophecy, in Luke 4: 16-21, He stops short in the very middle of verse 2 of Isaiah 61, because the latter part of the verse, and the details that belong to it, found in other664prophecies of the Scriptures, belong to another time, and are unnecessary in the matter which He desired them to know. So also in Revelation 20. In this chapter, the resurrection of the wicked is brought to view; and as we read the story, it would seem as tho the wicked went right up direct from their graves, and laid siege to the city of God. The details and other experiences are left for other scriptures to make clear. Thus in the parable, it would seem as tho the rich man was conscious in the grave immediately upon his burial; but other scriptures show that when any man dies, he knows absolutely nothing, and has no life nor consciousness whatever until the time when he is raised from the dead. Other scriptures reveal the fact of two resurrections—that of the righteous, and that of the wicked—and show clearly that an interval of a thousand years separates them. In the parable, the rich man is found entreating Abraham to send Lazarus. The interval of all the centuries is but the “twinkling of an eye.” The great gulf is the lake of fire into which the grave is cast (see Rev. 20:14), and lies between them. The holy city and the saints, with Christ and the Father, have descended to earth; and as the antitype of the ark that was the salvation of God’s people when He destroyed the world with water, that beautiful city, the New Jerusalem, is the salvation of God’s people in the day when God destroys the world with fire. In the plea that the rich man makes for his brethren, Jesus comes back, in the parable, to His present hour and experience—somewhat after the way in which Rev. 12: 1-6 brings us down to the end of the twelve hundred and sixty days, and then leads us back again to the resurrection of Christ, and from then on down to the development of the remnant—and adroitly presents conditions which exist even as He talks with them. Israel’s apostasy in the past is portrayed, and shown to be hopeless; and so far as their present condition is concerned, Jesus declares it to be the same. It is plainly seen that the parable does not apply to us or any other generation or people or dispensation, only as a lesson by which we may profit. Christ fastened the parable upon the Jews; and surely they fit the mold in every particular. They had Moses and the prophets, but they would not hear them. They wanted signs, and signs were in evidence at every turn. Said Jesus to them, “Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me.” John 5: 46. Covetous and proud, making their boast in the flesh, and not in the Lord, Jesus sought to set before them the utter hopelessness of a trust in any but the living God. Next came the plea that if one rose from the dead, they would believe, and this was met in the raising up of Lazarus from the dead. How it was received is told us as follows: “Much people of the Jews therefore knew that He was there: and they came not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom He had raised from the dead. But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death; because that by reason of him many of the Jews went away, and believed on Jesus.” John 12: 9-11. Then came the supreme climax in His own resurrection, and their rejection of the last rays of light when they counseled together and “gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole Him away while we slept.” Matt. 28: 12, 13. All this is told them in the parable, and they carried it out in their lives in the minutest detail. And the whole parable, while specially applicable, in every experience of it, to the Jewish nation, is also the story of sin and a personal Saviour in every human experience. Let us heed the tragic lesson, and profiting by the things written, know as did Philip, “We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write;” and like Nathanael be able to say, “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.” John 1: 45, 49.