Rich Man and Lazarus

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 2, 1864

Rich Man and Lazarus.

Henry Grew says: ‘It must be admitted that a part of our Lord’s representation of the state of the rich man and Lazarus seems to favor the opinion of conscious happiness and misery immediately after death, especially the request of the former that Lazarus should be sent to his father’s house. The entire representation, however, is far from sustaining such an opinion. So that the parable could not be considered as clearly teaching the popular theory, even if there was no opposing testimony.

‘By what process of reasoning do we infer the conscious misery of a disembodied spirit from the declaration that a man ‘lifted up his eyes’ in hell, and felt his ‘tongue’ tormented in the flame? Is not our Lord’s representation strong proof that man has no soul which is capable of suffering without the body? If such an opinion is true, was not this the very occasion to teach it? Would the faithful witness of the truth teach that the bodily members were actually tormented, when in fact they were as dead as a stone, in the grave? Does not such a representation oblige us to understand our Lord as anticipating that state, when the body, or the man, raised from the grave, should be capable of the suffering and enjoyment which he describes? Even that part of the parable which refers to the rich man’s concern for his brethren, contains some proof than there is no conscious spirit separate from the body; for the representation is that Lazarus could not make the desired communication, except he ‘rose from the dead.’’