The rich man dies, and is buried; and his next experience is the suffering of torment in consuming flame. How long after his burial he finds himself in this torment, we are not directly informed. But he has bodily organs; for he has eyes to see, and a tongue to be cooled; but these the dead are not usually considered to possess till the resurrection. This drives Landis, p. 191, to the unusual admission that the soul retains the human form, with its corresponding organs, hands, feet, eyes, tongue, &c. Again, the rich man sees Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom; but, as we have already seen, Lazarus is not literally borne there by the angels till the resurrection.
As a literal transaction, the scene is inevitably located, by the concurrent testimony of all Scripture, beyond the resurrection. How, then, it can be said to transpire in hades, we leave those to decide who believe that it is a literal transaction. Certain it is that no such scenes can really occur in hades, if the representations of that place given us by Moses and the prophets are correct; while analogous scenes will really take place beyond the resurrection: there the righteous are rewarded, and the wicked punished in devouring fire; there the Lord told the impenitent Jews that they should see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God, and they themselves thrust out, and that then there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Luke 13:28.
One view, only, maintains harmony between this and other portions of the sacred writings; and that is the one which is here, imperfectly it may be, but yet sincerely, advocated: that Christ, following the example of the prophets, uses the figure of personification, and anticipates, as transpiring in the grave, scenes which substantially occur beyond the resurrection; and that the object of the parable was to rebuke the Pharisees for their covetousness by indicating the fate that awaited a life of avarice and oppression here, however sumptuous that life might be.
That it does not teach the existence of conscious souls between death and the resurrection, is forever settled by the fact that Lazarus could return only by a resurrection from the dead. When the rich man requested that Lazarus might be sent to warn his brethren, Abraham replied that they had Moses and the prophets, and if they would not hear them, they would not “be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” The conversation did not therefore relate to the coming back of the immortal soul of Lazarus; and indeed no mention is made of any such thing in the whole transaction.
Therefore, interpret it as we may, it cannot be reasonably or scripturally used to prove the entrance of man’s naked, unclothed spirit into bliss or woe at the hour of death.
CHAPTER XXI.
WITH ME IN PARADISE.
According to Luke’s account of the crucifixion of our Saviour, Luke 23:27-46, one of the two malefactors who were crucified with him, said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” Verses 42, 43. This, says the immaterialist, “must ever stand as a clear announcement of the uninterrupted immortality of the soul.” (Landis, p. 211.) The “clear announcement” is made out in this manner: Christ and the thief, it is claimed, both died that day; they both went to paradise that day; and their condition while there was, of course, one of consciousness and intelligence.
There is one fact which stands somewhat in the way of this clear announcement; and that is, that Christ did not go to paradise that day. In answer to the popular view, we first set forth this unqualified proposition, and undertake its proof; and if this shall prove to be well grounded, the doctrine of annihilation will be found in a degree true; for the claims usually built on the scripture above quoted are utterly and forever annihilated by this fact.
In entering upon the argument to show that Christ did not go to paradise that day, we first inquire what paradise is and where it is. The word occurs but three times in the English version of the Scriptures, all in the New Testament; two besides the verse under consideration; but these are amply sufficient to define and locate it.
First, Paul in 2 Cor. 12:2, says: “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell; God knoweth), such an one caught up to the third Heaven.” In verse 4, he affirms that the place to which this man was caught up was paradise. This establishes the fact that paradise is in the third Heaven.