Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

The Rich Man’s Doom

“And in hell, he lift up his eyes, being in torments … I am tormented in this flame.”

“Thy song is at an end,
   Thy harp shall solace thee no more,
 All mirth has died upon thy grave,
   The melody that could not save
 Has perished on death’s sullen wave,
   That flung thee on that shore.”

No man of proper feeling could speak lightly of the doom of those who “die in their sins.” Next to those three mysterious hours of darkness endured by the Saviour on the cross of Calvary, there is no subject so solemn and appalling, and yet since it has its place among the truths of Holy Scripture, it cannot be ignored. But here the preacher of the Word must put a curb on his imagination lest he dishonour God and stumble men; his thoughts must be formed and controlled by what is written.

The Feast prepared for all men, and the Father’s welcome to the worst of sinners, precede in this Gospel the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and this I believe is divinely ordered. First a full and eternal salvation offered to all, then the solemn warning to those who are disposed to despise that salvation. “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” The rich man’s doom is the answer to that question. There is no escape. The warning was given to the proud Pharisees, who hated the Lord because of His care for sinners, and who considered themselves quite good enough for God without forgiveness and grace, and who supposed that such wealth as the rich man wasted on himself was evidence of God’s favour. The Sadducees also mingled with the crowds that thronged to listen to the Saviour’s words; they had persuaded themselves that there was no life beyond this, and would consequently congratulate the rich man not only on his wealth but on his wisdom in using it for his own pleasure. Their pernicious doctrines and influence were spreading among the people and had to be exposed. The progeny of these two sects is numerous to-day, more numerous perhaps than ever before, hence these warning words are needed now as they were when the Lord spoke them. Truth does not become outworn by time, it is eternal.

It was the Lord’s own hand that drew aside the curtain that we might look into eternity; and by His own mouth this most solemn of all parables, if indeed it is a parable, was uttered. Who could tell us the truth as to the future but He? And love was behind the telling of it, for it is the way of true love to warn when its wooings fail. It is not the final doom of the wicked that the Lord here describes, but the sufferings of the intermediate state; that which lies between the death of the body and its resurrection at the judgment of the great white throne. Revelation 20. The souls that share the rich man’s place and state in hades are remanded there until that last dread assize.

The rich man clothed himself in purple and fine linen and made good cheer in splendour every day. He lived for the present and forgot the future — he forgot eternity, and his sins and God. This alas, is the folly of thousands. He lived as did the rich fool of chapter 12 and as those did who despised the great Supper in chapter 14. He was a self-centred man, who gratified his fleshly pride and lust to his full bent; he left God out of his life and reckoning, and cared nothing for the stricken beggar at his gate, but left him to suffer and starve and die. Such a life could only move God’s displeasure and wrath. But wealth and self-will cannot arrest the march of time, nor resist the power of death. Death is no respecter of persons, it claimed both the beggar and the rich man and neither could refuse its claim. The beggar’s name was known in heaven, it was entered in the book of life there, and when he died angels carried him into Abraham’s bosom — a Talmudic designation for the place of blessing. The rich man died also and was buried and forgotten by the successors to his wealth.

There does not appear to have been any interval between his unwilling departure from this life and his entrance into conscious torment in the next. “I am tormented in this flame,” is the cry of his soul, that had indulged its slightest whim in his former life; the cravings remained, but the slightest gratification was denied. This man, no longer rich, makes no appeal to God for mercy; he had lived without Him, and died without Him, and must abide without Him and without hope for ever. He does not pray for release, for he knows that that too would be useless. He has reached that woeful hour in his soul’s history when the written word must have its full meaning, “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still,” and as there could be no change in his condition, there could be no release from his prison. One drop of water is all he craves, and that at the hand of the once ignored Lazarus, but that also is a relief that cannot reach him, for the great gulf is fixed never to be bridged, not even by almighty mercy, and the fountain of living water is not on his side of that fixed gulf.

This lost soul had full consciousness of his own misery and he had carried into hades a memory that could only add to his torment; and he was conscious moreover of the blessing in which Lazarus rested, in which he might have shared. It is a remarkable thing that he should then plead for his five brothers. It may be that he was responsible for the way they were living; he had set them the example and encouraged them in self-indulgent lives, and he would have them warned, for it would seem as though his torment would be increased five-fold if they came where he was, as a result of his influence and example. He pleads, If only some apparition from the unseen world would warn them, someone whom they had known in his earthly life, they would take heed and repent. No, answers Abraham, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them … If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”

By this parable the notion that the soul sleeps at death until the resurrection is shown to be false; and that more pernicious teaching that the dead will have a second opportunity of salvation is exposed, and that still further lie that the spirits of the dead are anxious and able to communicate with the living is shattered. I am sure that some spirits do communicate through mediums at Spiritistic seances, for not all is fraud in those circles, but they are evil spirits — demons such as possessed men and women when the Lord came to earth, these impersonate the dead to deceive souls.

The rich man was conscious, he had no hope of salvation, he could not communicate with his brothers himself and heaven refused to allow one of the blessed to do it.

Faith comes not by seeing apparitions and signs and wonders, but by hearing, and hearing by the word of God; there is no hope for those who refuse the word of God.

I know that some, desiring to rob this parable of all its solemn meaning, and to do away with the thought of suffering after death, have endeavoured to make it illustrate the fact that the Jew has forfeited and lost the favour of God and the Gentile has come into it. It is true that this has taken place as Romans 11 clearly tells us, but this favour of God was and is only for this life, and does not extend to the next, and this parable tells us of the next life, where all national distinctions cease to be. Moreover if the rich man represents the Jew, and Lazarus the Gentile, the whole of mankind is covered by these two races, then what section of mankind do “the five brothers” represent?

Because men naturally hate the thought of their responsibility to God, and judgment after death, they argue against it, but even while they do so their consciences tell them it must be so. I was introduced to a man of considerable intellectual powers, a great student, and one who seemed sincere in his search for truth. We had a long talk together in which I pressed the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ upon him. Several times in the course of our conversation he said, “I’ll never believe in hell.” My answer was, “I am not asking you to believe in hell; what I want is that you should own the once crucified, but now risen and glorified Saviour as your Lord.” His final words were, “I’ll never believe in hell.” That night he found it hard to sleep; his conscience and his mind were in conflict, and he argued with himself, until very weary he dozed off to sleep early in the morning. It was the month of December. He awoke suddenly to see his bedroom lurid with fire, and his first thought was, “I’m in hell.” It was a great factory on the opposite side of the road that was ablaze, flames leaping from the windows. His relief was beyond words, but he began to ask himself, “If there is no hell, why should I have thought that I was there on seeing the fire?” He realised that his conscience had spoken before he had had time to marshal his arguments, and, a thoroughly sobered man, he came to listen to the gospel and fled for refuge to the one and only Saviour, Jesus Christ the Lord. Six months afterwards, from across the seas he wrote, “I have found in Christ the solution of all my difficulties — He is the wisdom.”

But we rest not either in man’s conscience or his reason, neither is the standard of truth. We turn from man to God; we believe His word, and thank Him for its warning of love.