Last month we began looking at some of the texts in the Bible dealing with the state of the dead, which we might find hard to explain. We learned that we are going to have to give an answer for each of our beliefs, and we need to be prepared to do that. Let us look at a few other texts in the Bible and see how we can explain them. These texts all contain the same word, mourn. I want you to see how this word is used in the Bible.
Mis-Translated Words
In Amos 1:2 it says, “And he said: ‘The Lord roars from Zion, And utters His voice from Jerusalem; The pastures of the shepherds mourn, And the top of Carmel withers.’” Have you ever seen a pasture mourn? No, pastures cannot mourn.
Isaiah 24:4 uses this same word: “The earth mourns and fades away, The world languishes and fades away; The haughty people of the earth languish.”
In verse 7, you will see this same word used again, although some versions of the Bible have translated the word as fails in this text. The Greek word translated as fails is the same word that is translated as mourn. “The new wine fails [mourns], the vine languishes, All the merry-hearted sigh.”
Isaiah 33:9 says, “The earth mourns and languishes, Lebanon is shamed and shriveled; Sharon is like a wilderness, And Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits.” That word, mourns, is also used in Job 14:22.
So what are these texts saying? In each one of the verses it said that something which is inanimate, like grass, or the earth, or a vine, mourned. The word that means to mourn was used. What does that mean? It means, literally, that it is languishing, languid, falling, failing, or dried up.
With this knowledge, let us look at Job 14:22, and put that same definition in there. “His relatives or his kinfolk will be in pain over it [that is over his death], And his soul will be languishing [dried up, failing, or falling—any one of those].” You see, when a flower gets droopy and falls, that is a sign that the life has gone out of it. The same word is used here. This word is also used concerning people—they mourn. But it is used, very often, in regard to inanimate things that have no life in them at all; they are languished or dried up or falling or failing. Dried up is a good translation there. So Job 14:22 is not a hard text to explain, if you have an understanding of the words.
Check the Context
There are a few texts in Ecclesiastes with which some people have trouble, such as Ecclesiastes 3:21. Remember, verse 21 is a question, not a statement: “Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth?” Somebody could object and say that the spirit of man goes up, but the spirit of the beast goes down.
We ought to look at the whole context. Let us see what it says in verses 19 and 20: “For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust.”
So what is the answer to verse 21? The answer is to say, Let us read verses 19 and 20. Verses 19 and 20 say that man has no advantage over the beast; they all go to one place. They are all dust. When a man dies, he is in the same condition as a beast. The only hope is the resurrection, the future.
Ecclesiastes 9; 12; Psalm 6:5 and 115:17 are texts where the wise man talks about the state of the dead, that they do not know anything. But some of the most troublesome texts in the Bible, concerning the state of the dead, are in the New Misplaced Commas
Probably the easiest one of all to explain is what Jesus said to the thief on the cross. (See Luke 23:43.) Jesus said, “Truly I say to you today . . . .” Say it right, and it will help the person understand. After you say “today” just pause for a long time.
“Truly, I say to you today [right now, when we are both on the cross], you will be with Me in paradise.” Jesus did not say, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.” How do we know that Jesus did not mean to say, “Today you will be with Me in paradise”? Can you prove it from the Bible? The answer is simple. He did not go there that day! How do we know that? Because, three days later, on the first day of the week, He said to Mary Magdalene, “I have not yet ascended to My Father . . . .” John 20:17.
According to Revelation 2:7, God’s throne is in paradise. Since, three days later, Jesus said, I have not gone yet, He was not intending to say to that man that he would be in paradise with Him that day, because He did not go there that day.
Incorrect Translations
Let us examine a text that is a little harder. “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell. For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.” Philippians 1:21–23.
Now when you just read this text the way it is stated in the English Bible, you are in deep trouble. You can read it over and over again, and you only have two choices: you live here in the flesh, or you depart to be with Christ. But there is a problem here, and the problem again is with the translation. Because in verse 23, the word between is an incorrect translation.
It was translated that way by translators who were trying to make it agree with what their preconceived opinion was, but that is not right at all. The Greek word that is translated between here, is the word that means out of. If you look in a Greek Lexicon, you will not find this word ever translated as between, except in this one text. It is not translated that way any place else in the Bible or in any other Greek literature, to my knowledge. Now if you put the words out of in this text, you will find that this text says something completely different. Look at verse 23 again. “For I am hard-pressed out of the two.” What does he mean hard-pressed out of the two? Paul did not want to stay here in the flesh, and he did not want to die either.
He said, Really, I am hard-pressed. I have a different desire, either staying with you or dying. What did he want to do? He wanted to be translated as was Enoch and go live with Christ. That would be far better than staying here, and it would be far better than death. Nevertheless, he says, to remain in the flesh is more needful for you. So that is a little bit harder to explain than Luke 23:43, because here you have the problem with a bad translation.
I worked with an evangelist one time who used to have many Bible translations, and he would take the one that had the right translation of the text to show the person. I found that was a very convincing technique. I have never found an English Bible that has this right, so I do not ever bring it up to people, because most people cannot read Greek. They would be taking my word for it, unless they got a Strong’s Concordance and an Interlinear Bible and checked it out, which they could do. However, we need to know the facts. If it comes up, we ought to know what the truth is, so we can explain it any time.
Difficult Texts
Another text that is difficult to understand is 11 Corinthians 5. In 11 Corinthians 5:1–8, Paul is talking about the very same concept that he was talking about in Philippians 1—how we can remain here in this body of flesh or we can die and be unclothed, but he really does not want to do either of those things. He would rather go and be with the Lord.
It will take you several minutes to go through these verses. You have to go through them phrase by phrase by phrase, then analyze, what is he saying? Being clothed, being naked as in the state of death, being clothed in this temple, or to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. He is talking about three things, not two. If you keep that in mind, you will
Let us go now to the hardest one of all. The hardest text (passage) in the whole Bible about the state of the dead, for me, is Luke 16.
Now, this could happen to anybody—suppose you come up to a passage of Scripture that you cannot explain; it seems to teach contrary to what all the rest of the Bible teaches. What are you going to do? Are you going to throw out 100 Scriptures because there is a Scripture that you cannot explain?
That would be dangerous, would it not? So even if you could not explain this passage (Luke 16) at all, you would not want to throw out all the rest of what the Bible says on this subject. To really understand this passage, I recommend you read Christ’s Object Lessons, 260–271. The title of the chapter is “A Great Gulf Fixed.”
Luke 16:19–31 is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Ellen White says, “In this parable Christ was meeting the people on their own ground.” Ibid., 263. The next question is, What was their own ground? Did the people, in Christ’s day, understand the truth about the state of the dead? They did not. You can look in the writings of Josephus and the Jews. The Jews had developed a theory about how, after you died, you went down to a hot place. They even had described what kind of a place it was.
Jesus Meets Us Where We Are
Mrs. White says, “The doctrine of a conscious state of existence between death and the resurrection was held by many of those who were listening to Christ’s words.” Ibid. So did they believe that after you died you were in a conscious state? Yes, they did. They were confused. Now, friends, we are going to get into something that I cannot fully explain. Why did the Lord not choose to correct them?
We know what Jesus believed about death, because when we read John 11, the story of Lazarus, Jesus said when he was dead that he was asleep. Nevertheless, notice what Ellen White said Jesus did: “The Saviour knew of their ideas.” He knew these people believed that you were conscious after death. He knew what they were thinking, and what did He do? “And He framed His parable so as to inculcate present important truths through these preconceived opinions.” Ibid.
He took their preconceived opinions, which were all mixed up, and He said, I am going to teach you something. I am not even going to straighten you out on that, I am just going to teach you something. Now before you and I get to arguing too much with the Lord about why He did this, let me ask you this question. Has God ever taught you something when you were all mixed up, but He did not teach it all to you at once; He just taught you a little bit? Has that ever happened to you?
That has happened to me. God does not wait until our thinking is all straightened out on everything before He starts to teach us. Sometimes He starts to teach us right where we are. We may be all mixed up, and He just comes to us on our own ground. He says, Well, I am going to tell you a story. And what a story!
Teaching by Parables
What do we learn from this story? There are several things. First, the Jews thought that they were the favorites of heaven. Who went to heaven, and who went to hell in this story? The Gentile went to heaven, and the Jew went to hell! (See Ibid., 262, 268.) That was just the beginning. They also thought that if you were rich, that proved you were honored and blessed by God. If you were poor, that meant that the curse of God was upon you. Who went to heaven, and who went to hell in this story? The rich man went to hell, and the poor man went to heaven.
I am telling you, Jesus was turning their heads pretty hard in this story. But that is not all. There is something even more important. It taught that we are judged in the future by the life that we live in this world. Our eternal destiny is determined by the life that we live, and after we die, it cannot be changed.
After you die, your eternal destiny is fixed! Ellen White says, “He held up before His hearers a mirror wherein they might see themselves in their true relation to God. . . . Christ desires His hearers to understand that it is impossible for men to secure the salvation of the soul after death. . . . The rich man had spent his life in self-pleasing, and too late he saw that he had made no provision for eternity.” Ibid., 263, 264. Then she talks about the fact that everyone has a certain amount of light, and if they do not make use of the light that they have, they will be lost.
Remember what Abraham said to the rich man who begged, “Please, if somebody went to them from the dead, if a miracle were worked, then they would believe.” Abraham said, “No, they have Moses and the prophets. If they do not believe them, they will not believe even somebody who rose from the dead.” (See Ibid., 264.) Did that turn out to be true in the case of the Jewish nation? It did.
“The conversation between Abraham and the once-rich man is figurative.” Ibid., 265. Jesus is not describing something that ever happened or that ever will happen in reality. It is a parable to illustrate certain things to the Jewish nation. Now if you study this chapter in Christ’s Object Lessons, you will find that this parable is a special teaching device of Jesus, not just for the Jewish nation. There is a whole section in this chapter to show that this parable has a special application to people who are living in the time of the end of the world. That is you and me. Now we have not exhausted the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. We have barely scratched the surface. This parable is one of the most instructive and comprehensive parables that Jesus told.
Preparing to Give an Answer
Do I have the right, on the basis of this story that Jesus told, using their preconceived opinions and giving it in figurative language, to say that you are conscious after death? No, I do not at all. Jesus has told us plainly in John 11 what He believes about the state of the dead and so have the prophets and so have the apostles.
There is a gulf, an uncertain time, and when a person dies, that gulf is fixed. That is why death is so serious and so solemn, because once a person dies their eternal destiny is fixed.
As long as you are alive, if you are on the wrong side—you can still change your destiny. You can change it either way, according to Ezekiel 18. Do you want to be headed toward the right place? Do not wait and think that you will do it just before death. That is not so easily done, and besides that, very often death comes suddenly, without time to change.
This parable about the rich man and Lazarus helps us to look at death in a completely different way. Death is not something to be afraid of or about which to worry. It is simply something for which to be prepared. We need to always be prepared.
The only way to live, and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus teaches us this, is to be ready all the time, to have your life committed to the Lord Jesus all the time, because then you are ready to live for Him. But if you die, you are ready for that, too. You do not need to worry about it, because if you are in Christ, the moment you close your eyes in death, in what will just seem a second to you, you will open them up again and have a new body.
You will have eternal life. According to the parable, you will be in Abraham’s bosom. That is figurative language, too, of course, for Heaven.
Friend, every one of you is going to be tested on this pillar of our faith. I hope that you are all ready for that test. I hope that you are ready to give an answer for your faith, with meekness and fear, to everyone that asks you. Show them what the Bible teaches, so when they hear about an apparition, and when they hear about Peter, or James, or John, or Mary, the Mother of Jesus, appearing, they will know who it is and will not be deceived. [Bible texts given in literal translation.]