I am led to address today the parable Jesus told that is known as “Lazarus and the rich man.” (Luke 16:19-31) I have written an in-depth breakdown of this whole story, which can be found by clicking on this link: The rich man and Lazarus. (2019) In 2022 I wrote a shorter piece, which can be read by clicking on this link: The man wealthy and the poor man God has helped.
Today, I want to place focus on a view that I missed before or did not express clearly.
In the story, it is easy to see the rich man as a reflection of those who pander their knowledge of memorized Scripture to those who are impoverished, due to their lack of having anything of substance to share. What I want to point out now is how the rich man and Lazarus are a mirror image of all Christianity, as it suffers in the same way that Judaism had long suffered, when Yahweh sent His Son Jesus to walk among the Jews. Both men professed belief in Yahweh, with both experiencing Father Abraham after the death of their flesh; so, both men (as Jews) project the same beliefs carried on by Christians, after Jesus had come and gone in the flesh.
The duality message can be clearly seen, where the unstated generality of a “rich man” (“Anthrōpos plousios,” or “plousiou”) and the specificity given name for the “poor man” (“ptōchos”), as “Lazarus.” That specificity in name actually means “God Has Helped” or “My God Is Helper.” Thus, the duality becomes a statement of how Christians define such divine assistance, where some believe this is physical “wealth,” making life in the flesh comfortable and some believe they must sacrifice such worldly comforts for a much greater reward: spiritual salvation. It is then Jesus making the statement that the true test of faith is found in the one “God Has Helped,” meaning the “rich man” refused that divine assistance, instead helping himself to all he could grab for himself in the world (which he took from other Jews).
Here, it is important to see the whole of Luke’s sixteenth chapter, where it begins with Jesus telling his disciples (not the Pharisees or others of Judaism) the parable of the “unrighteous steward” (“oikonomon tēs adikias” – literally translatable as “manager of a household-guardian of this of injustice-unrighteousness”). That story being directed at the disciples is then a more difficult to grasp analogy that Jesus knew there were followers of his who were not sincere and totally committed to serving Yahweh the Father, who in this parable is the “Man rich” (“Anthrōpos plousios” again an identifier) that hired and then fired the “unrighteous steward,” for “wasting the possessions of himself.”
The “possessions wasted (“diaskorpizōn to hyparchonta” – literally translatable as “squandering-winnowing-dispersing-scattering these already existing-to be in possession of him”), when one realizes this parable speaks of a false shepherd “scattering” the flock of Yahweh, are the “possessions” of souls placed by Yahweh into flesh. A righteous manager hired by Yahweh then becomes an extension of the “Man rich,” making the true wealth made possible by a good shepherd be spiritual salvation. By being fired from that position of responsibility means the soul of the unrighteous – a pretender in the name of the Son – has “scattered-dispersed-squandered-mismanaged his (or her, if that human sexual identity be the case) soul, away from spiritual salvation, into eternal damnation.
The ’moral’ of that story is found at the end, where the “Man rich” (Yahweh) tells the “unrighteous steward” he has made friends by the wealth of unrighteousness. (Luke 16:9a) This then led the “Man rich” (Yahweh) to tell the false shepherd, “those who received unrighteous wealth that will fail will receive you into their eternal dwellings.” While the parable tells of the unrighteous manager (knowing he was going to be fired) going and reducing the debts owed by others to the “Man rich” (falsely), this is Jesus telling Christians today, “If you mislead other Christian souls away from a total commitment to Yahweh (thus spiritual salvation), rather than teach them how to save their souls through righteous servitude, then when they die, they will follow the soul of unrighteous manager to banishment.
This must be seen as the point of Jesus telling his disciples about the differences between sheep and goats. (Matthew 25:31-46) The sheep will be deemed righteous and saved souls; but the goats will be those who were falsely led others to believe salvation only required giving Yahweh and His Son ‘lip service.’ They are the ones who one sees today telling sinners – those souls in debt to the “Man rich” (Yahweh), whose debts can only be forgiven by divine union with Yahweh and being reborn in the name of Jesus – “Oh, its okay to be homosexual, even though divine Scripture plainly states the opposite … because I say God loves everybody.” The goats will be told Yahweh does not know them [meaning their souls never married His Spirit and they then were never reborn as His Son], so those souls will be cast into the outer darkness when teeth will gnash like Homer Simpson saying, “D’oh!”
The ‘moral’ of the story clearly says, “You cannot serve two masters. Either they will hate the one and love the other; or, they will hold firmly to one and disregard the other. You are not able to serve God (Yahweh) and money.” (Luke 16:13) Only the sheep serve Yahweh faithfully. The goats serve self in the flesh, where they use the concept of spiritual salvation as a marketable ware to be sold to their friends, promising discounts that will never pan out in the end. The confusion of serving “money” (“mamōna” – also translatable as “riches, possessions, property”), rather than God, means the flesh becomes the god over the soul. The ‘lower-g’ god – a soul (a.k.a elohim) serves the material realm, seeking worldly riches and favors. Like the Temple bigwigs, they like the idea of controlling as many other souls as possible – making them seem to be like Yahweh, who makes all souls. To do that they have to make promises that can never be fulfilled. They served self (a puny god), not Yahweh (the true and only God that matters).
From that clear moral being stated, Luke then tells of some nearby Pharisees hearing what Jesus just taught his disciples in parable. They ridiculed Jesus, leading him to address them, saying, “You are making yourselves appear righteous in the eyes of men, but God (Yahweh) knows the hearts of you; because this in men exalted a detestable thing (an abomination) before the face of this of God.” That not only confirms that homosexuality is “an abomination,” because it comes from the hearts of men who worship self, not Yahweh. Everything of the flesh is “an abomination,” because it is the flesh that leads souls away from spiritual salvation, offering false promises that will never be fulfilling.
At this point, Jesus told the Pharisees laughing that they worshipped the prophets, meaning they twisted the prophets' words to suit their selfish needs, “forcing their way” upon Scripture. As to that end result, Jesus said it will be “easier for the heaven and the earth to pass away, than one iota of Scripture (of law) to fail." Here, the metaphor of “heaven” is the soul of a human being – its “spirit within its flesh. The metaphor of “the earth passing away” is then the death of the physical body of flesh, so it is no longer capable of retaining the soul that brings life to inanimate dirt, dust, and clay (to which it will always return). Thus, to force one’s intellect upon Scripture, falsely teaching what is not truly written, one’s soul will find itself getting off the ‘death bus to the altar of Yahweh’ as a goat, among righteous sheep, finding out the future is not what one hoped it would be.
In Luke 16:18 is found a verse that seems to be out of place. It is joined with verse seventeen (by Bible Gateway NIV) and listed as “Additional Teachings.” The NIV translation of Luke 16:18 is this: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” This takes the concept of marriage and applies it to what Jesus told both his disciples and the laughing hyenas in fancy robes who stood nearby.
A soul is expected to marry Yahweh, where that union brings about a spiritual cleaning of all past sins by the most holy Spirit of the Father. The consecration of that divine union then (immediately) brings about the resurrection of His Son’s soul [first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby Jesus in one's newly cleansed carriage], which reside with the soul in its flesh, Jesus becoming the Lord over that ‘kingdom’ in which his soul has been divinely placed. Such a soul that has received the proposal for Holy Matrimony and accepted it, engaged but still having not ‘tied the knot,’ that is a “wife”-to-be soul still married to the flesh of its body.
To ‘divorce” Yahweh and marry another “woman” – all souls in flesh are “women,” as brides-to-be of Yahweh – then that says a soul in the flesh has shacked up (and hooked up) with something relative to the physical world (be it homosexuality, love of money, the pretense of self-importance, whatever). To “commit adultery” means to not be a newborn Jesus in the flesh, but instead be a full-grown adult playing selfish-me in the material realm.
The use of “commits adultery” (“moicheuei”) should be seen as a statement that says “becomes an abomination.” It is a refusal to commit one’s soul to Yahweh in divine marriage, not becoming His wife soul in human flesh, nor His Son reborn in one’s flesh, leading one’s soul to spiritual salvation that is choosing a worldly life of sin (an abomination) over the reward of self-sacrifice for eternal salvation.
That is then the lesson taught in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Still, my focus today is less on what I have already written prior on that parable, and more on this concept of rejecting Yahweh. It deals with the end of the Lazarus parable, where the soul of the sinner suffers in “Hades,” unable to get any of his requests answered favorably by Father Abraham.
The soul that had formerly enjoyed the material wealth of the world no longer had any material world about him. He was no longer a Jew, as that is nothing more than an identification of certain humans on earth. The poor man “God Has Helped” was spiritually raised – not buried in the ground – and had become “into the bosom of Abraham” (“eis ton kolpon Abraam”), having been “carried away by angels.” To be place “into the bosom of Abraham” means his soul was indeed one of the descendants Yahweh promised Abram he would have. Abram was physically childless, but Yahweh was not promising Abram a household of countless children descended from his physical loins. The “poor man” was poor because he rejected the lures of the material realm, in order to receive a greater reward “in the bosom of Abraham.” The soul of the former “rich man” had left behind all he had sold his soul to gain. He was nothing, with nothing.
Now, when that lost soul requested Abraham to send an angel or spirit to tell his five brothers what they faced if they did not change, this must be seen as the Homer Simpson ‘D’oh!” moment, while that soul was at the feet of Yahweh, standing naked, colorless, without sex organs, without national affiliations and without philosophical concepts as defense at the altar of Judgment. It is a little too late then to start thinking of making amends for a lifetime of sinful wrongs. That soul wanted to make it seem like he was always a ‘do-gooder’ at heart; so, trying to save his brothers could be his swan song in that regard. Yahweh knows your heart; so, that act will not fly.
This is where it is vital to be familiar with the sheep and goats all thinking they are getting off the Love Boat to Heaven, to be greeted by a most gracious host and his midget companion Tattoo. The goats find punishment at Judgement, while the sheep find spiritual salvation; but neither will know what they did to justify that. This is a statement about the Jews thinking they will be saved for memorizing the words of the prophets and Moses, while the sheep will think they will be saved for letting Yahweh lead their souls, without question. The goats will be blind to their sins, while the sheep will shake with fear knowing they had once many sins to their resume.
This says the sheep and the goats both say they serve the same God; but both will show up for Judgment in the same way as the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man will have persecuted every sheep in the flock, in order to make a buck. The sheep will have paid the bucks, hoping their poverty would be seen by Yahweh as a sign of devotion to His protection.
In this world today, Christianity has fallen into the dismal state that Judaism was in when Yahweh sent His Son to slap some awakening into them. There are false shepherds acting as unrighteous stewards, selling sins as redeemable … in their name (which aint Jesus resurrected).
They huddle into sects, as the holiest of thou, casting insults and epithets (privately, behind people’s backs) at those they do not personally like, because he or she likes someone or something they hate in their hearts, with great passion. Playing little-g gods on earth makes it seem they have the right to walk by the poor people “God Has Helped,” not once offering them even one morsel of discussion, advice, or consolation for being seen by them as ‘full of sores’ that only the dogs will try to lick clean. Little-g gods pretending to be Christians would rather bow down and wash the feet of those who openly hate Yahweh and Jesus, than offer a hand out to another Christians (one of the great unwashed members of a different denominational sect). Wear a MAGA hat and forget about it! The false shepherds hate those worse than Satan.
All the while they wear fancy costumes that make others think they are almighty and special in the eyes of God. They are not. They show the face of a little-g god before the face of Yahweh and they have just broken the First Commandment: You shall wear the face of no other gods before the face of Yahweh. (“lō yih·yeh- lə·ḵā ’ĕ·lō·hîm ’ă·ḥê·rîm ‘al- pā·nā·ya,” – Exodus 20:3) [That's what that means. Look up the Hebrew.]
That is the first Covenant of divine marriage to Yahweh. To receive His blessing of redemption, which comes when His Spirit pours out upon one’s soul, one must make an oath of total subservience and obedience, as His wife-soul in newly clean flesh. To start playing a little-g god means to divorce Yahweh and enter into the realm of commitment that is adultery. That is “an abomination” that can only be washed clean before the death of one’s physical dirt bag comes. After physical death it will be too late to ask Yahweh to let an angel go back and tell all the souls you pissed all over, “I’m sorry.” The time to do that is now ... while the proposal is still open.
Comments