So Persuade Me!
But Don't Ask Me to Work.
"If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they
be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." --Luke 17:31
The rich man was in hell.
He deserved to be in hell because of his wicked and unbelieving
life. Jesus said that those who showed
no mercy would receive no mercy, and his life had been selfish, wicked, and
self-serving.
In hell, he does not repent.
Although rich and successful by worldly standards, he never took
responsibility for his behavior, and pretended that religion was a matter of
opinion, that everyone had his own view, and that such things were not at all
clear enough to worry about.
So in hell, he is overcome by pangs of self pity. "I am tormented in this flame," he
moans to Father Abraham. It is the
lament of Cain, "My punishment is greater than I can bear!" But, like Cain, he still does not accept
responsibility.
"Father Abraham,"
he whines. "Send someone
back to warn my six brothers, so they will not come to this awful place."
"But they have the Scriptures," says Abraham.
"But they will repent if someone rose from the
dead," the rich man protests. [In other words, they were not properly
warned. Religious principles were
unclear, and everyone had different ideas as to what was true. No one should expect the brothers to repent
on the basis of the evidence they had.
God is not fair.]
"Not at all," said Abraham. "If they will not hear the law and the prophets, neither
will they be persuaded if one rose from the dead."
The implications of Christ are crystal clear. The scriptures are all that a person needs
to know how to stay out of hell. To
tell a person to read the Bible is the greatest evangelistic witness a person
can give.
Too often even the church has bought into the idea that the
message is not clear. As a result they
begin to neglect the instrument of enlightenment. They turn to psycho-therapy, entertainment, snappy music, and
other devices to attract people. They
may travel miles across the country to some center of "revival,"
where they may see people barking like dogs, slithering like snakes, mumbling
like idiots, or muttering and peeping like the heathen, but they do not read
their Bibles. When they read the Bible,
they do not read for understanding, but as an device for gaining some kind of
cultic experience. They long for some dramatic miracle to convince the ungodly,
and forget that Jesus said that if people will not hear the story of the Bible,
they will not be convinced by miracles.
To the rich man, the law and the prophets were too dull, too
ordinary, too trite, too old-fashioned, and too God-centered. How could old stuff like that tell anyone
how to go to heaven? Besides, even the
church people disagreed about what the Scriptures say. It's just too confusing and it is unfair to
expect me to sort it all out.
The attitude of this rich man shows his bias and justified his
damnation. A man will spend from 12 to
16 years after high school and spend thousands of dollars to gain a license to
treat a person's sore throat.
The arguments for Christianity can be mastered by any man of
average intelligence if he will put his mind and devotion to it. But the modern man dismisses it all on the
basis of what he hears from people as ignorant as he is. He gets impatient if he has to listen to a
45 minute sermon once a week. He will
spend hours reading the books of anatomy, but the only knowledge he has of
Scripture is what he may have picked up as a child when it was "crammed
down his throat." He will read the
medical journals, but will not read St. Augustine, Athanasius, or St. Bernard;
not to speak of John Calvin. He is
content to take someone else's word for what they said. He will prescribe a treatment only after a
drug has been tested exhaustively; but he will accept spiritual advice from
colleagues who are as ignorant of spiritual things as he is. He is proud, ignorant, and very rich; and
will whine his way into hell. "But
you didn't send someone from the dead to warn me."
The illustration I used above may be applied to many other
professions. Only a fool would hire a
man to build a great bridge, unless he was sure that the builder was a
qualified engineer, who had studied for years to master his trade. Computer programmers spend years learning
the art, but trust their souls to those as ignorant of God as they are.
When he said, "Let them hear the law and the prophets,"
Jesus was giving testimony against the eclectic attitude of the ancient world,
and of ours. "What is truth?"
Pilate asked, sneering. But it didn't
get him off the hook, or out of hell.
Read the Bible. If you don't get
it, read it again, and ask questions of those who have studied it. Of course people disagree. Do all doctors agree on how to treat a sore
throat? Do we then reject the study of
medicine? The maladies of the soul are
at least as important as a sore throat.