a question to those who understand the parable of the rich man and Lazarus literally

[Meerkat2]

Originally Posted by psychohmike

I would suggest that it is a parable and not speaking about the afterlife. But rather the contrast between the old covenant and the new.

I would agree with you..

[svenM]

Sven, briefly what do you believe the scripture concerning Abraham's bosom to mean? And where do you believe people go to await the resurrection?

I think the story is a parable, Abraham's bossom does not exist

biblical studies: The Rich Man and Lazarus, Part One

I believe the soul perishes with the body, both the sinner's and saint's souls, I do not say the soul is annihilated at death, it may exist but I believe it is dead. The dead are unconscious, it would go to far to post all the verses that state this. There will be a ressurection of the just, and a ressurection of the unjust for judgment 1000 years later, the unjust will be punished and suffer a second death, they seem to perish in the lake of fire, while evil angelic beings suffer conscious torment there for ages of ages.

I believe a final ressurection will occur of those who perished in the lake of fire and the evil angelic beings released from their aeonian (age-pertaining) punishment, that God may be all in all (1Cor. 15:28)

[yeshuasavedme]

Originally Posted by svenM

there are several manuscripts - the Ethiopic version might be the translation of a translation anyway, the German translations have punished, some English translations support this alternative reading so I chose these, slain further carries the notion of annihilation that seems to appear in many instances in the book of Enoch, further the different translations partly vary pretty much. Wether slain or punish, the contradiction remains - Jesus said there will be a ressurection of all, the book of Enoch says for all class of sinners there will be no ressurection, this is a major contradiction in my opinion!

Enoch and Jesus and the OT and NT say that there are two resurrections of earth, and they are the harvests typed in Pentecost and in Tabernacles.
All agree that the spirit of Adam will not continue, will not rise, and that the soul will rise in the body of its own flesh, of those who are not regenerated in Spirit [born again in Christ's One Living Spirit]. The state of being raised in the body for the lake of fire is called being an undying worm, because the purpose Adam was created for will be forever unattainable for the souls who are not born again in Spirit, into the Living Spirit, Christ.

When God saved 8 Adam persons in the ark, through the flood , it was so that the Adam spirit could continue on earth for 120 more Jubilees [6,000 years] so that His plan could be completed for the redemption of the earth and the Adam souls who would be made clean by the Atonement; and continue without the defilement of the flesh of earth by the iniquity of the mixing of the kinds, which was caused by the Watchers and the wicked Adam persons.
He said in Genesis 6 that the days of Adam [spirit] would be 120 years on earth, with a dual meaning of 120 years from that time before the flood, in which Noah and Methuselah would preach righteousness, and 120 Jubilee years, which is 6,000 of our normal years; but the oracle of circumcision given to AbraHAM [the father of faith] is the sign that the Adam spirit will be cut off, completely, on earth, and so cannot multiply on the earth, in the 8th day -the New Beginning- of creation.

So, since Enoch and Jesus both tell us about the unclean souls who are unregenerate, rising in their Adam flesh bodies but not with the Adam spirit, then for sure, the Adam spirit will never rise from Sheol, but the souls will rise from Sheol in their own bodies of Adam flesh, and in that flesh, they will be cast aways, never dying worms, in the lake of fire.

Man is body, soul, and spirit, but the spirit will never rise from Sheol and the soul in body will be forever cast aways in the lake of fire, for the unregenerate. That is why we must be born anew, regenerated in Spirit, adopted into Christ's One Living Spirit, now, in this age, while we have our being intact, before the end of this age comes and it is too late.
Mat 10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
The soul in body will be "destroyed"/useless for its purpose, in the lake of fire, where each will be "a never dying worm", no chance of morphosing into a son of God for the Glory to indwell.


Also, Enoch and the OT also teach that the spirits of the "dead" nephillim will never rise in the wickedly attained bodies of Adam flesh, because those bodies were not of the Adam seed, but illegally got for the multiplying of the Watchers spirits, in bodies of Adam flesh genetically manipulated from their Adam flesh wives.

So, studying the OT, NT, and Enoch, Adam souls lose the spirit called Adam, which defines their being, and the nephillim spirits lose the bodies of Adam flesh which was stollen from the Adam race. 'They are the dead, they shall not rise", but they certainly will be cast into the lake of fire and be tormented there forever, as Enoch revealed from the Word of the LORD, the Great Glory. The demons are the nephillim disembodied spirits, and they certainly believe the Gospel, and they tremble, for they are doomed/damned to eternal destruction in the torment of the lake of fire, minus the bodies they illegally got from the Adam flesh race.

[hljc]

In Luke 16:19-33 There was a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and faired sumptuously every day.........And there was a begger named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate , full of sores,........And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man`s table, moreover the dogs came and licked his sores..........And it came to pass that the begger died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham`s bosom; the rich man also died, and was buried.........And in hell he lifted up his eyes being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom..........And he cried and said Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue, for I a tormented in this flame...........But Abraham said Son, remember that thou thy liftime receivedst thy good things and likewise Lazarus evil things, but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented,.......And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot neither can they pass to us that would come from hence......... Then he said I pray thee therefore, father, thou wouldest send him to my fathers house........For I have five breathren that he may testify unto them lest they also come into this place of torment..........Abraham saith unto him They have Moses and the prophets let them hear them.........And he said Nay father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead they will repent..........And he said into him If they hear not Moses and the prophets neither will they be persuaded through one rose from the dead.```..........Seen Israel in the Old Covernmant all people born in this land and were consecreated to the Lord were saved and if obeidient to the will the Lord God were sent to Abraham`s bosom a realm of a holding place that does not exist today and was ended at the cross of Jesus Christ, when all the people in Abraham bosom were sent to another realm in Heaven were all of Jesus Children are.........In Matthew 27: 52 Abraham bosom closes `` And the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.``....... Rich people in the Old Covernment it is asumed that they had all their need taken care of and had no need of The Lord and did not pray or sow charity to the Lord and were lost to the Lord God at their departure from their life. and the parable says that lost people did not liten to the Lord God or the Prophets of the Lord so why would any body even listen to any people who rose from the dead............. Book of Enoch is not a Christian book and not conscrated or book honored by the Holy Spirit who is called to teach the Children of The Lord Jesus

[twin.spin]

The rich man and Lazarus themselves may not be literal, but the situation of what happens after death is spoken as a matter of fact.

[yeshuasavedme]

Originally Posted by hljc

Book of Enoch is not a Christian book and not conscrated or book honored by the Holy Spirit who is called to teach the Children of The Lord Jesus

Your post is extremely difficult to read with any understanding. Try paragraphs and separate your own comments from passages of Scripture you post, for easier to read posts.

As to 1 Enoch: it is Scripture and it was always Scripture, since the beginning, only some western hellenized Christians who had lost the understanding of the doctrine of the Word decided to follow Christ rejecting Jews and ban it almost four hundred years after the NT Church was founded and used that ancient book as Scripture, just like religious Jews did before them, and just like Abram did before them.
But the Ethiopian Christians did not follow Rome, and kept Enoch in their "list" of sacred writings =Bible, where it is today, because they always had it, as Jews, before they heard the Gospel of Christ and were converted to Christ; and they believed it to be sacred Scripture; and they did not need to follow Roman hellenized Christians who lost understanding and banned it four hundred years after the NT Church was founded, because their background is in Judaism, and they already used Enoch and called it Scripture, as the Jews had before them.

The Jewish Essenes of the Dead Sea Scroll fame used Enoch as Scripture, and in the ancient manuscripts of those Qumran caves, in a portion of Scripture called the Genesis Apocryphon, there is the discovery that AbraHAm read from the book of Enoch to the Egyptians who brought Sarah back to him from the Pharaoh, and asked him to teach them wisdom, values, and truth.

Translation of 1Q Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen)
Abram writes:

[SIZE=2] But after those five years, three men who were princes of Egypt [came … …] of Pharaoh Zoa[n] about my affairs and about my wife, and they presented [me numerous gifts and aske]d m[e to teach them] values, wisdom, and truth. So I read in their presence the [book of] the words of [En]och[/SIZE]

[svenM]

The state of being raised in the body for the lake of fire is called being an undying worm, because the purpose Adam was created for will be forever unattainable for the souls who are not born again in Spirit, into the Living Spirit, Christ.

this appears to me as a twisted and very fancy interpretation of what Isaiah and Jesus actually said:

Isaiah 66:24

And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.

men can also be translated with mortals, "the dead bodies of mortals" - nothing of this refers to immortal souls or spirits suffering consciously, this not dealing with an afterlife at all, but speaks about corpses, the LXX renders this with limbs which shows that they did understood it similarly as I do.

We find a perverted understanding of this already in the apocryphal book of Judith, yet it this far different from your interpretation.

Judith 16:17

Woe to the nations that rise up against my kindred! the Lord Almighty will take vengeance of them in the day of judgment, in putting fire and worms in their flesh; and they shall feel them, and weep for ever.

The idea seems to be taken from Isaiah 66:24 but she says something completely different than what Isaiah said, Isaiah spoke about corpses, Judith says God will send the worm and the fire in their flash while they are alive, it is not sure if Judith teaches here endless torment, as "for ever" [Greek eis ton aióna] does not nessecarily mean endless in biblical use, but often merely lifetime;

1 Maccabees 14:41 is a good example, "for ever" the same term [Greek eis ton aióna] as in Judith 16:17 is clearly limited here:

Also that the Jews and priests were well pleased that Simon should be their governor and high priest for ever, until there should arise a faithful prophet.

Let's now look what Jesus said (Mark 9:47.48)

And if your eye offends you, remove it; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than to have two eyes and fall into the Gehenna of fire, where their worm does not die, and their fire does not quench.

We see that Jesus quoted Isaiah - not Judith, and therefore He seem to have meant something similar as Isaiah did (and not what you assume); and this was not conscious torment but merely earthly desctruction, Gehenna is literally the valley of Hinnom, this can be proven from Joshua 18:16 in the LXX, Jeremiah prophesized that this valley will be called the valley of slaughter (Jeremiah 19:6), not the valley of everlasting torment.

But the Ethiopian Christians did not follow Rome, and kept Enoch in their "list" of sacred writings =Bible, where it is today, because they always had it, as Jews, before they heard the Gospel of Christ and were converted to Christ; and they believed it to be sacred Scripture; and they did not need to follow Roman hellenized Christians who lost understanding and banned it four hundred years after the NT Church was founded, because their background is in Judaism, and they already used Enoch and called it Scripture, as the Jews had before them.

What authority is the Ethiopian church?, Ethiopia is far away from the holy land and the places where the apostles lived and interacted, the book of Enoch was never part of the Jewish canon, if the book of Enoch was actually inspired, the Jews seems to have dismissed it very early.

Jesus Sirach writes about the patriarchs from chapter 44 onward, he begins with Enoch, yet only mentions him with one line, Enoch pleased the Lord, and was translated, being an example of repentance to all generations. (Sirach 44:16), nor considers him to be a prophet, about everybody else he wrotes much more.

As far is I know this book was written 180 BC, to me it seems either Sirach was not even aware of a book of Enoch, because it was not written yet, or he was aware of it, but did not deem it worth to mention or did not consider it scripture.

Some contents of the book of Enoch might be borrowed from Ezekiel and Daniel, rather the way round; so it so no wonder that there seem to be similarities.

Further it can be questioned if the book of Enoch teaches everlasting punishment, I will only consider the last chapter:

CVIII, 3

And wait ye indeed till sin has passed away, for their names shall be blotted out of the book of life and out of the holy books, and their seed shall be destroyed for ever, and their spirits shall be slain, and they shall cry and make lamentation in a place that is a chaotic wilderness, and in the fire shall they burn; for there is no earth there.

their spirits shall be slain this implies annihilation, it is said they shall cry and burn in fire, but that might be part of their process of desctruction until they vanish utterly.

The last two verses:

And they shall see those who were, born in darkness led into darkness, while the righteous shall be resplendent.
And the sinners shall cry aloud and see them resplendent, and they indeed will go where days and seasons are prescribed for them.'

days and seasons are far away from eternity, first the book of Enoch speaks about fire and then of darkness, annihilation would be the uttermost darkness. This would agree with fragments of Dead Sea scrolls that speak of total annihilation in a similar ambiguous manner:

It is noteworthy that the Manual of Discipline describes the punishment of those who follow the Spirit of Perversity instead of the Spirit of Truth in an apparent contradictory way, namely, as unending punishment which results in total destruction. The text states: "And as for the Visitation of all who walk in this [Spirit of Perversity], it consists of an abundance of blows administered by all the Angels of destruction in the everlasting Pit by the furious wrath of the God of vengeance, of unending dread and shame without end, and of disgrace of destruction by fire of the region of darkness. And all their time from age to age are in most sorrowful chagrin and bitterest misfortune, in calamities of darkeness till they are destroyed with none of them surviving or escaping" (1QS 4.11-14).

The fact that the "unending dread and shame without end" is not unending but lasts only "till they are destroyed" goes to show that in New Testament times, people used such terms as "unending," "without end," or "eternal," with a different meaning than we do today. For us,"unending" punishment means "without end," and not until the wicked are destroyed. The recognition of this fact is essential for interpreting later the sayings of Jesus about eternal fire and for resolving the apparent contradiction we find in the New Testament between "everlasting punishment" (Matt 25:46) and "everlasting destruction" (2 Thess 1:9). When it comes to the punishment of the wicked, "unending" simply means "until they are destroyed."

Hell: Eternal Torment or Annihilation

NOW LISTEN, if the book of Enoch was actually written by Enoch, then it is one of the most ancient books in the world, older then most parts of the Torah, the ancient languages were destitute of a word to denote eternity, if Enoch wrote in Hebrew, he was destitute of a word that meant "eternal" as we understand it today, therefore the book of Enoch cannot teach "eternal damnation" because the language in which it was written lacks a word to denote eternity! - this might be true of the Ethiopic language alike.

It does not seem to have been generally considered by students of this subject that the thought of endless duration is comparatively a modern conception. The ancients, at a time more recent than the dates of the Old Testament, had not yet cognized the idea of endless duration, so that passages containing the word applied to God do not mean that he is of eternal duration, but the idea was of indefinite and not unlimited duration. I introduce here a passage from Professor Knapp, or Knappius, the author of the best edition of the Greek Testament known, and one in use in many colleges and ranks as a scholar of rare erudition. He observes:

"The pure idea of eternity is too abstract to have been conceived in the early ages of the world, and accordingly is not found expressed by any word in the ancient languages. But as cultivation advanced and this idea became more distinctly developed, it became necessary in order to express it to invent new words in a new sense, as was done with the words eternitas, perennitas, etc. The Hebrews were destitute of any single word to express endless duration. To express a past eternity they said before the world was; a future, when the world shall be no more. . . . The Hebrews and other ancient people have no one word for expressing the precise idea of eternity."

AIÓN -- AIÓNIOS

I won't longer argue about the book of Enoch, I do not consider it of divine origin nor written by Enoch himself; but as a work of the intertestamental period under pagan influence (Babylonians e.g.), even if it were a inspired writing it is not explicit on the subject of everlasting punishment and contradicts other parts of the bible, the available translations are not too trustworthy in my opinion and the preserved Ethiopic texts may be not very genuine, especially as if it were some thousands year old, who knows how many interpolations have been made there? - this is not the case with the canonic writings.

Concerning "eternity" in the Ethiopic language and bible translation, this link is further interesting:

Whence Eternity? How Eternity Slipped In by Alexander Thomson

That this word olm [in the Ethiopic language] assuredly could not signify "eternity" is placed beyond all doubt by the fact that it is also used to represent the Greek word for world (kosmos) generally, as throughout John 17. It also stands for the Greek word for era kairos, as in Mark 10:30 and Luke 18:30, and even for generation genea as in Luke 16:8.