whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?' (Luke 9:25).
That brings us to the second aspect of the story. The two men have two very different destinies.
The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire’ (Luke 16:22-24).
We have to be very careful how we interpret the horrifying elements of these particular verses.
First of all, this is a parable, and a parable is a literary device for teaching spiritual truths by allegorical means. Parables, therefore, are not meant to be read like history. Even more important, as far as this particular parable is concerned, Jesus is quite clearly here accommodating himself to the conventional Jewish ideas of that period about the afterlife. I don't think there can be any other explanation for his strange description of going to heaven as being carried by the angels to Abraham's side. That's a metaphor without parallel in the rest of the New Testament, but it's common enough in the rabbinical writings of Jesus' own day. In fact, scholars have discovered a story quite similar to this one. It probably originated in Egypt, and was very popular among Jews in Palestine in the first century. It is far from impossible that Jesus is deliberately using that common folk tale in order to make a point of his own here.
For both of these reasons, therefore, it would be unwise to press the details of this account of the afterlife too far. Some, for instance, have questioned whether Jesus is describing here some intermediate state, in which the soul
