survives after death before the general resurrection. The implication of the story certainly seems to be that life is continuing as normal on planet Earth while the rich man and Lazarus enter their experience of the afterlife. Yet if they are disembodied souls, why does Jesus speak as if they had physical bodies? He mentions the rich man's tongue and Lazarus' finger. At the very least, we have to say there is a high degree of probability that Jesus' language here is symbolic, and that we had better not read it as if it were a literal account of what the afterlife is like.
Having entered that cautionary note, however, it is very hard to imagine Jesus casting his story in this form, or even repeating an existing story like this, if he didn't intend to endorse, at least in outline, the picture it gives us of human destiny. Indeed, the story falls apart if certain aspects of it are not an accurate picture of the afterlife. Maybe he isn't intending to detail the real nature of heaven and hell to us. But it is surely his intention to warn us that heaven and hell exist. He surely suggests that our personalities survive death in a conscious state. He certainly implies that a distinction between human beings occurs at death. The personalities of the dead are sustained by God in two quite different states: the one a state of bliss, in company with the redeemed of every age (represented by Abraham); the other a state of isolated anguish, represented by the lonely rich man in hell. If these things are not true in outline, then the whole point of Jesus' story is lost.
And that of course is a very sobering observation. People sometimes remark that death is the great equalizer. No matter how great or wealthy you may have been in this life, no matter how high you may rise over the heads of your fellows, there's no evading that final horizontal repose by which all people are reduced to a common level. Remember the famous words of Thomas Gray’s Elegy:
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