says it is the Bible. If people won't listen to 'Moses and the Prophets', nothing else will work, not even somebody rising from the dead. And he should know, of course, because he did!
Jesus tells us, then, that we seal our destiny by our response to the Bible. Signs and wonders may establish the faith of the faithful, and may confirm the spiritual blindness of the unbelieving. But it is the Word of God that awakens spiritual life.
Every time we open God's book, we stand before the gates of heaven and hell. That is the measure of how serious it is to hear the Word of God. It is not like reading a novel. For this is a word that calls us to change. No ghost is going to warn you of judgment to come. No miracle is going to prove to you the power of unseen things. Like the five brothers, you can have an open Bible in front of you; that is your privilege.
Not all tire world has that privilege, I freely acknowledge. For some, the Bible is still an unknown book. What Jesus would say of those more remote brothers of the rich man, we don't know for sure. Perhaps he would say that they have the book of nature and the light of conscience. The point is, however, that this is not addressed to people like that; it is addressed to people like us who have a Bible.
And what Jesus is saying to us on that score is quite simple. If we will not listen to the Bible we will listen to nothing. If we will not be changed by it we will be changed by nothing.
Perhaps Jesus is rather more realistic about the question of equality than our modern world tends to be. People today speak of equality of wealth in places where there never has been equality of wealth, and I doubt whether there ever will be. Jesus once commented, 'You will always have the poor among you' (John 12:8). Equality of opportunity is also elusive, I'm afraid, if you press it too far. People are born with a huge variety of potential; as
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