Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: REMEMBER (10/19/17)
-
TITLE: Remembering with Regret | Previous Challenge Entry
By Rebecca Lunn
10/26/17 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
The rich man shook with shock. “This heat is unearthly hot!”
The man was right for he was burning in hell. The instant he arrived in the darkened furnace that is Hades, moisture was seared out of his rotund body.
“Water!” the rich man commanded. “I want a bucket of water this instant!” he gasped inside the black inferno. No one came to serve him. Instead, hostile demons roared back at the rich man’s misery with piercing, mocking laughter.
The proud man had spent a lifetime looking down on everyone. But now, he lifted up his shriveled eyes and saw someone far away: Lazarus, the beggar man he used to see—yet not see.
“Lazarus!” the rich man called out in full hope. “I know you! You must remember me! You used to sit at the gates of my mansion.” Lazarus made no answer.
The tormented rich man saw someone else close to Lazarus. It was Father Abraham—also a very rich man like himself.
“Father Abraham! Have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. I am in agony in this fire.”
Strange! How is it in hell one can correctly perceive someone without ever having met him before on earth? Does truth function even in hell?
“Son,” kindly Abraham answered, “Remember in your lifetime…”
Remembering how good it used to be: those were the torturous stings. “I used to be royally dressed in purple and fine linen, but now my skin is crawling with maggots. Lazarus used to be caked in festering sores but now he is bathed in glory. I used to live in luxury with no thought of tomorrow; now I am abandoned to hell in endless, lifeless, roiling tomorrows. Lazarus had lived just outside my gates, but now I am the one cast outside. Though Abraham, Lazarus, and I are all supposed to be dead, we can still see, hear, and talk. We can still remember, reason, and feel. I am the one alive with regrets; not them. What on earth is death anyway?”
The rich man thought to himself, “Why is rich Father Abraham there in comfort along with poor Lazarus, and I am here? I must have missed a major connection somewhere in my past life that had nothing to do with riches nor glories of the earthly sort.”
The rich man spoke up again as the bossy boor he used to be. “Send Lazarus to my five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.” Realizing his arrogance in judging his brothers to hell, the man toned down his rhetoric and added, “I beg you, father.”
Abraham stated matter-of-factly, “They already have Moses and the Prophets.”
Indeed, for more than a thousand years, prophets have recorded heavenly glories seen by their own human eyes: Abraham himself was the friend of God; he saw the heavenly city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. Moses was in God’s glory speaking with God face to face. Daniel saw the white haired Ancient of Days seated on a throne that livestreamed flames. Those heavenly fires did not torment like these hellish fires.
In hell, the rich man even remembered how to argue. Though he recalled Moses and the prophets he was unmoved, and even dared to rebut father Abraham that, no!—written Scriptures were not persuasive enough. A more convincing plan would be for a dead man like Lazarus to resurrect and to report to the living about heavenly glories.
Cogently, Abraham silenced the rich man with his own rebuttal. Someone rising from the dead to report to the living would undoubtedly be spectacular. But that would not be not any more persuasive than a living person reporting the truth of his experience regarding the same glory. Whether the reporter be dead or alive, an unbeliever’s unbeliefs stay unmovable.
Sadly for the rich man, his empty arguments belied the truth he had known all along. That is, the point of departure between the glories of heaven and the horrors of hell had to do with the listening ear and the repentant heart. The rich man chose to be convinced that a transient earthly glory was more to be desired than an everlasting heavenly glory. In the end, the false belief inside his heart trapped him inside the true hell where all rememberings are only regrets.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be right now. CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.
This could be used as a warning to some or an encouragement to others.
Well written.