Human Imperfection, Teboho Kibe [read a book .txt] 📗

here but you are in anguish. And besides all these things, a great chasm has been fixed between us and you people, so that those wanting to go over from here to you people cannot, neither may people cross over from there to us.” (Luke 16:25, 26, NW) Because the Jewish clergy were natural descendants, Abraham could properly address them as “Child!” But this only condemned them, because, though being his natural offspring, they had willfully rejected the divine favor and had come under God’s condemnation. So because of their professions to be God’s children the Greater Abraham addresses the complaining “rich man” religionists as “Child!” in the same way that Joshua addressed the troublemaker Achan when on trial for life. (Josh. 7:19) They are in the position of a child that justly needs punishment. Psalm 82:6, 7 says to them: “I said, Ye are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High. Nevertheless ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” (AS) The “blazing fire” they now experience is just an advance token of the destruction that awaits them. But God defends and delivers the poor and needy, and rids them out of the hand of the wicked.—Ps. 82:1-4.

“In your lifetime!” Yes, in the rich man’s time before divine judgment came, on natural Israel back there and on Christendom down here since God’s kingdom was set up and Jesus Christ was made the “chief cornerstone” in that royal structure. Before the “rich man” religionists were exposed as dead and buried toward God they had little concern for the people’s real spiritual need. They made a good living from their clerical profession and sought honor and worldly respect and led an easy life. They gave the people very little Bible intelligence and did not go out seeking the lost sheep. They remained silent about their oppressors and oppressions and let them hope for relief and comfort only in heaven. Likewise the “evil slave” class seek only their own heavenly salvation and leave the “other sheep” to shift for themselves until the Millennium. They offer no assistance now to such sheep to escape the world tribulation of Armageddon and to survive into the Millennium. (Matt. 24:48-51) So the “rich man” religionists have taken the good things of this life and have held the good things of the Bible in reserve for themselves. But now those days are gone forever, and they are seriously disturbed, disillusioned and in great anguish.

In those days when Christendom’s religious set flourished, the Lazarus class received the “injurious things”, and that largely at the hands of the “rich man” religionists. People who gave them a bit of soothing relief were looked down on as dogs that came and licked their ulcers. They were made to appear spiritually diseased and outcasts, under God’s curse, “as having nothing,” like beggars. (2 Cor. 6:8-10, NW) But now since God has reversed matters and showed whom he really favors and has taken to his bosom, they are comforted. Of course, they are still verbally abused and violently persecuted by the “rich man” class; but they are comforted with God’s comfort and refreshed and renewed by the good things from his table. They eat, drink, rejoice, sing for joy of heart, and are blessed, whereas the “rich man” religionists hunger, thirst, feel shame, cry and howl sorrowfully, leave their name for a curse, and face destruction. (Isa. 65:13-16) It is as when Job was healed and comforted, and his family, relatives and friends were restored.

The remnant of the Lazarus class are spiritual Jews. Upon their “skirt” we now see “ten men . . . out of all languages of the nations” take hold and go up with them as companions to Jehovah’s theocratic organization. (Zech. 8:20-23) They are like Job’s brothers, sisters and acquaintances who came to comfort him, besides those beautiful children whom he fathered in his old age. (Job 42:11; see also The New World, pages 364, 365) They are the “other sheep” whom Jehovah’s Right Shepherd, Jesus Christ, brings into unity with the Lazarus remnant, making them one flock under one Shepherd. In this way, too, these “other sheep” become intimate companions with the remnant and come into the bosom favor of the Greater Abraham, and they share in the present “good things” and comfort of the remnant. (John 10:16) They are the first ones of the earthly class to receive benefits from the Greater Abraham through his Seed, Jesus Christ and his body of joint heirs.

A GREAT CHASM

But that “great chasm”! The rich man had not thought of that when pleading to Abraham for relief. The people where he is cannot cross it and force themselves into Abraham’s bosom. Nor can the Lazarus class leave Abraham’s bosom and cross over it to the relief of the “rich man” class. The chasm pictures God’s judgment, which cannot be reversed and which divides the two classes. It forbids any mercy or relief to Christendom. She is abandoned since making her decision following World War I. She then decided against God’s established kingdom and favored the international conspiracy for ruling the earth by human agents in defiance of His rightful sovereignty and in opposition to his King Jesus Christ, whom he put on the throne in 1914 to rule amidst his enemies. To the “rich man” class the King Jesus Christ says: “Serpents, offspring of vipers, how are you to flee from the judgment of Gehenna?” (Matt. 23:33, NW) The Kingdom is here to rule in triumph. Now this world, including Christendom and its religious powers, must be abandoned to destruction. Her “rich man” class are like Esau, who sold his birthright for selfishness and moved to Mount Seir. Afterward when he wanted to inherit the blessing he was rejected, for, “although he earnestly sought a change of mind [in Isaac] with tears, he found no place for it.”—Heb. 12:16, 17, NW; Deut. 2:1-5; Ezek. 35:1-15

The terms for getting adopted as members of Abraham’s seed according to God’s promise cannot be set aside. The Kingdom class of blessing is now about complete, only a remnant on earth being yet destined for it. The “rich man” has not met those theocratic terms and requirements but has chosen the wisdom of this world. The last ones from his standpoint are now first in their participation in the Kingdom interests, and the reputedly first ones are now last. There can be no fusion of the two classes, no fraternizing! “Come out of her, my people,” calls the divine voice from heaven, “touch not the unclean thing.” The Lazarus remnant have left the Babylonish world and its religious confusion that they might be clean to bear Jehovah’s vessels of worship. God is determined to keep the organization of his people clean now. Only the real thing is kept there; all hypocrites are thrown out. The rich man cannot be brought in contrary to Jehovah’s decree. But now in this short period of God’s patience before the world destruction at Armageddon the “other sheep” class hear the Right Shepherd’s voice sounding the divine call to come out of worldly Babylon. They do so, flee to the upraised Signal of Jehovah’s kingdom, and gain entrance to the one flock under his royal Shepherd. These sheep the Shepherd puts to his right and divides them off from the “goats”. The great unbridgeable chasm of divine judgment allows for no fellowship between faithful persons and those who unbelievingly reject the Kingdom. “Thy judgments are a great deep.”—Ps. 36:6.

PLEA FOR THE FIVE BROTHERS

The “rich man” class have their own ideas about the salvation of the people. “Then he said: ‘In that event I ask you, father, to send him to the house of my father, for I have five brothers, in order that he may give them a thorough witness, that they also should not get into this place of torment.’” (Luke 16:27, 28, NW) He still calls Abraham “father”, but he confesses he has a closer relationship to another father and has five brothers. Who this father is Jesus told this class: “If you are Abraham’s children, do the works of Abraham. . . . If God were your Father, you would love me, for from God I came forth and am here. You are from your father the Devil and you wish to do the desires of your father. That one was a manslayer when he began, and he did not stand fast in the truth, because truth is not in him.” (John 8:39, 42, 44, NW) So the “rich man” class show their real sonship by the resemblance of their works to those of the Devil.

The “rich man” and his five brothers total six. This is a number distinguishing the organization of imperfection and sin, the enemy organization. (1 Sam. 17:4, 7; 2 Sam. 21:20; Rev. 13:18) So they are the visible seed of the great Serpent, as Jesus called them. (Gen. 3:15; Matt. 23:33; 3:7) Back there the five brothers stood for all the Jewish brothers of the “rich man” class, all natural Israelites of a like attitude, spirit and fatherhood. They were the seed of Abraham by natural descent but were not the spiritual sons of the Greater Abraham nor the brothers of Christ. At this end of the world they picture all those professed Christians of Christendom who associate with the religious leaders, follow their guidance and act goatishly toward Christ’s remnant of brothers. Their works betray who is their father.—2 Tim. 2:25, 26, NW.

The rich man admits that Lazarus is a witness of Jehovah, saying: “That he may give them a thorough witness.” Is the rich man here approving of the Lazarus class of Jehovah’s witnesses and asking for his five brothers to be helped to become Jehovah’s witnesses too? The facts fulfilling the parable do not indicate this. Actually, the rich man wants the Greater Abraham to send Lazarus away from his bosom to preach to his brothers in such a way and with such a message that it will not show them up to be dead toward God. It should not put them in mental torment. On the contrary, it should give them the false assurance that they are still in divine favor, reposing, like Lazarus, in the bosom of the Greater Abraham with all the promised New World blessings in view.

As in apostolic times, the “rich man” class of today want God to make his witnesses change their unorthodox way of preaching and also change their message. Soft-pedal this message of the “day of vengeance of our God” and let up on ‘overturning the strongly entrenched things’ of error, false religion and worldly friendship. The “rich man” class wants his brothers in his father’s organization to be spared the torment he suffers from the proclamation of the pure Word of God, exposing their hypocrisy and worldliness. So their prayer is really to their true father, Satan the Devil, and is that he will prevail upon the Lazarus class to make them a part of this world, compromising with the “rich man’s” organization. Then they will not torment unfaithful Christians.

“But Abraham said: ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to these.’” (Luke 16:29, NW) This shows that, at the time Jesus spoke his parable, only Jewish persons were meant, for then the Gentile nations did not have the Mosaic Law and the Prophets or the other section of the Hebrew Scriptures headed by the Psalms. Abraham’s answer showed he did not agree with the rich man’s request concerning Lazarus. Just so, too, the Lazarus class was not to be allowed to take away Moses and the Prophets or to ignore them or to take from them or add to them. The Scriptures which they had already must stand without change or compromise. The “rich man” class and their “five brothers” today have, not only Moses and the Prophets or the Hebrew Scriptures, but also the Greek Scriptures of Christ’s disciples. The “rich man” class had not strictly heeded these Scriptures and