In discussing this question it is important to have a definition of the term "death." Scripture speaks quite definitely on this point. James 2:26 teaches that "the body without the spirit is dead." 2 Peter 1:13-15 enlarges on this definition of death:"Yea, I think it meet as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me. Moreover I will endeavor that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance." Peter here speaks of his body as this tabernacle and also of putting off this my tabernacle. In verse 15 he defines the putting off of his tabernacle as "my decease." Thus the testimony of James and Peter shows that death is the "I" or the spirit being absent from the body.

2 Cor. 5:8 confirms this in these words:"Absent from the body, present with the Lord." Further, death as we are accustomed to speak of it affects only the relations and responsibilities of this life. This is shown by the Lord's words as recorded in Luke 20:37, 38:"Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; for He is not a God of the dead but of the living, for all live unto Him." Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead for seventeen centuries, and yet God proclaims Himself as their God. He surely is not proclaiming Himself a God of inanimate dust. In the words above quoted, He is not a God of the dead but of the living; so that whilst Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were dead so far as the relations and responsibilities of this life were concerned, they were alive to God; and not only they, but in the solemn words of the Lord Jesus, "ALL live unto Him;" so that whether men die in faith or in their sins, in the intermediate state they live toward God.

As recorded in Luke 16:19-31, the Lord Jesus lifts the vail of the unseen and reveals to us the state of one who has died in his sins, in that intermediate place between death and the final judgment. There can be no possibility of mistaking the teaching of our Lord on this question. It makes no difference whether we call the story of the rich man and Lazarus a parable or not, it is a divinely accurate setting forth of the truth, because He taught it.

On the one hand, we see a man who is the very embodiment of affluence and luxury; on the other, one who is the last word in misery and beggary. There is no charge brought against the rich man of specific moral wrong. He certainly was entitled to dress in purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously every day if his income afforded it, and there is no need to question but what Lazarus obtained the broken pieces that fell from the rich man's table, for which he had waited.

The Jews-forgetting their own shameful history; forgetting that they had broken the law so flagrantly and continuously, and that God had pronounced upon them the sentence of "not My people,"-blindly appropriating to themselves the blessings of Deut. 28:-1-14, taught that material wealth was a sign of God's favor. With this doctrine in their minds, the picture drawn by the one Hand competent for the task must have been startling:the rich man in torment; Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham!-for "Abraham's bosom" was a well known term for the highest possible place of blessing attainable. That one whose condition in this life had been so wretched and miserable-and thus, according to their theology, under the displeasure of God-had reached this height of bliss, whilst his highly favored fellow had passed into torment, must indeed have been very startling to His audience. Even His own disciples held the doctrine of riches as being a mark of God's favor, for when the Lord said, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven!" their astonishment is set forth in their exclamation, "Who then can be saved?"

The rich man in hades "lifted up his eyes being in torment and seeth Lazarus afar off in Abraham's bosom." Such is the vivid and awful description of the intermediate state of a lost soul. Not only is he in torment but he sees where he might have been. He might have been in the resting-place of the faithful-Abraham's bosom. The concluding verses of our chapter give the reason why he is where he is. The only way of escape from that place of torment for his five brethren for whom he intercedes was that they should believe Moses and the prophets. He is where he is because he had rejected the testimony of Moses and the prophets to Christ.

In hades the unjust await the call to the resurrection of judgment. When a believer dies he departs "to be with Christ" (Phil. 1:23), and in that place and state of bliss he awaits the call to "the resurrection of life." In Acts 24:IS we learn of a resurrection of the just and of the unjust; in John 5:28, 29, of a resurrection to life and a resurrection to judgment. In Revelation 20:4-6 we learn that there will be one thousand years between the resurrection of the just to life and the resurrection of the unjust to judgment. As the believer awaits the resurrection of the just to enter into the fulness of his blessings, so the unbeliever awaits the resurrection of the unjust to receive the full penalty of his sins.

The position of the unbeliever in the intermediate state has been aptly likened to a man caught in the committal of a crime being held in jail until the time of his judgment shall have arrived. The doctrine current in Christendom, that when a sinner dies his soul goes to hell, is not found in Scripture. His soul goes to hades, which for him is a place of conscious torment, and there awaits the resurrection of the unjust at the close of the Millennia reign of Christ (Rev. 20:5, 6). The record of this dread event is set forth in Rev. 20:11-15. There the unjust in resurrection are described as the dead, great and small, and are seen standing before the Great White Throne, on which He sits who fain would have been their Saviour. Books, in which are set forth the deeds done in the body, are opened, and they are "judged every man according to their works." The book of life contains not one name of all that company who stand before that throne. "The sea gave up the dead which were in it; death and hades delivered up the dead which were in them." The sea giving up the dead which were in it shows how escapeless for any of the wicked dead is their final judgment Death delivers up that which it held- the body; hades delivers up that which it held-the soul. Soul and body having been reunited, the unrepentant dead stand before the throne in all the terror of that awful hour. There are no broken links in memory's chain; every incident in the life of the past stands out before their affrighted gaze in terrible present reality, whilst there falls from the reluctant lips of Him who had died for them, the solemn sentence of their eternal doom. The awfulness of their destiny is set forth in these words:"Death and hades were cast into the lake of fire;" that is, the body which death had given up, to which the soul, given up by hades, had been reunited, were both cast into the lake of fire. As men they had lived and died unrepentant; as men they stand before the throne, and as men they are consigned to the lake of fire.

In Revelation 20:10 we are taught that the beast and the false prophet are in the lake of fire. In ch. 19:20 we see that these two, the beast and the false prophet, were put there before the Millennial reign of Christ began. What is recorded in chap. 20:10 is that which takes place after the Millennial reign is finished. The verb "are" of this verse has been disputed as to its correctness, and by changing it to/'were cast" the opponents of eternal punishment try to escape the fact that the beast and the false prophet had been one thousand years in the lake of fire. This verse, when correctly rendered, reads-according to the consensus of Biblical scholarship and textual criticism-"And the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where ("are" or "were cast") both the beast and the false prophet, and THEY shall be tormented day and night for the ages of ages." The presence of the pronoun "they" disposes of any objection founded on the tense of the verb, nor will it suffice to say that "to the ages of the ages" means nothing more than the Millennial reign of Christ, for that is over before the devil is cast into the lake of fire, where the beast and the false prophet are. George MacKenzie