And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
“Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’
(Luke 16:23-24) NKJV
The rich man, in hell, lifts up his eyes and speaks of his torment in flame. Here’s the thing: Abraham and Lazarus are also in hell, but they’re not in flame. This may be confusing, but it’s compatible with our model.
The key to this passage is the idea that the rich man has to look up to see Abraham and Lazarus. We have orientation: an up and down. The rich man is below them. It’s not hard to parse this as meaning that Lazarus and Abraham are in a chamber in the lower mantle, above, while the rich man is on the surface of the molten core of the Earth, below. They’re separated by a great gulf of open space.
This is deduction. It’s a simple matter of taking the parameters we’ve been given, the passage from Luke, and deducing how it relates to our model. There’s much more detail on the internal structure of the Earth in the Old Testament Hebrew than in the New Testament Greek, but they’re congruent.
Abraham apologizes for the plight of the rich man but points out that he had great comfort during his life above ground while Lazarus didn’t. He then goes on to describe the physical relationship between them. There’s nothing that can be done. It’s too late.
Why does this matter to you, it’s just a parable, right? You experience the world in your mind. You exist physically as a body, and your body interacts with the environment, but all of your sensory perception, sight, hearing, small, taste, touch, are processed in your brain and you experience it in your mind. When we think, it feels like we’re thinking in our head, but this is just the location of the neural processing taking place in our brain. The Bible tells us that we do our thinking in our heart. Either way, the Bible associates the soul with both the mind and heart. The mind isn’t the same thing as the brain. The brain is a biological system that makes the mind possible, but the mind is centered in our heart.
What happens when we dream? Our body is asleep in bed but somehow our mind is experiencing another world and having the same kinds of perceptions. In our dreams we see, hear, smell, touch and taste. In our dreams our minds are experiencing a world as being physical, but it isn’t. The world we experience in our dreams is a projection of our mind. In our dreams we’re aware of the environment changing to fit with whatever we’re thinking. The world of the dream changes along with the narrative of whatever story we’re living.
The rich man in hell lifted up his eyes, being in torments. He spoke. He remembered his former life. He doesn’t have eyes, mouth or a brain. His mind, his soul, is projecting his experience of the world. The mind thinks it has hands and feet, eyes and ears.
Your mind was created before the world began. It’s eternal. You’re going to continue to experience your environment for ever. What do you want this environment to be? Trust in Jesus Christ and live for ever in heaven.
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The Naked Prophet 