March 21

The Great Chasm

The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’

(Luke 16:22-26) ESV

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is a description of the internal structure of the Earth that’s in conflict with current popular science theories (SciPop). We need to understand why.

These days SciPop is regarded to be established fact. What most people don’t know is that, once upon a time, SciPop was a rebellious upstart which challenged conventional wisdom. It’s an outgrowth of our desire for the Bible to be wrong so that we can feel good about denying the existence of God. As such, it has to be able to account for things in a way which makes it look as if the Bible is wrong. The internal structure of the Earth is an example.

Leaving aside all of the textual-criticism-based-theological-fluff interpretations of this passage which are a capitulation with the SciPop model, Jesus describes a great chasm, or gulf, between the lower mantle and the surface of hell. This chasm isn’t part of current SciPop theories which have a liquid outer core instead. Why? This is what we need to resolve.

We don’t have any direct evidence of what the Earth’s interior looks like. Seismological data is used to infer that there are zones of different density and a transition from solid material to something else, possibly liquid but it doesn’t have to be. So how did SciPop rationalize the idea that it’s liquid rather than open space? It’s because of the way that Newtonian gravitation works. In order to counteract the SciPop rationale we have to debunk Newtonian gravitation and, by extension, general relativity. We’re going to cut the link between mass and gravity.

Section	Title	Scripture
1	March 21	Luke 16:22-26
2	Cutting the Link between Mass and Gravity	Luke 16:26
	Salvation	Romans 10:9-10