Rich Man and Lazarus: use "illegitimate," says the newspaper
Littlejohn declares it "illegitimate" to use Luke 16 to prove life after death. These are the very words of Christ about the conscious dead — to call His teaching illegitimate is serious.
Por Rodrigo Custódio ·
The moment
On Thursday, August 19, 1880, issue number 31 of the sixth volume of Signs of the Times circulated in Oakland, California — the weekly founded by James White and published by the Adventist Missionary Society. The edition has twelve printed pages, numbered 361 to 372, and devotes its first pages to a long doctrinal article entitled "The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus" (original title in English). The authorship is printed just below the title: Elder W. H. Littlejohn. The text opens at the foot of page 361, continues on page 362, and is cut off in the middle of a sentence: the continuation was left for a later edition of the paper. The topic was not occasional in the editorial agenda. On page 371 of the same issue, the advertisement section offers for sale the tracts "The Rich Man and Lazarus" and "Depart and Be with Christ" (original titles in English). The state of the dead was catalog merchandise for the paper.
A nineteenth-century scholar's desk, with an open book, a magnifying glass and an oil lamp: the era of the article.
The absurdity
The article's project is straightforward: to prove that the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, narrated by Christ in Luke 16, teaches nothing about conscious existence after death. Littlejohn begins by reducing the narrative to a word picture, a figure of speech that would illustrate moral truths without describing the invisible world. Once this frame is established, the verdict comes against those who read the text otherwise. It is at this point that the paper writes the sentence that sums up the entire article:
"the use that has been made of it in the theological world, insofar as it has been employed as the basis of an argument to prove the natural immortality of man, is altogether illegitimate."
Source: Signs of the Times, vol. 6, no. 31, August 19, 1880 — p. 362.
Original passage from the paper, p. 362: the use of the parable of Luke 16 declared "altogether illegitimate."
Note the weight of the word chosen. The paper does not say that such a use is mistaken, weak or debatable. It says it is illegitimate — a courtroom term, which disqualifies the opponent before the debate. Whoever cites Luke 16 to speak of consciousness after death is not, in the paper's logic, misinterpreting a text: he is committing a theological illegitimacy.
Why this is serious
The first seriousness lies in the target. Littlejohn is not refuting a rival theologian nor correcting a detail of exegesis: he is stamping as illegitimate the appeal to the very words of Christ. Luke 16:19-31 is not a quotation from a commentator — it is narrative from the mouth of the Lord. When the paper declares its use illegitimate, the verdict falls, whether it wants it or not, on the teaching of Jesus.
The second seriousness lies in the method. The article does not demonstrate, from the text, that the dead sleep unconsciously; it disqualifies those who read the text otherwise. It is the complete inversion of authority: instead of the doctrine being judged by Scripture, Scripture is judged by the doctrine. The sleep of the soul — a thesis that Adventism needs to sustain at any cost — becomes the tribunal before which even the words of Christ must explain themselves.
An open Bible on the pulpit: the words of Christ in Luke 16 do not ask for a stamp of approval.
The third seriousness lies in the necessity. Without this stamp of illegitimacy, Luke 16 destroys the sleep of the soul in a single reading: there is a dead man who lifts up his eyes, feels torments, remembers his past life, recognizes Abraham and dialogues across a gulf. None of this fits into a blackout of consciousness. Littlejohn himself betrays the difficulty: he admits that there are those who maintain that the narrative is rather a matter of real history, and he must spend pages arguing that it is not. Whoever has the text on his side does not need to forbid others' reading.
The article itself delivers the measure of the problem. Littlejohn announces his plan of work: first to establish that the narrative is, in reality, a parable — and not real history. And he explains why: if it is history, he admits, the theological meaning of the facts presented by the Savior establishes forever that men live between death and the resurrection. In other words, the author knows that, read as history, the narrative of Luke 16 buries his thesis. The whole effort of the article is to flee from that reading — and the stamp of "illegitimate" is the bolt on the exit door.
To declare it illegitimate to cite Jesus is to confess, unwittingly, that the text does not help the thesis.
The verdict of the Scriptures
Scripture leaves no room for the paper's stamp. In Luke 16:22-31, Christ Himself describes the afterlife with details that only make sense with conscious people: the beggar was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom; the rich man, in hell, lifted up his eyes, being in torments. Eyes that lift up, torments that are felt, memory that functions — "remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things" — and dialogue across the great gulf. To say that this teaches nothing about the state of the dead is to ask the reader to close his eyes before the open text.
The objection that it is only a parable does not come to the paper's rescue. Christ's parables teach truths; none of them lies about eternal destiny in order to illustrate a moral point. The Lord would not use a false portrait of the beyond to teach about the beyond — that would make Him a teacher who illustrates truth with a lie.
And the rest of Scripture confirms the natural reading of the text. To the repentant thief, Jesus promises: "today shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Lk 23:43) — today, not after a sleep of millennia. Paul desires to depart and be with Christ, and calls this far better (Phil 1:23): death is gain because it is encounter, not blackout. Absent from the body, he says, is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8). And John sees the souls of those who were slain crying out under the altar, receiving white robes and conversing with God (Rev 6:9-11). Unconscious dead do not cry out, do not wear robes, do not dialogue.
The illegitimate thing, therefore, is not citing Luke 16. Illegitimate is a newspaper stamping as illegitimate the teaching of Christ Himself in order to protect a doctrine that the text dismantles.