The dead are not alive, decrees the newspaper
The newspaper decrees that the dead are not alive and that hades is total forgetfulness, reducing the parable of the rich man and Lazarus to mere personification with no literal value.
Por Rodrigo Custódio ·
The moment
On Thursday, June 30, 1881, the Signs of the Times of Oakland, California, carried in volume 7, number 25, page 298, the conclusion of J. N. Andrews's article "Dives and Lazarus" — a continuation of the previous issue. It was the final blow of the campaign against the parable of Luke 16: after describing hades as total unconsciousness, the paper now pronounced sentence in absolute terms.
The sentence: "The dead are not alive. Hades is not a place of thought, but of total forgetfulness and deep sleep." There is no margin, no exception, no nuance: the dead are not alive. Full stop. The decree is presented as an axiom — and axioms are not debated, they are merely applied to everything that comes along, including the words of Christ.
The application follows immediately: the parable of the rich man and Lazarus becomes mere "personification." Andrews argues that the Scriptures personify lifeless things — the blood of Abel that "cried out" from the ground (Gen 4), the dead kings seated on thrones in the depths of the earth (Isa 14), the deep and the sea that "speak" in the book of Job. Therefore, the rich man speaking in torments would be the same literary device: poetry, not reality; figure, not fact.
And the punishment of the wicked is pushed back to after the final judgment: no one suffers now, no one is conscious now, no one sees, remembers, or cries out now. The hereafter becomes an empty, silent waiting room, and Jesus' most vivid warning about the fate of the lost becomes a figure of speech to be dismantled by analogies.
Horse-drawn hearse on a foggy road at dawn — period painting.
The absurdity
The newspaper decrees by axiom what the Bible denies by narrative: the dead are not alive, hades is total forgetfulness — and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, with its rich man who sees, remembers, speaks, and suffers, is demoted to poetic personification, of the same kind as the blood of Abel that "cries out." Read the exact words of the printed page, in translation:
"The dead are not alive. Hades is not a place of thought, but of total forgetfulness and deep sleep."
Source: Signs of the Times, vol. 7, no. 25, June 30, 1881 — p. 298.
Highlighted clipping from the printed page with the quoted passage, June 30, 1881 edition, p. 298.
Why this is serious
The decree "the dead are not alive" is a catchy phrase that falls apart at first contact with the Bible. Jesus said to the thief on the cross: "today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43) — today, not after the resurrection, not after the judgment. Paul longed "to depart and be with Christ, which is far better" (Phil 1:23). If the dead are not alive, Paradise was empty that day and the apostle longed for a blackout.
The comparison with the Old Testament personifications is a false analogy. The blood of Abel "crying out" is an evident metaphor — blood has no mouth, no eyes, no memory. But the rich man of Luke 16 has eyes ("he lifted up his eyes"), has a tongue ("cool my tongue"), has memory (the five brothers), has will (he asks, argues, intercedes). Personification presupposes that the personified thing is inanimate; the rich man is presented as a person — and persons speak because they are alive.
Isaiah 14 — the dead kings on their thrones — is prophetic satire against Babylon, a taunt song ("how you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn"). To use a funeral parody to nullify a parable of Jesus is to level downward: Isaiah's mockery of a tyrant does not cancel Christ's doctrine of the hereafter. Different genres, different purposes, different authorities.
The newspaper's hermeneutic is, at bottom, selective: what confirms the sleep of the soul is treated as literal; what contradicts it becomes poetry. With that yardstick, any biblical text can be dissolved — just stamp it "personification" and move on. It is the method that does not interpret Scripture but administers it.
And the pastoral cost is perverse: if "the dead are not alive," the promise to the thief, Paul's expectation, and the cry of the martyrs become empty poetry — and the wicked gain what the gospel never offered: guaranteed unconsciousness until the judgment. It is a pillow stitched together from verses for sleeping over the abyss, while Christ shouts "wake up" from the other side. No sinner was ever brought to repentance by the promise of a tranquil sleep.
Iron gates of a cemetery open under the full moon — period engraving.
The verdict of the Scriptures
Luke 23:43 is the decree against the decree: "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." The adverb demolishes the newspaper's axiom — today. The thief died that day and was with Christ that day: alive, conscious, in Paradise. There is no deep sleep between the cross and Paradise; there is presence.
Luke 16:24-28 shows the rich man exercising four faculties that unconscious dead people do not have: he sees ("he lifted up his eyes"), speaks ("Father Abraham, have mercy on me"), remembers (the five brothers in his father's house), and feels ("I am in agony in this flame"). Four faculties, one account, one narrator — and the narrator is Jesus, who does not personify people. Note also the detail that the personification theory cannot explain: Abraham responds, argues, and pronounces sentence ("between us and you a great chasm has been fixed"). Personifications do not sustain theological dialogues; persons do.
John saw "under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God, and they cried out with a loud voice" (Rev 6:9-10). Dead people who cry out with a loud voice are alive enough to cry out, remember martyrdom, and demand justice. The newspaper's hades is total forgetfulness; the Bible's has memory, voice, and argument.
And Paul sums up apostolic doctrine: "to be absent from the body" is "to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor 5:8). Absent from here, present there — continuous consciousness, with no interval of unconsciousness, no empty waiting room. The newspaper decrees that the dead are not alive; Scripture demonstrates that, in Christ, they have never been more alive.