John 3:13

Hi, Galveston ...

The parable of Lazarus and the Rich man has nothing to do with heaven and hell.

Yeshua was giving the Jews a prophecy concerning Israel and the Gentiles.

Lazarus was Abraham's steward, Eliezer... Eliezer was Lazarus's Hebrew name. Lazarus is his Greek name.

The Rich man represented the Jews.

And, you'll not find the word hell either in the Greek or the Hebrew..The bossom of Abraham was a Hebrew Idiom for the abode of the dead, or She'ol. Or, if you like, Hades (Greek), which was also the Greek word for the abode of the dead.

Cleveland

Sorry Fred I must disagree,
You must die first before you can go to heaven. Romans 6:3-5 says Jesus had to die first and then be resurrected before he could go to heaven He set the pattern for us. Also Psalm37:29 says the righteous will posess the Earth Forever. The Earth is our final destination. Everybody wants to go to Heaven but Jehovah made the Earth our home, not Heaven. Talk to JehovahsWitnesses,only then you will know the truth. David did not ascend to Heaven Acts 2:34. The dead are asleep! There will be a resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous! Acts 24:15.

It's just a book folks, no-ones going to heaven.

Harry Potter didn't believe he was a real wizard, then he turned out to be....But go and find Daniel Radcliffe in real life and see if he can fly a broomstick.

It is fictional, don't get so high-rate about it...if nobody every went to heaven before jesus...then that means the hundreds and thousands of people who lived before him were just a waste...all those loving communities, sad children and weeping widows lost their loved ones with no chance of seeing them again....Sounds like a really loving and caring lord....oh wait..

Enoch and Elijah were taken to Abrahams Bosom(Luke 16) a place of paradise where the saved went until Jesus's finished work on the cross. Eph 4

So when the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in 70AD That didnt happen historically?

Where does the Bible mention the Romans destroying the temple in AD 70?

In order to really understand this verse you have to look at the original King James Translation. "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

Notice the words "man" and "he" are not capitalized, but the word "Son" is capitalized. When he says "No man hath acsended....", he qualifies it with "except he... (man and he are the same person)" He's referring to human spirits in singular tense. All human spirits came from heaven and will return to heaven when we die. In a story (not parable) told by Jesus, this is the place where the rich man and Lazarus went when they died. Both went to the same place which had two sides separated by a great gulf. Remember, all who die will be judged at the same place. When Jesus said in the same chapter "we testify to that we have have seen", he is referring to the Word which was in Him, and the Holy Spirit that ascended and stayed upon Him when John baptized Him. The Word and the Son are the same Person. Remember this, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God...." . In the New Testament the Word was revealed to us through the man Jesus, but in the Old Testament the Word was revealed to Abraham through the man Melchizedek. Do you see were I'm headed with this.

Jesus told Nicodemus... "that which is spirit is spirit and that which is flesh is flesh". He was teaching him to make a distinction between the two. He also told the woman at the well that God is a Spirit. So, the Word (Son) is also a Spirit and since we were created in the image of God, we are also spirits. A spirit does not need a human body in order to exist. Another point... the same spirit that was in the body of Elijah in the Old Testament was also in the body of John the Baptist in the New Testament.

Summary: Jesus was saying that all spirit beings came from heaven and are embodied in human flesh at conception. And they will also return to heaven at the death of the flesh. That also included Him... that is why he said "even the Son of man. Jesus has already received His new glorified body, but we are still waiting to recieve ours.

Foulboy,

Exactly what do you mean when you say that all spirit beings came from heaven? I believe the bible teaches we become spiritual beings at conception, in the womb.

In other words...I wasn't always a spiritual being until I was conceived. Jesus Christ WAS!!! and IS and IS to come. Not mankind.

Are you in agreement? Because it sounds like you believe we always were.

Actually, it teaches that we don't become spiritual beings or "living souls" until we take our first breath, Gen 2:7; Job 33:4.

And foulboy518, I do hope you're not trying to claim that the King James is THE original. Based on the manuscript evidence, the phrase "who is in heaven" probably started out as a scribe's marginal note and found its way into the text. It's not what John originally wrote.

I will look those verses up because I don't know what they are off the top of my head. I DO know that John the Baptist leaped in his mother's womb over the news of our Lord Jesus Christ. Explain to me if you can, how he was able to do that if he wasn't already a spirtual being with a soul.

having said that, I do get that we are all born spiritually dead to God...but we are spirit, soul and body even in the womb, from what I can understand.