454.

2. The Mammon of Unrighteousness.--The revised version of Luke 16:9,
reads: "And I say unto you, Make to yourself friends by means of the
mammon of unrighteousness, that, when it shall fail, they may receive
you into the eternal tabernacles." The Lord's counsel to the disciples
was to so use worldly wealth as to accomplish good thereby, that when
"it," i.e. all earthly possessions, fail, they would have friends to
welcome them into "the eternal tabernacles" or heavenly mansions. In
studying a parable based on contrasts, such as this one is, care must be
exercized not to carry too far any one point of analogy. Thus, we cannot
reasonably gather that Jesus intended even to intimate that the
prerogative of receiving any soul into the "eternal tabernacles" or
excluding therefrom, rests with those who on earth had been benefited or
injured through that person's acts, except so far as their witness to
his deeds may be taken into account in the final judgment. The whole
parable is full of wisdom for him who is in search of such; to the
hypercritical mind it may appear inconsistent, as so it did appear to
the Pharisees who derided Jesus for the story He had told. Luke 16:14 is
rendered in the revised version, "And the Pharisees, who were lovers of
money, heard all these things; and they scoffed at him."

3. Lazarus and Dives.--Of all our Lord's recorded parables this is the
only one in which a personal name is applied to any of the characters.
The name "Lazarus" used in the parable was also the true name of a man
whom Jesus loved, and who, subsequent to the delivery of this parable,
was restored to life after he had lain for days in the tomb. The name, a
Greek variant of Eleazar, signifies "God is my help." In many
theological writings, the rich man of this parable is called Dives, but
the name is not of scriptural usage. "Dives" is a Latin adjective
meaning "rich." Lazarus the brother of Martha and Mary (John 11:1, 2, 5)
is one of three men mentioned by name as subjects of our Lord's
beneficent miracles; the other two are Bartimeus (Mark 10:46) and
Malchus (John 18:10). Commenting on the fact that our Lord gave a name
to the beggar but left the rich man nameless in the parable, Augustine
(in Sermon xli) suggestively asks: "Seems He not to you to have been
reading from that book where He found the name of the poor man written,
but found not the name of the rich; for that book is the Book of Life?"

4. Divergent Views Co