And Abraham says: well they've got the Bible. Oh no, no, no, no, send someone from the dead. He said: no, even if we send someone from the dead, they won't listen to the Bible, and the prophets of God. They won't listen to someone who came from the dead!
So what Jesus is saying, very, very clearly is this: is that the word of God is what we need to change our values, our thinking, and our heart attitudes. If we won't believe the word of God, and put our trust in what God says, then even if we saw a miracle, it won't change us.
When Jesus' friend Lazarus - it's a different guy Lazarus - when he raised him from the dead - the religious leaders, instead of celebrating and having faith, wanted to kill him, because he was inconvenient.
Jesus rose from the dead, and in spite of Him rising from the dead, there's still great contention worldwide; even though a man rose from the dead. People do get raised from the dead. In Pakistan, Dave was telling me just recently, one of his last meetings he took there, another girl was raised from the dead, so people do get raised from the dead, but what counts is: what we will do with Jesus Christ, and our response to the word of God.
So what happens in the five seconds after a person dies? Death can come very quickly. Death can come slowly, but there is just a moment when the person dies. When a person dies, their spirit leaves their body, so here's what happens.
They become aware, as they leave their body, they're leaving this realm. If a person has faith in Christ, they become immediately fixed upon the presence of angels, in white dazzling garments, with a great smile on their face, coming to greet them and welcome them as a person of faith, and bring them to where they belong, an eternity in the kingdom of heaven, forever and ever and ever. They're ushered into the presence of Jesus Christ. They're ushered into a realm of joy, of peace, of tremendous beauty, of beauty that you can't even possibly imagine, of colours and of life that is just beyond what we could know here.
That's why when people experience it, they're reluctant to come back; because it's so beautiful, so intense, and so fulfilling, they never want to leave it to come back to a war zone. So that's what a person experiences, the moment they die.
I have no doubt that David's daughter Jessie, in the moment alone at her bed, when she had an epileptic fit and then suddenly died, there was a moment suddenly she was aware she's stepping out of her body, and she's encountering angels, and coming into the presence of the Lord. In that presence, she'd have no desire to return, so intense, so wonderful, something that's hard to describe.
But for a person who doesn't know Christ, it's quite a different story. Maybe you know someone who doesn't know Christ. This is why they need to be saved, because of what will happen to them. That person that doesn't know Christ, we don't know how long they'll live. You don't know what can happen to that person's life. You don't know whether they'll have some kind of accident. We just do not know. Neither shall we be so confident that it's not going to happen. We just need to actually carry the heart Jesus had for them.
Now notice what it says: Straight away he opened his eyes, and found himself in hell. There were no angels to greet him. It's most likely demons dragged him into hell. He turned up in a place of torment, his life terrified, in absolute agony and pain, aware of his fingers, aware of his tongue, aware of his memories of earth, in a place of great torment, aware of other people in a different place - and there is no, no, no release forever. This is a 'window into eternity' story, and it's a story about real people.
Jesus told the story so we would have no doubt whatsoever. He knew that there would come a day when people would question whether there's an eternity, question whether there's life after death, and so He came to make it very, very plain. So people today have two eternal destinations: one in the presence of Almighty God; one in the presence of torment forever.