Hey everyone, and welcome back to Jesus the Legend. I’m so excited for today’s episode because we’re diving into a passage that, for most of my Christian life, I thought was one of the clearest texts for a hell of eternal conscious torment. At least that was how I had always read it and always been taught. Like many others— I thought the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus was rock-solid evidence that once a person dies, their fate is permanently sealed. No second chances and no hope of redemption. You either experience eternal bliss in heaven or eternal agony in hell—no crossing over, no possibility of change. That was the framework I had been given, and so I read this passage assuming that’s exactly what it was saying.

But here’s the thing—I now see that’s not what this parable is about at all. I’ve come to realize that I've been reading something into this text that simply isn’t there. I was bringing a set of assumptions to the passage rather than letting the passage speak for itself. And when I started looking at it with fresh eyes and through the lens of Jesus - I realized this story is about something much different than I had thought.