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Why was Dives’ request that his brothers be informed of their impending fate refused?
“They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them” (Luke xvi, 29).
Moses and the prophets do not teach the doctrine of endless punishment, nor even that of a future existence, much less that the mere possession of wealth, acquired perhaps by honest industry, is a crime which can be expiated only by the sufferings of an endless hell.
Christ’s Kingdom was a kingdom of vagrants and paupers. “A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew xix, 23). “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (24).