not in the passion of lust, even as the Gentiles who don't know God;
So now he leaves this area, and now we go into the interesting area of where are those who have died.In the church of Thessalonica, Paul had taught them concerning the coming again of Jesus Christ in the establishing of God's kingdom upon the earth. A glorious truth and a blessed hope. But since Paul had been there, some of the members had died. And they were grieving. They thought, "Oh, what a shame. They died before Jesus came and thus they're gonna miss the glorious kingdom of God." And they were really sorrowing and grieving over those who had died prior to the return of Jesus, figuring, "Aw, they missed it. They died before He came."So this section, Paul is devoting to correct their misconceptions concerning those who were asleep in Christ. And the term asleep does not at all connotate soul sleep, but it is only a figure of speech to describe death, and the death of the believer. You remember when Jesus came to the house of Jairus and the daughter? They said, "Don't trouble the Lord any more, your daughter is dead." And Jesus said, "Fear not, only believe." And they came to the house and everybody was wailing and crying and Jesus said, "The little girl isn't dead, she's only sleeping." And they laughed in discorn, and so He put them out. You remember when He was at the Jordan River with His disciples and they received a message from Mary and Martha, "Come quickly. Lazarus is dying." And He had stayed for a couple of days at the Jordan River and He said, "Now let us go that we might see Lazarus." And as they were talking, Jesus said, "Well, he's asleep." And the disciples said, "Well, that's good; if he's sleeping he's probably getting better." But Jesus was referring to the fact that Lazarus had died.It's a phrase that was used in the Old Testament. You remember how many times . . . and it referred to the king "and he slept with his fathers"? It was a term that was used, too, for the death, usually of the believer, but does not connotate soul sleep doctrine. For those that are dead are certainly in a conscious state, as is declared by Jesus. Now you have Ecclesiastes, Old King Solomon coming as a humanist saying that, you know, that the grave is the end, there's no thought, there's no consciousness or whatever.But you have Jesus, on the other hand, saying that there was a certain rich man that faired sumptuously every day, and a poor man was brought daily and laid at his gate. He was full of sores, and the dogs came and licked his sores, and he ate the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. And the poor man died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. Moreover, the rich man died and in hell lifted up his eyes being in torment, and seeing Abraham afar off and Lazarus being comforted said, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus unto me that he may take his finger and dip it in water and touch my tongue. I am tormented in this heat." So Jesus speaks of Hades as being a conscious state. Lazarus being comforted, the rich man in a conscious state of torment.Now, you may try and pass that off as a parable, but there is no reason to pass that off in a parable. Never in a parable was any person named. And if it was a parable, what is the purpose of the parable but to illustrate a truth? And if what Jesus said was not a truth, how can you illustrate a truth with a lie? And what was Jesus trying to illustrate? Somebody definitely taught that Hades was a conscious state.