Cheryl Schatz

Thanks for those comments! There is a lot to think about. I think the only thing I want to add is that the physically dead don’t have a choice to hear Jesus or not. Jesus will resurrect all to face eternity either with Him or in the lake of fire. All will be resurrected and not just some. Yet with the spiritually dead, only those who hear will live. Not all. There has to be a willingness to hear and to pay attention. It isn’t just a sound, but words of life that they are responding to. What I like to remind Calvinists about is that Jesus is the one who set up the metaphor of spiritual death. It is the prodigal son, a son who was very much alive and who was very much able to respond to conviction, that is the one who is described as having gone from death to life. Lazarus is not set up as a metaphor for the spiritually dead. That would not work because a physically dead man cannot sin or listen to conviction. A physically dead man is plain dead and can do nothing.