---
title: Luke 16:19
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/luke-16-19/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/luke-16-19.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Luke 16:19
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Luke 16:19

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Now there was a rich man dressed in purple and fine linen, who lived each day in joyous splendor.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "There was a rich man who used to dress in purple and linen, enjoying himself day after day with magnificence."

## JW Usage

Luke 16:19 opens the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which the Watchtower treats as a parable about wicked religious leaders ("the rich man") and a downtrodden faithful class ("Lazarus") rather than as a description of the afterlife. Because the dead are taught to be unconscious (Ecclesiastes 9:5), the parable cannot be read at face value; the rich man's torment, conversation, and memory are reframed as symbolic of class inversion in some future earthly arrangement, not as testimony to conscious post-mortem existence.

## Protestant Usage

Even granting that the rich man and Lazarus is a parable, parables use real categories. Jesus's sowers really sow. His vineyards really exist. He never builds a lesson on a cosmology that does not match reality. If the dead are unconscious and non-existent, this is the worst possible parable Jesus could have chosen — every detail (eyes lifted, voice raised, thirst, memory of brothers, request for warning) is built on conscious post-mortem awareness. And Jesus introduces the rich man simply ("there was a rich man") — no signal that we are entering a fictional cosmology rather than using a real one. Read v. 19 as the setup verse; the punchline is vv. 22-26 where the conscious-afterlife framework does the theological work.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Rich Man and Lazarus](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/rich-man-lazarus.md) — Luke 16:19-31 — Conscious Afterlife [Soul & Hell]
- [Hadēs Is Not the Grave](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/hades-the-grave-rendering.md) — Luke 16:23 / Revelation 1:18 — The NWT Collapses Two Greek Words Into One [NWT Translation]