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****Sorry, that passage doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.****

The meaning couldn't possibly be more clear:

Abraham: "Listen Dives, your brothers have the scriptures, the have Moses and the Prophets.

If they won't repent after hearing the scriptures, then they won't repent even though someone came back from the dead to tell them."

So no, (as xJones said), it shouldn't take an apparition of a departed person to get people to turn from their sins and put their faith in Jesus.

"The meaning couldn't possibly be more clear:"

Yes, and you couldn't possibly be more wrong about it.

To say that a particular group of people are so obdurate that not even an apparition would turn them around is not the same thing as saying that there will never be apparitions.

As a matter of fact, unless you wish to deny the Transfiguration, we know that there have been apparitions.

Doing a little internet research on Marian apparitions is interesting. Apparitions calling themselves Mary have been reported occasionally all over the world, but the reported sitings have increased in the last two centuries.

There are slightly differing variations but the basic story is that a lady appears to humble, usually young children, and she wants them to pray because her son, Jesus, is hurt by the world's sins. She can withhold his wrath if they'll pray various things. Also, in some accounts, she can lead people to salvation. IOW, she has more power than Jesus, the Messiah.

In all these Marian apparitions the dominating figure is, of course, Mary, who says to go to her son, but always she's in control, she's the one that showed up in whatever location, and she can tell the Son of God what to do or not.

I've read one Orthodox view of the historical Marian apparitions which was good, even with the occasional gratuitous Orthodox swats at "the Latin church", and Protestantism. But the analysis of the seeming need for another Earth mother goddess cult is certainly interesting.Marian Apparations.