What happens when we die? Eternity eclipses time
The temporal and eternal framework has now been laid for comprehending a resolution of the biblical paradoxes already mentioned. The resolution may be stated quite simply in a variety of ways, and it is illustrated in progressive sequence of Figures 6-9.
1. In eternity there is no time; that is, there is no entropic historic earth-time, such as we currently experience it in this time-cursed cosmos. When a person leaves a present moment of time and enters eternity, cosmic (historic) time is completed for that individual. He has come to the end of “his time.”
2. In eternity there is no interval of waiting for the end of historic earth-time, because eternity is the absence of time as we know it in this natural cosmos of entropic historic earth-time.
3. A person who enters eternity instantly arrives at the end (and the beginning) of this world’s time, because eternity surrounds all of entropic earth-time like the ocean surrounds an island. This is the astounding fact of the eternal present tense of Yahweh, the I AM who is at the beginning and end of His entire creation (including time) all at once.
4. In sum, eternity eclipses time. All the difficulties and degenerations and deaths that arise in time and through time are resolved in eternity in the eternal present tense presence of the I AM Who is the Holy Creator God Who reveals Himself in His word, the Holy Bible.
Figure 6. The entire biblical timescape within the context of eternity.
In Figure 6 the Biblical timescape is shown in the eternal context that is God’s perspective. The broad long horizontal line, extending from left to right in the center of the “pipe of time,”, represents historic earth-time. The entire human timescape of the world is illustrated, and is based upon one familiar interpretation of biblical chronology (that of Archbishop James Ussher) regarding human history. The actual chronological dates are not important, and cannot be reliably determined from our temporal perspective in the present moment. It is the concept of eternity encompassing and surrounding cosmic time that is important in this illustration. The drawing is not to scale. In Figure 6 the first two and last two chapters of the Bible are shown out of time and in eternity, which is where I believe they properly belong.
The biblical timescape begins with the fall of the “first Adam,” out of the eternal realm into the temporal realm of death when he and his wife are ejected from Eden/Paradise by God (Genesis 3:23-24). The timescape ends with the second advent, the return, of Jesus Christ, who the Bible refers to as “the last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45). Jesus comes from the eternal realm into the temporal realm of death to accomplish the abolition of time and death and to fulfill God’s purpose in history. This biblical timescape illustration may be simplified for the sake of clarity in Figure 7.
Figure 7. The Entire Biblical Timescape simplified with the “pipe of time” removed and historical persons inserted.
In Figure 7 the entire Biblical timescape is simplified for illustration by removing the “pipe of time.” Everything above the line of Biblical historic time is in eternity and everything below the line is in historic earth-time. The births, lives, and deaths of various people in time are shown as circles, lines, and arrowheads respectively, and placed at their approximate places in time on the historical timeline. Representative lifetimes of people in history are shown with the circle representing birth, and the tip of the arrow, death.
In Figure 7 I also represent myself and you the reader, for we, like all other people, are descended from Adam in time. Adam’s life in time has no circle, because he had no date of birth “in time.” As I have explained, Adam was created by God in the eternal real estate where historic entropic time, which is God’s fallen creation of death and vast eons of time because of Adam’s sin, does not exist. Adam’s de facto birth occurs when he is cast out of the eternal Garden (Paradise) and quarantined as an adult in the temporal realm of death. In a similar fashion to Adam, those who are alive at the second advent of Christ, “the last Adam,” whenever that may be, will have no tip to the arrow of their lives in historic time, since they will have no physical death in time.
All people since Adam and Eve have been born within the quarantine facility of entropic historic time and death. And we are all born in the image and likeness of Adam—as dead spirits in living bodies that are destined to die in time, unless Christ returns before we die and brings this world of time to its end. Thus it is necessary that those who want to live forever in the eternal holy presence of God have a spiritual rebirth. We must be “born again” or “born above” by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ.
In Figure 7 we see what happens to all men at death from the temporal naturalistic perspective. Their bodies return to the dust, and they are never seen again by those who are living in this time-cursed world, and who also are destined for dust and disintegration in this world. The temporal perspective is the natural perspective in which death reigns as the sole and unavoidable destiny of all human beings, for naturalistic philosophy can give no accounting for the soul or its eternal nature. Indeed, naturalism absurdly reduces the soul to a random expression of the physical components of the brain which disintegrates along with the rest of the body.
But I have repeatedly tried to show that the temporal perspective, and the natural world it includes, is not the only view of reality. The Bible is quite clear that the trusting believer in God who is absent from the physical body of our natural world is “at home” with the Lord in eternity (2 Corinthians 5:8), which I shall discuss in greater detail later. In Figures 8 and 9 we can see how this claim by the Apostle Paul is straightforward, despite the fact that Christ has not yet returned to receive the dead and the living to Himself (1 Thessalonians 4:16).
Figure 8. Eternity Eclipses Time at the Moment of Death
Figure 8 shows the eclipse of time at the moment of death. When a person dies, he or she passes out of the time-cursed world (below the timeline) and into eternity (above the timeline), where there is no entropic time. Arriving immediately at the end of time, the departed soul encounters the last Adam, Jesus, at his Second Coming.
Figures 8 and 9 show the eternal perspective on death in time and demonstrate what occurs for the Bible-believing person who dies trusting God’s complementary eternal perspective and sovereignty. In Figure 9 the dotted lines in time are canceled, or “eclipsed,” in eternity. For in eternity there is no interval of historic earth-time, no waiting for the end of that time (Revelation 10:6 – “no more delay”). When every person dies, he or she instantly arrives at the end of this world’s historic timeline. That is, when a person dies in this world, they enter eternity and thus are at the end of history (historic earth-time), as well as at the beginning, since eternity surrounds time like the ocean surrounds an island. This is because the eternal I AM, Jesus Christ, is (continuous present tense) at the beginning and end of our time all at once. If this seems bizarre and unacceptable to you, ask yourself what kind of a being would you expect God to be? One like you in essential nature and ability? Or One who is “other” and superior in nature and ability? Do you want to worship a Super-Man, like all the mythological human creations of the Greek, Roman and Egyptian gods. Or do you want to worship the True God? The Bible reveals the True God Who Is. The choice is yours.
According to the Bible, God creates the soul and gives it a body, thereby making a person. All persons, even “the dead,” are always souls that inhabit bodies, according to the Bible. When a person with a born again spirit from God dies, he or she immediately receives a new glorified body (2 Corinthians 5:1-8), which no longer is contaminated by the likeness of Adam and which no longer desires to sin. This person is joyfully received into the eternal presence of God Almighty to reign with him forever in Paradise over the eternal universe, the “new” heavens and earth, which have remained since the beginning (Genesis 1–2).
Figure 9. Eternal perspective on the instant of death. “In the twinkling of an eye” all saints are united forever with God.
In Figures 8 and 9 the interplay of the two perspectives on reality is seen as complementary rather than contradictory. From the temporal perspective a person dies, and death is an unavoidable certainty viewed in a prospective sense by every person living in time, and in a retrospective sense by those who remain alive in time following the death of another person who has shared a portion of their personal timescape. Those who remain see the dead body with its interment in the grave. Thus, they are convinced of the finality and unconsciousness of every human being in death. Their perspective is real and correct, as far as it goes. But they are only looking at the physical time-cursed body.
The Bible promises otherwise, not in contradiction of the common temporal perception, but in consideration of the complementary eternal perception. The believer, who trusts God and who dies in this world, does not view his or her death from the temporal perspective but from the eternal. The believing saint instantly and without conscious interruption enters eternity where the eclipse of all historic time intervals brings him or her instantly to the Last Day, the day of the return of the resurrected Jesus Christ! This is why Jesus can proclaim that those who believe in Him shall “never see (taste of) death.” (John 8:51-52).
In the twinkling of an eye.
Figure 9 summarizes the ultimate eternal reality in which all of time’s arrows are removed and those who trust God are united with him forever in eternity. This is the reality that each dying saint experiences instantly, or as Paul put it “in the twinkling of an eye.” (1 Corinthians 15:52)
There is no waiting for fulfillment or judgment, because both occur instantly at the end of time with the terminus of this cursed world at the return of Christ. Regardless of “when” in “time” a person dies, all believers in Christ simultaneously arrive at the instant of his return at the end of historic entropic time, because, in eternity, time is eclipsed. There is no disembodiment of the soul waiting indefinitely in some ghostly spirit world of human temporal fantasy or theological speculation. There is simply complete fulfillment of the destiny of every person who perseveres in trusting God and receives His revealed perspective in the Holy Bible.
The Bible is of tremendous value, because it reveals our intended purpose and destiny, if we are willing to listen. Without God’s revelation of eternity into our temporal prison we could never know what it is like outside our prison cell or what God wants to give us and how he wants us to live.
God is good, and his goodness is the standard for every human life made in his image (spiritual and mental, not physical). His goodness is the fruit and fulfillment of every born again human soul that perseveres in trusting God’s omniscient unobstructed eternal perspective on the entire human timescape of the Bible.
It is significant that the eternal perspective can only be achieved in our personal experience by passage through the portal of death. In our time before death, each of us in our temporal perspective may only know the eternal perspective by faith in God’s word, the Bible. However, at death each of us understands the eternal perspective by personal experience. But passage through the portal of death irrevocably ratifies our faith choice–trust and love God or trust and love self–for all eternity.
The faithful who persevere in their trust of God are sealed and secured with him in the “new” heaven and earth of his eternal real estate. But it is new only from the temporal perspective, as our current world in historic earth-time ceases to exist. The “new” eternal real estate is not new from the eternal perspective, because it was created by God in beginning in Genesis 1–2, and remains forever.
Those who reject Christ are separated eternally from him. And that separation is cause for eternal sorrow and regret, which Jesus describes as bondage in “outer darkness” with “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 22:13)
The eternal perspective is not discoverable by human science from within our current temporal estate, because temporally quarantined eyes cannot, under their own power, examine the eternal reality. But the eternal perception is revealed in God’s word, the Bible, for the comfort and assurance of those who have eternity in their hearts. From the temporal point of view death is indeed terrifying, for it is the abortion of physical life (bios). But from the eternal point of view death is a continuation and fulfillment of the soul’s conscious life (Zoe) in a new glorified body into eternal joy and light!
Just as a newborn infant emerges from the darkness and painful pressure of its fetal experience of labor and delivery into the noisy bright lights of a larger existence, so also does the saint of God emerge from the physical pangs of earthly temporal dying into the vastly greater and brighter realm of God’s eternal presence. For the saint of God, death is not something to be feared but welcomed, for death is a birth passage instantly and without conscious interruption into the presence and glory of the one whom the saint loves above all others—the Lord Jesus Christ!
In a very real sense, death, when viewed from the eternal perspective by the trusting saint, is a larger than ever before experienced beginning for which there will never be an end. We may know this by experience, if we are willing to trust God’s word. We could never know this without His word, because it is only his word that tells us the facts about the eternal reality.
These two views of reality, temporal and eternal, are not contradictory but complementary. Death is feared from the purely temporal perspective but is welcomed with joy and expectation, through faith, by the saint from the eternal perspective. The Bible, unlike humanly contrived religious belief systems, recognizes the validity and importance of both temporal and eternal perspectives, for God is sovereign over both.
The Bible’s complementary views of reality go a long way toward resolving many paradoxes in Scripture and apparent contradictions between the Bible and human science, when they are held in balance as the Bible presents them. To discover this balance is a wonderful key to comprehending the whole counsel of God’s word. This is because the Bible speaks the truth of the eternal perspective into our temporal realm, and it tells us of the entry of the Eternal Person into a temporal Person with flesh and blood—the Lord Jesus Christ.
Much of the remainder of this series on time and eternity is devoted to application of the complementary temporal and eternal views of reality to biblical paradoxes. For me, such applications may transform narrow paradoxes into broad parables of living truth. It is my hope that you the reader may experience some of these transformations. As we proceed, we shall discuss application of the eternal perspective to temporal living for those who become the true children of God here and now (John 1:12-13).
I invite your questions and comments in the space below.
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