Q&R Session 2

Related Resource:

How Accessible Will Jesus Be to Each of Us on the New Earth? Randy Alcorn, article

Key Points:

Will people of all time periods be together?

Yes, in Matthew 8:11, Jesus said, “And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.” In Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16, Lazarus is depicted as existing alongside Abraham. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus, and they were still known as Moses and Elijah even though they lived hundreds of years apart and centuries before Jesus. So, yes, you may see Abraham walking the streets of NYC and Martin Luther King Jr grabbing lunch in Jerusalem.

That also brings up the point of what time period will eternity/heaven be? Will it be a previous time, a current one, or a future one? That being said, does it have to be static? Can heaven keep developing like our culture has? I tend to think it might continue to develop over time. Eden was supposed to be improved on continually by human ingenuity. Why not the renewed Eden?

‌What language will we speak?

Before the Tower of Babylon in Genesis 11, humanity was united under one language. The story of Pentecost in Acts 2:3–12 just 2 months after Jesus’ death and resurrection reverses that incident.

Note though that the miracle of Pentecost was that the pilgrims were hearing the disciples in their own language. I personally believe that in eternity we will continue to speak the languages we do now. We will just all be able to understand each other without needing a translator. It is possible that there could be one language, but if that was the case, I would imagine it would be a new language. I doubt God would favor one human language over others.

‌Will there be an in-between state?

The question posed was not asking about purgatory but rather about the current status of people who have died pre-final judgment. Dispensationalists have created a general timeline that says before the cross, everyone, good or bad, went to Sheol. Then, at the cross, Jesus took the good dead to heaven and left the bad dead in the bad part of Sheol often called hell. At the end of time there will be the Judgement Seat of Christ where the good dead are judged according to their actions (for rewards not salvation). Then there is the Millennium which ends with the Great White Throne Judgment for the unsaved. The bad dead are pulled out of Sheol/hell, judged, and then sent to a somehow worse eternity in the lake of fire. The good dead move on into the new heavens and new earth.

The problem is there is no one passage that says all of this. We are making a patchwork of a lot of different passages which are saying different things for different purposes and trying to make them all fit together. There is no guarantee that timeline is completely accurate. And it does form an uncomfortable position in which there is an in between state between now and the Judgement Seat in the future. Sure, the people may be with God, but if they haven’t had their judgment, they don’t have their rewards yet. So what are they doing? Are they chilling on clouds with harps and halos? In that framework, hell starts to sound like purgatory, just without the goal of purifying. It’s honestly kind of sadistic.

The exact timeline of what happens after death is not as clear as we’d like to think it is. The Bible is far more concerned with giving you guidance for this life than details about the next. The best verse I turn to for guidance about the current state of the dead is 2 Corinthians 5:8. “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” In other words, for those who believe in Yahweh, to die is to be with God. There’s no in-between. You’re automatically in eternity with God.

But even that doesn’t answer specifics. Personally, I believe that since eternity exists outside of time, all of time is visible from eternity. That also means that from the perspective of eternity, we’re all already dead. And we’ve not been born yet. And we’re still alive. So that means that you currently exist in eternity right now. When you die, you’re united with the eternal version of you that’s always been there. I believe in the moment of death, your consciousness is synced up with the eternal version of you and that all of those things within time are now instantaneous and in the past. In other words, at the moment you die, you experience your verdict and move into eternity after that. You don’t have to wait for anything because time doesn’t move the same way there. I wouldn’t die on that hill, but it’s the best way I’ve been able to make sense of such a difficult concept.

‌Will you automatically know everything in eternity?

A lot of people assume we’ll understand everything perfectly as soon as we enter heaven, like Neo learning kung fu in the Matrix. It’s just automatically uploaded into you. But you have all of eternity. Why would you need to know everything immediately? Why not take the time to learn new things? Think about it, when Jesus lived on earth, He didn’t automatically explain everything to people. When God appeared to Job, He didn’t put things in a way that immediately made Job understand everything. God makes you work for understanding. I believe we’ll still have to ask questions and read books and watch movies and learn in eternity. Besides, only God is ever said to be all-knowing. I think that implies we will always have more to learn.

How much of human history will you be able to see in eternity?

Since eternity exists outside of time, I believe the past, present, and future are all simultaneously accessible in eternity. That’s how God is I Am. So, I do believe we’ll be able to go back and view moments in time that interested us. I imagine it will be less like Back to the Future where you can influence the past and more like Christmas Carol where they can’t see or hear you.

‌Will there be different degrees of suffering in hell/reward in heaven?

Yes, Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:12–16 teaches that differing levels of rewards are available in heaven. In Matthew 11:21–24, Jesus condemns the towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida for rejecting Him, saying Tyre and Sidon will have a lighter judgment than they will. Parables like Matthew 25:14-30 also teach a spectrum of rewards. The main question asked was about Luke 12:42–49 where Jesus said some would be beaten with few stripes and others with more.

But I’m not convinced that passage is talking about hell. These are all servants of the master. It’s talking about how we all face judgment. Jesus’ message was frequently, “Don’t think just because you believe in Yahweh, you’ll be safe from judgment.” You can believe in Yahweh, be a servant of the Master, but if you’re going around beating down, abusing other servants, God’s going to give you the same when judgment day comes. Sometimes people struggle with the idea of Christian forgiveness and how we could all be in heaven together with people who professed a belief in Jesus but also caused hurt and abuse. Verses like this show it’s not that simple. Eternity’s a big place. Yes, it’s belief in Jesus that gets you there, but what you do with your life determines where on the spectrum of reward/punishment you end up. Sometimes God has to punish His servants when they mistreat other servants.

We also have to remember that punishment in the Scriptural sense is rarely punitive. It’s redemptive. When we have a church discipline situation, what do we say is the ultimate goal? Restoration. That needs to carry over into other areas of thinking too. Let me share a sobering thought. How you were parented shapes your view of God. Most of us had parents who punished us punitively. The idea was “You did bad, so I’m going to make you hurt for it so you know bad it was.” We tend to think God does the same. But that’s not the picture of the Bible. In the Bible, punishment is meant to be redemptive, not punitive. Yes, there are passages that speak of saved people passing through fire and stripes and outer darkness and judgment. That’s not to say we all will. Rather, those who believe on God and are safe from hell are not given a free pass to act however they want. We will all be held accountable for what we do. You can be in eternity with God and still face periods of judgment. Not everyone’s going to agree with me here, but once you realize that Jesus was mainly speaking to people who already believed, you can’t get around the uncomfortable fact that judgment as well as reward is on a spectrum for the Christian.

What about people who have never heard of Jesus?

In our circles, many turn to Romans 1 and suggest that based on the general revelation of creation and conscience available to every human being, God has given everyone enough resources to acknowledge the existence of a creator. If someone responds to that general revelation wanting more, God will send them a missionary with specific/special revelation, namely the gospel of Jesus in verbal or written form. I have heard stories of people in remote places who had never heard of Jesus, looked at creation, prayed to an unknown God that if He was real He would send someone to them, and then a missionary shows up shortly thereafter. I don’t want to put the Almighty in a box and said He couldn’t do that. But I don’t think that happens very often.

However long you believe humanity has been on the earth, the majority of that time was before the cross. That means that the majority of humanity that has gone to heaven has done it without needing to know specifics about Jesus. While we do live post-cross, there are many in the world who still live functionally pre-cross. They’ve never heard of Jesus and have no access to a Bible. I tend to think God deals with those people as He did with people before the cross. Abraham didn’t have to believe that someone named Jesus would die on a cross. He had to acknowledge that the world is messed up, he’s part of the reason it’s messed up, and there’s a God who’s working with humanity to make it right again. That’s all it took. For those who have never heard of Jesus, God is not going to send them to hell just because they didn’t know the secret password to get into His heavenly members only club. God isn’t trying to send people to hell. Those who end up in hell do so purposefully. They consciously choose to reject God’s offer. That wouldn’t apply to people who didn’t know there was an offer in the first place. While we can certainly split hairs over how God works in these situations, let us agree on 2 Peter 3:9—God “does not want to lose anyone. Rather, He wants to make room for all to change their minds.”