Pretty much whenever you see depictions of the Christian afterlife - Heaven or Hell - it seems to run on a chronological basis. If your father dies in 1990 and your mother died in 2005, he’ll have been waiting for her fifteen years when she arrives in Heaven. And if Hitler and Stalin are roommates in Hell, Hitler had to wait eight years for Stalin to show up.
But is there any basis for this in scripture? Heaven and Hell are generally depicted as being “timeless” so it seems to me that everyone would arrive simultaneously regardless of when they died. You’ll arrive at the afterlife at the same time as people who died a thousand years before you were born or a thousand years after you died.
Offhand, the only depiction of this kind of afterlife I can think of is Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series.
The Old Testament bible says nothing whatsoever about an after-life. Various prophets do mention a future age when the lion will lie down with lamb, eternal peace, no wars, swords beaten into plows, etc. including the dead awakening. Under that interpretation, things would be as you suggest: all the dead would presumably waken at the same time (or relatively such, there is some interpretation that the more righteous individuals would awaken earlier.)
I got no clue (well, OK, but only vague clues) about New Testament heaven-ography, so I’ll let Christian scholars comment. My impression, however, is that most of our current popular view of heaven comes in much later than biblical times.
I can’t come up with specifics, but I vaguely remember some New Testament lines to the effect that the righteous will sleep in the grave until the end times, and only then join the Father in heaven.
On the other hand, there’s Luke 23:43, where Jesus himself says to one of the dudes being crucified with him, “Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
(Which possibly brings up the question of which direction Jesus went immediately after he died.)
What exactly he was doing down there isn’t specified, though there’s an old tradition that says that he was rescuing the souls of the righteous people who died before his time.
NT expressions about the afterlife are kind of all over the place, but: in the parable of the rich man and the poor man (Luke 16: 19-31), one ends up in torment in Hades and the other ends up comforted in the “Bosom of Abraham”, and they can detect one another and behold one another’s condition, and Dives asks for a message to be sent back to Earth with a miraculous signal to warn his five brothers who are still alive; so there is in the Gospel that scenario of an afterlife with temporal awareness of how others are still living on Earth.
So they can still see/perceive the people on Earth as being “over here” as opposed to “over there” at a given point in the continuum. Just that for those already in Heaven it’s probably not the same thing as “waiting for 15 years” as we would feel it in this world. They would not get lonely or bored. Those in Hell may be allowed to fully savour every least Planck time of their torment, just because, hey, it’s Hell…
Harrowing of Hell. (Not to be confused with Scourging of the Shire :p)
I would assume the notion of praying to a saint to intercede on your behalf would suggest contemporaneous action. Similarly the communion of saints. Both of these being a very Roman Catholic viewpoint, and not shared with the rest.
Atleast one sect says the comma in that scripture is misplaced - and should be read as ‘Verily I say unto thee today, thou shalt be with me in paradise’
Of course, why he would need to add ‘today’ to that statement in that case, since like when else would he be saying it, is a different conversation all together.
Specifically Roman Catholic, but most mainline Protestant churches have some concept of “the universal church” which includes “saints” – saints being defined as those who have died and are now united with God in Heaven.
Also, every Christian funeral service I’ve ever attended says pretty strongly that the deceased is with God now, not resting peacefully for a few millennia until they finally get sprung from the grave.
There is some belief that time between death and Jesus’s return will be “in the twinkling of an eye.” (no cite for that, I remember it from the Messiah.) I have a friend who’s brother died; member of the Church of God Sabbath Day. I was told that, for his brother, he closed his eyes in death and immediately opened them when christ came back. Kinda Einsteinian.
If Santa can circle the earth giving presents to all who believe in him in one night then I assume 3 days is enough time to rescue all the souls that needed rescuing.
The Catholic teaching is that Heaven, and thus all the saints, are beyond time, and thus heavenly beings can interact with the world at any point of time they choose, regardless of their span as mortals. Thus, for instance, it can make sense to join with St. Monica in praying for the conversion of her son, even though that prayer has already been granted (St. Monica’s son was St. Augustine).
And Thudlow, it’s not possible to customize one’s sig for a particular thread: If you change it, the new sig will show up under all of your old posts as well. I’ve been using this sig for years now.
Taken literally, that certainly implies some sort of passage of time in the afterlife as specified in the OP. There’s still the possibility of some kind of “Narnia time” in effect (“…wait a little longer…”) but apparently everything doesn’t happen simultaneously and the dead are aware of some kind of chronological passage of events.
Of course it’s Revelation. I don’t think anybody takes Revelation totally literally (unless there’s some obscure sect out there which genuinely believes the End Times will look like a cheesy Japanese monster movie).
However, Thessalonians suggests that the dead in Christ “sleep” until the Lord’s return
Now, there are some in the bible (Enoch, Moses, Elisha) who did not necessarily die but were taken directly into heaven - this is a justification for Moses and Elisha appearing at the Transfiguration: they were not ghosts, because they were taken by God to heaven. But based on the above verse, all in Christ (the quick and the dead, where quick means living) will rise and ascend at His return, and the dead sleep till then.
