There’s a New Testament problem with regard to what happens to a believer (or any righteous person) upon death. It mostly revolves around these three questions:
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What happened to all the souls of the just before Christ’s salvific death and resurrection?
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What happens to a believer’s soul who dies after Christ’s resurrection but before the final judgement?
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Where was Jesus’ soul while in the tomb? (Or for that matter, where was Lazarus’ soul after death but before resuscitation?)
All these questions deal with the larger question: Is the state of everlasting bliss from resurrection into the Kingdom of God (Heaven) immediate upon death? Or, is there a delay? (And if there is a delay, what are you doing during that delay?
And the New Testament problem is that there are conflicting answers and/or silence with regard to these questions.
The orthodox Christian answer is: resurrection, judgment, and entrance into heaven is immediate. The scriptural basis is found in:
[ul]
[li]Jesus during his earthly ministry appears to Peter, Andrew, and John with Elijah and Moses. So, obviously, Elijah and Moses are alive and well in heaven (otherwise, they were resurrected for a just a ten minute appearance).[/li][li]Jesus’ story of the beggar Lazarus (no relation to the resuscitated Lazarus of Bethany) is that he went to heaven into the bosom of Abraham. Notice that the story does not depend on the final judgment at some later time, but that the beggar simply went to Abraham who was already in heaven).[/li][li]In the debate with the Sadducees (who did not believe in an afterlife), the Sadducees pose a theoretical question about the afterlife. Jesus’ response seems to assume immediate resurrection.[/li][/ul]
And one more point of data: from the very beginning of Church history, the veneration of martyrs presumed that the were already in heaven, and not waiting for the last judgment at the end of time.
Now, against this position of immediate resurrection, there is the contrary arguments:
[ul]
[li]that entrance into heaven can not happen until Jesus’ death and resurrection. And therefore, all those who lived before Christ had to wait. [/li][li]And then there is Christ’s talk about the final judgment of all people. That talk makes it sound like everyone has to wait until The End of Time, at which point then there will be resurrection to a judgment which will determine one’s final destination. But, where are the souls of the dead until that final judgment?[/li][li]And there is Paul’s assumption, found mostly in his early letters, that Christ is coming back in their lifetimes. But since a few of their numbers have died, Paul claims that they will rise when Christ comes back in glory. Until then, they ‘sleep in death.’[/ul][/li]
The theology of modern mainline Christian denominations (RCC, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, etc… – the fundamentalists are on their own in trying to reconcile these contradictions) responds to the delayed resurrection thusly:
Christ’s death and resurrection was once for all. This means all people at all times. While Christ’s death and resurrection was experienced by us time-bound people as happening in time, it is also part the eternal now of God outside time, and, being outside time, can be applied to all people throughout time. From our point of view, that means retroactively. From God’s point of view, the timing is irrelevant. So, even those born before the time of Christ could have experienced immediate resurrection.
Jesus’ stories of the final judgment are parables told in human language to time-bound humans. It was not meant to be a timeline of resurrection, but a warning to those who reject the Kingdom of God on earth that they will find themselves outside the Kingdom for ever after death.
Paul’s ‘sleeping in death’ awaiting Christ’s coming again in glory was a mistake on his part (the part about it going to happen in their lifetimes). Paul’s later letters drops this language as he is now realizing it might be generations until the second coming.
And now, onto where was Jesus and Lazarus in between their death and resurrection/resuscitation? We don’t know for sure. Christian tradition developed a story that Christ went to the land of the dead to free them from that place. But this presumes the Jewish understanding of death being a shadowy semi-life in the netherworld. (Later tradition uses the term ‘hell’ {"…he descended into Hell, and on the third day, rose again…"} for this underworld, but it is not the ‘hell’ we think of with devils, fire, and pitchforks.) This is just fancy imagery for saying that Christ died, just like any human being would die, and then by rising from the dead, was able to raise all from the dead. It is trying to put a time-bound timetable (complete with geographical postitioning) on the sequence of events that get us into trouble. As mentioned above, once you leave this world, time (and space) is meaningless.
And so, Jesus’ and Lazarus’ period of death could have been just a blink of an eye from their point of view (or an eternity, or both).
Which now gets us to the OP’s question about the dead being seen in Jerusalem: We presume that they appeared like Jesus did, as post-resurrectional appearances in glorified (heavenly) bodies, and not as resuscitated people like Lazarus (or like zombies). Just like any story about one seeing a loved-one appear after their death.
Maybe the saints of Jerusalem were just having a big resurrection party.
Peace.
How about an easy question next time, like the meaning of life?
