Sorry Thomas you're over my head.
The Fire of God.
- Thread starter winner08
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Good grief no! However did you arrive at that impression?
Again, you're assuming the eternal is conditioned by time, I don't think it is (that's the difference between 'eternal' and 'eternity'). So there's no question of 'now' and 'then' in the eternal, there's no time, there's no waiting...
With regard to us, however, perhaps it's easier understood as:
There are those who 'sleep in Christ' and await the Judgement, they are perhaps close to what the Jews understand as Sheol, neither dead nor alive, but waiting for that final trial, the separation of the wheat from the chaff.
There are those who, by virtue of their own heroic efforts to purify their own souls, are 'awake' in Christ — their example, their spirit, what have you, is an active inspiration for those who follow ... they are models and exemplars of the tradition ... for us they are very much alive in it.
Of course, we view this as a temporal condition because the world hasn't ended yet, and so the day of reckoning for us is yet to come ... they however, might well be outside the temporal order, so perhaps for them the Judgement has already happened.
Thomas
If you foundation is not in God, not in Christ, then there is nothing left to save.