Some weeks back, my brother gave me some food for thought. His question was this:
What if the Transfiguration chronicled in the Gospels was actually Jesus transcending time to meet in real time with Moses & Elijah? For example, when Moses was on the mount with smoke and lightning all around, he was meeting Jesus in what the Disciples saw as the transfiguration. Why not? As Peter said, “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” 2 Peter 3:8 NASB The common teaching about this event is that Elijah and Moses, already being dead, came ‘down’ from heaven to meet with Jesus.
This question got me thinking about our exit from this world. Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians that when we are absent from the body, we’re present with the Lord. When you look at what Paul says in 2 Thessalonians, he mentions that the dead in Christ will rise first at the shout of the archangel and the sounding of the trumpet of God. How can both of these concepts be true? 2 Corinthians indicates an immediacy while 2 Thessalonians indicates the dead in Christ waiting for the archangel & trumpet. When you start adding in prophesies from Revelation and Jesus telling the Disciples, “I go to prepare a place for you.” the timing of everything begins to get fuzzy.
As a kid, I grew up in church. I was there if the doors were open. We had Sunday School then church services on Sunday morning. We would be back early Sunday evening for choir practice followed by Sunday evening services. Wednesday night would be another church service with kids’ church or youth group. In the summer, there was church camp. This was the greatest. Our church camp was rustic. We had uninsulated cabins that each contained 5 sets of old military bunk beds. We’d bring our own bedding, fans, swim trunks, Bibles, and a softball glove. The showers were a somewhat open air building down the hill from the water tank. The floor was open slats so the water run-off went to the rocks below the building. Each morning, if he remembered, the camp manager would dump the hot water tank into the water tank to knock the chill off for those who showered early. Toilets were even rustic. There was a long building built over a trench dug into the rocky hillside. The boys had a long stainless steel trough just inside the door, then a row of wooden stalls. These stalls had no doors or curtains. Each stall contained a plywood box built over an opening in the concrete floor. The top of the box had a hold cut in it and a toilet seat screwed to it. No one spent much time there. At the bottom of the hill was a pond for swimming (I just now thought about the ramifications of the swimming pond being downhill from the pit toilets). At the top of the hill was a building that served 2 purposes. It was the dining hall and the chapel. We were all divided up into teams. We competed in Bible drills (see who can find a scripture location the fastest), memorizing Bible verses, and active outdoor games. Through all of the Sunday School classes, church services, kids’ church, youth groups, and church camp experiences, I learned much of the Bible backward & forward. Special attention was given to sections about end times, heaven, and hell since that particular denomination did not teach eternal security in any form.
In all of my childhood Bible training, there were a few lessons and leaders who stood out. One particular leader had a great way of using comparisons and word pictures. One time, at camp, he was teaching about who God is. One point he was trying to make involved the complexity of God compared to our relative simplicity. One word picture he used has continued to live in my brain. He told us to imagine a two-dimensional world. This would be a world where people and objects only had width and depth. They had never experienced height. Now imagine if you somehow stepped into this world. How could the residents of that world fully understand you. They don’t even have the capability to look up and observe height. They could only perceive the width and depth of the soles of your feet. They might know or understand that there was more to you than what they could perceive, but would have no way to fully grasp your third dimension. He then told us to consider our three-dimensional world. He asked us to think about God, who has more dimensions than three, stepping into our world. Our ability to grasp God and his dimensions is limited by our three dimensional capabilities. This was revolutionary to me.
As I grew older and began to think on a more theoretic level, I began to consider other dimensions like time. Apparently, I’m not the only one. There is no shortage of movies and TV shows that explore the idea of more than three dimensions. One of the most common is the theory of time as a dimension. This is the theory that has been on my mind in relationship to the Bible’s teaching about the end of our lifespan here on earth.
2 Peter 3:8 suggests that time is one of the dimensions that God can master but we cannot. I’ve heard Christian scientists use it (incorrectly I think) to blend creation and evolution. I actually had a biology professor in a Christian university teach that. He taught that what science calls the Big Bang was God forming everything and setting evolution in motion. He taught that the 7 days chronicled in Genesis were merely summaries of the 7 thousand years (or possibly more) that evolution took to develop the earth and universe we know & understand. I had a Bible college professor express his doubt of the literal 7-day creation. His doubt came from another perspective though. He simply said, “Why did it take God that long? He could have done it in seconds. Why did it take him days?”
The more I study the Bible and science, the more I believe the concept of time being a dimension. Humans are restricted by this dimension. God is not. Given that, the transfiguration could very well be a real-time meeting between Jesus, Elijah, and Moses–each of them in their own time in history meeting together across that dimension of time. Even as we refer to the end of the earth, the rapture, or ‘judgement day,’ we use the words “The End Of Time.”
Expanding on that concept, I then apply this to the end of a human life. If our humanity constrains us to our three-dimensional world, what happens when we depart humanity? Are we suddenly freed from some or all of those constraints? Are we freed from the constraints of time? I think about my grandpa’s final minutes. My dad was with him. My dad is not one who is given to the ideas of ghosts, spirits, and the like. He’s very realistic. His account of my grandpa’s final minutes goes against what I experienced of my dad. He told about grandpa looking toward the corner of the room, reaching his hand out and speaking to someone there. He asked my dad if he saw the family members standing there. These were family members who had died many years earlier. Was my grandpa experiencing, during his last few minutes, the transition from his constraint to his freedom of the dimension of time?
If we assume that the end of human life frees us from the constraints of time, then so much of what we read in the Bible about the end of time and the end of our lives makes sense. It begins to blend together into something that is easier to understand.
So, now what? Learning is only fruitful if it’s applied. How do we apply this. Well, for me, it’s time to study what the Bible says about the End of Time again. I need to read these prophesies with that perspective. I need to let God’s living Word gell in my life with this new view. This should be fun.
Keystone Jack 