I am really enjoying the readings from this thread. Esp. “Extracts from Philip K. Dick” and his queries about eternity and time and the afterlife. So fun!
"This would account for the apparent contradictions regarding the question as to whether the Just Kingdom is ever to be established here on Earth or whether it is a place or state we go to after death. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this issue has been a fundamental one - and an un-resolved one - throughout the history of Christianity. Christ and St. Paul both seem to say emphatically that an actual breaking through into time, into our world, by the hosts of God, will unexpectedly occur. … Consider the significance that can be assigned to these notions. The Kingdom will come here, unexpectedly (this is always stressed); the faithful shall see it, because for them, it is always daytime, but for the others… what seems expressed here is the paradoxical but enthralling thought that - and hear this and ponder - the Kingdom, were it established here, would not be visible to those outside it. I offer the idea that, in more modern terms, what is meant is that some of us will travel laterally to that best world and some will not; they will remain stuck along the lateral axis, which means that for them the Kingdom did NOT come, not in their alternate world. And yet meantime, it did come in ours. So it comes and yet does not come. Amazing.
I think that the reason why we get into difficulty over this is because we project into eternity the attitudes and relationships of time. It is amazing how we do this quite unthinkingly. We still think of heaven as a kind of continuation in every way of this life. Now, it has similarities, there is no question about that. There are many things which will be very similar indeed to our present life, of this I am sure. Friendships will be continuing, relationships will be extended, we will recognize one another, we will have memories of things on earth, these are clear. But it is wrong to project into eternity the conditions of time, and one of the conditions of time is sequence of events.
Down here we must wait patiently for things to run their chronological course; but we need not do this in eternity. As best we can understand this whole matter of eternity (and Dr. Einstein has surely helped us a great deal in this with his concepts of space and time), eternity is now, one great now, where things happen, not so much in sequence, chronologically, but according to our spiritual readiness. (You Sci-Fi writers have probably already covered such themes).
Remember that in eternity there is no such thing as “now.” That is why God, who is an eternal Being, sees the future as clearly as the past. It is not because he must wait for things to happen; for him they have already happened. Everything that is ever going to happen has already happened, in God’s eyes, and it will also for us in eternity.