03 January 2025
Your mileage may vary...
I've noted in the past that I don't see everything quite the same as Heiser did. Like him, I didn't come up with this stuff on my own; I learned it from other people who knew more than I did. Unlike him, I didn't sit down and catalog all my sources. I never expected to need them. Further, I never expected to face detailed questions about such things. Everyone I know absorbed the same material and only a great many years later did I begin to encounter folks who had different assumptions. By then, there was no way I could recall my sources.
But I have been asked to explain my outlook once more on certain things. Again, I am not alone; I still read material from time to time that seems based on the same assumptions, when it doesn't state them outright.
There are no human words to describe Eternity. We have some symbolism from ancient times, the Bible in particular. The issue is not a matter of understanding what's on the other side -- we absolutely cannot -- but of paying attention to our side and just how utterly different it is from the other side.
A primary feature of our side is the constraints of space and time. Something about the way the Bible and other ancient literature talks about this constraint indicates that neither is an issue in Eternity. We cannot possibly grasp what that is like, only that it is so. Indeed, I tend to think that the primary nature of Satan's punishment is confinement to a space/time milieu that would weigh heavily on his consciousness as an eternal being who is fully aware of what it's like to experience the eternal realm.
Please be aware that the term "Unseen Realm" is not the same concept. The Unseen Realm covers a great deal more territory; it is anything we cannot see from our fleshly existence, to include Eternity, but also the Abyss where Satan was initially confined. I don't pretend to know what the Abyss really is, per se, only that the Bible uses the term. It's not here in this world exactly, but it is connected. The space/time constraints apply to both this world and the Abyss -- as I understand it. But the Abyss is unseen to us.
It's the same with the terms "spiritual" versus "eternal". They aren't the same thing. The word "spiritual" covers more territory that overlaps into our existence.
Indeed, there is no way we can describe that it's like to be an Eternal being forced to stay on this side of the boundary between Eternity and this temporal realm. I cannot begin to understand the boundary between the two, but the Bible seems to indicate those at home in Eternity can cross that boundary under certain conditions, with divine permit. We have the story of some elohim crossing over without permission, and are told they are now stuck here, mostly in the Abyss. They can reach into our world, but apparently there is a high cost for actually coming here in a physical form. I suspect it has to do with divine permission again.
Nor would I pretend to know precisely our status with respect to the Eternal Realm, but we are promised a home there. If so, it would certainly mean leaving this fleshly existence. So far as I can tell, Jesus' resurrected body is the model for what it would be like to shed our flesh and take our intended form.
There is something about our world that is also not what God intended. All I can say is that it has something to do with being outside of Eden, our native place. To me, that suggests that Eden is not in this realm; we would have to die to return to Eden. It may well be something like this realm, but it's not here. You cannot get there and remain in a mortal form. I suspect what grows in the Garden is probably something like the natural world here, but there is some distinction that makes living here not at all the same as Eden. I don't pretend to explain that difference, only note that there is one.
Heiser has stated that he sees far less difference. He believes Adam and Eve before the Fall were pretty much the same as humans now, but somehow eternal. He also seems to think that Eden is here, simply inaccessible to our fallen existence, same as the Abyss. I don't agree, and this has a lot to do with how we come up with different answers to the same questions.
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