Extra Temporal Dimensions

I’m sure many of you have heard of extra dimensional beings, parallel universes, and alternate realities. As much fun as those things are to talk about, I’m actually talking about something a bit different here. As a youth my father challenged me to figure out certain things like using a perpetual motion machine to generate energy (patent pending) or to figure out how people can all arrive in heaven at the same time, when they’ve died at different points throughout history. This article is an answer to the latter.

Subject Defense

Daniel Jackson's Ascension

Before you go off on a tirade about the content of this blog, I know it’s intended for nerdy topics (I’m the one who picked the subject). That said, this is every bit as nerdy as a talk on mirror universes or alternate realities, it just happens to pull from my experience and background which is Christianity. I know not everyone agrees with this mindset, but understand that my intention here is not to sway you to my beliefs, but to discuss the idea of a dimension that exists outside of time. Science fiction is as much about exploring the spiritual nature of the universe as it is the scientific. The idea of ascension in Stargate, the Jedi in Star Wars, even the Bajorans in Star Trek all point to an intention to stir the spirit as well as the mind. Still if that’s not nerdy enough for you to at least tolerate the spiritual content, I invite you to skip this article and come back for tomorrow’s article with my blessing.

Two Possibilities

There are essentially two ideas to answer this question and for fairness we’ll take a look at both of them and see which one makes the most sense as an explanation of this phenomenon.

Places of Waiting – presently the popular theory, this idea suggests that upon death the soul of the deceased will go to a place where they will wait for the Day of Judgment. It’s not described as either good or bad, just a place where we will wait. I have some serious problems with this explanation.

First among these is the idea that our all-powerful God who created everything including time can’t figure out a way to get us to the end without having us wait somewhere for God knows how long (pun intended). God made time! He existed before it did and therefore he is not subject to it. If Heaven is where God is then it must also exist outside of our space-time and thus there’s no need for us to wait.

Second, this interpretation assumes that the references to a “place of waiting” are to be taken literally. Did you never consider that perhaps the terms “sleeping” and “waiting” are ways to communicate something to us that we weren’t ready to understand yet as a species? Yes we’ve always had the same capacity for intelligent thought, but what we lacked before was the foundation laid by those who came before us. The very idea of space travel was preposterous only 100 years ago. Imagine 2,000 years ago what the idea of a dimension outside out space-time, would sound like to even the most well educated people.

Third, why would a loving, caring, compassionate God force his people to wait when there is no need? It just doesn’t make sense and defies the logical foundation of the world he’s created. Earth is where we make our choice, heaven and hell where we go when it’s over. There’s no need for a place to just wait. That’s just ridiculous, in every sense of the word.

A Crude Diagram of Extra-Temporal Dynamics

Extra-Temporal Dimensions – now for my theory, which is not to say I’m not so arrogant as to believe I’m the only person to have ever thought of this, but I’m the only person I know who holds to this theory. I believe as I mentioned earlier that God and thus heaven and hell exist outside of our space time. Even if the places are temporal in nature they exist in an entirely different space-time which means that when someone in our space-time dies and their spirit sets off, it needn’t go to a waiting area, but rather it can jump into another space-time at a moment of God’s choosing. In fact this means that our souls, regardless of when or where we die will go to the same place and time, namely the Day of Judgment. Even if this is not the case the eternality of God and the immortality of our souls demands that an extra-temporal dimension exist. Without it immortality would be impossible. Still I wholeheartedly believe that when I die I will be immediately at the Day of Judgment, not waiting around in Tartarus for that most holy court date.

Conclusions

Regardless of what you may believe, it’s not only intriguing but highly likely that at least one extra temporal dimension exists which should provide some sense of comfort for those seeking something lasting and meaningful here at the N3rd C0rn3r.