You aren't saying that the scriptures in the OP are not truthful, so I am not sure what you are saying.
You seem to be making an argument against, but to do so, would be to deny what Jesus said, and what the scriptures said.
Unless you can explain how what Jesus said, and what the scriptures said, do not mean what they said.
Are you saying the little girl, Lazarus, Stephen, and the Saints were not, or are not sleeping in death?
I did as good a job of explaining it nearly a year ago, in post #20 in this thread, as I can now —I have not much improved with age, though I have gotten a bit more grumpy.
Let me try to explain it like this, now: Do you think it impossible, that even though WE experience a passage of time, and more time to come, before the resurrection unto life eternal, that when death happens to us, that we will have no experience of time passage, and, even, that it is impossible for us to find ourselves arriving to see also Samuel, Jacob, Noah, Adam (even Elijah who did not die) arriving? That's just a question asked also from our point-of-view to get the point across I'm trying to make. Like it, Moses and Elijah, transfigured on the mountain with Jesus, is time-passage relevant to them being there? I'm not asking for what came first, but what God did, and who they are, to God.
My real question is this: Does God, (whose point-of-view is the only reality), see this the way we do? I'm not saying, "
Can he see it the way we do?" —I'm asking, "
Does he...?"
We are so entrenched into this experience of that which God says is hardly a vapor, compared to the reality of what is to come, that we don't even know how to talk about it except in our terms.
Not to be too cryptic, but ask yourself, What is existence? Is not what God spoke into being, the saved and unsaved, the Bride of Christ and the Reprobate, more real than the time it took, and our viewpoint of how we get there?
