Not a Reason Not to Believe

by David L Dye

How can a person experience eternal life if his or her brain functions, including consciousness, cease moments after the brain's blood supply ceases? A recent news story quotes a scientist as having abandoned his childhood religious beliefs because he could find no answer to this question.

The Bible declares (and Hugh Ross's book Beyond the Cosmos reminds us) that God exists in Spiritual Reality. I'll call it a "hyper-dimensional" reality, simultaneously outside of and interacting with our familiar space-time reality. (See Ps. 90:4 and Isa. 57:15.) Col. 1:15-23 indicates that God's reality, His Being, holds together everything in the physical universe, including you and me. He reveals himself to us in space-time and makes a way for us to enter His reality in the best way possible, through the man Jesus Christ (Jn. 1:1-14, Phil. 2:5-11, and Heb. 1:1-3).

What we humans measure as the age of the physical universe, about 13-14 billion years, and of Earth, about 5 billion years, seems enormously long by comparison with the brevity of our lives, less than 100 years for most people. But "long time" and "ancientness" lose meaning in the context of an eternal God, without beginning or end. Because the universe's time line and every segment of it, including the segments you and I occupy, exist within God's hyper-dimensional reality, with multiple—even infinite—time lines and beyond, God sees and can access every moment and every particle in the universe, all 10⁸⁰ protons and neutrons. Though such a number seems unimaginably huge to us, what is it to an infinite God?

The God revealed in Scripture and affirmed by the testimony of creation can interact with every human person (not to mention everything else in space-time, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral), living or deceased, born or not yet born. His interaction with us humans is unique, for to us alone He gave a "spirit," a capacity to form a relationship with Him, a "door" (as Revelation 3:20 describes it) we can open, by His grace, to receive His eternal love, life, and truth. Peter and John use the analogy of spiritual "birth" to describe the process through which our relationship with Him begins to develop. According to 2 Cor. 1:22 and Eph. 1:13, anyone who is spiritually "born" receives a special "seal," something like an ancient king's signet ring, guaranteeing our entry into a place Jesus calls heaven. All of these interactions, of course, involve the human body and brain.

Now we may suppose that every human, carrying this spiritual capacity, this "image of God," is represented in Spiritual Reality by a corresponding personal "timeline." Whatever transpires in our brains and elsewhere in our bodies, in the millions of interconnected cells and their biochemistry, is recorded in eternity. When the body dies and brain function ceases, the hyper-dimensional record of the person continues to exist. The spiritually alive person continues forever beyond his or her limited space-time dimensions in an unimaginably beautiful, pleasant, joyful, relational reality with God (Jn. 14:2-3, Phil. 3:20-21, and 1 Pet. 1:3-9).

The person who decides to ignore or reject God also leaves a record, a set of interactions played out on a timeline. After physical death, that personal record remains forever, but apart from the wondrous link, the loving relationship with God. For that person, there is no blissful fellowship with God, not even oblivion, only judgment based on the record (Rev. 20:12-15).

What of the people of all times and places on Earth who have never heard the good news of Christ's sacrifice and God's forgiveness, but who might have accepted it—accepted Him—had they heard? This question opens a controversial topic, one with no entirely complete answer, though Scripture makes clear that unbelief is inexcusable because God has disclosed His existence, nature, and power through the created order (Ps. 19; Rom. 1). Nevertheless, the hyper-dimensional viewpoint may be helpful.

If 1 Peter 3:18-21 and 4:4-6 can be interpreted to mean that when Jesus died in Earth time (A.D. 33 or thereabouts), He resumed His bodily existence in Spiritual Reality, then, all of Earth time became accessible in that instant. All of Earth's people would be spiritually accessible in an instant. More than one scenario is possible, of course, but one is that in each person's dying moments, the Son of God reveals Himself to them as God and Savior, or perhaps when nearing death, a person becomes more aware of God's ongoing (ignored) communications with him or her. Those who accept Him as such are in that instant ushered into the presence of God with all the other believers of all Earth time. All who reject Him as such (see Gen. 6:5, Lk. 16:19-31, and Rom. 1-3) are reserved for judgment before the "white throne" (Rev. 20:11-15).

In any case, Gen. 18:25 applies: "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?" See also C. S. Lewis's parable on the subject, "The Great Divorce." Whether or not the foregoing ideas are accurate, they suggest a plausible answer to the questions cited, questions that serve as stumbling blocks to some people. They account for both the biblical and physical data, and they provide a good reason to believe in Jesus and to accept God's gracious offer of eternal life in His presence.

Dr. Dye earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Washington with a thesis on cosmic rays. After some Navy duty and teaching, he returned to the Seattle area to do research for Boeing. Today he lives near Seattle and works as a consultant in radiological physics. His book Faith and the Physical World (1966, 1970) expresses the message he has brought to youth conferences and adult Sunday school classes for many years: science and Christianity can be compatible.