When you say "we" look at everything backwards do you mean everyone? And how is recognizing a truth, whatever that may be, from the position of our existence automatically looking at it backwards? That is once again essentially saying that the revelation God gives us in his word is irrelevant---disconnecting the effect from the cause.
@Arial says, "
That is once again essentially saying that the revelation God gives us in his word is irrelevant---disconnecting the effect from the cause."
No. It is not. That's like saying that I believe there is no relevance to the practical facts of Sanctification, or worse, to Redemption itself! It doesn't work down to that. I have to think that somehow I'm just not getting my point across.
We do, and must, and should, see the temporal facts, proscriptions and prescriptions, obey within time, and so on. But the fact that the temporal language of Scripture may also be "spiritually discerned", should already give us a hint, (though by, "spiritually discerned", I don't mean that "spiritual discernment" is not also applicable in/to temporal things.)
But by "We see everything backwards", I refer to many things, such as the fact that GOD is the center and causer of all FACT—this is about HIM, not us, not the universe— and that the eternal things are not patterned after our use of words/terms he writes into scripture, but this temporal patterned after the solid eternal facts. (E.g: Our gold is a poor imitation of the real thing. Our fathers hardly compare. Our bodies need glorified—our "physical" is a vapor by comparison— even possibly, time is patterned after logical sequences decreed, etc.) That I can't speak of the eternal except by temporal terminology doesn't impinge on the fact (or so I suppose) of the eternal not being according to time.
"We see everything backwards" shows up in awful fashion with the synergistic views of life, as though we have something to add to God's work.
And still, though I insist there is something to, "We see everything backwards", —particularly that God is not like us and his thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways—I happily admit to some degree of conjecture and supposition. Yet, I insist that there is more than what we suppose, concerning the afterlife, that is in some way(s) unrelated to time-as-we(here)-know-it, for both God, and for those who have died. And I think you have admitted the same, as has
@John Bauer .
And so, I think that the dead do not experience time until the resurrection. They die, and are resurrected. And if there is an intermediate state—even if they are in some way conscious of it—it still does not mean passage of time-as-we-know-it. Cain (if he is in some intermediate state), will not have his tongue burning longer than Hitler. Or so I see things. BUT, I happily admit I could be wrong.
I think that hell/LOF may exist in some state that is not physical in quite the sense we are familiar with. We don't know God's ways well enough to say it is. BUT, I happily admit I could be wrong.
I think the tapestry of which you have written is much richer and deeper a sculpting than a two-dimensional wall-hanging of only 10 million colors.
... might be a great source of Geothermal Energy which would lessen our carbon footprint
