I haven't read the posts that follow yours eddie but I wanted to interject a perspective that alters the way I look at the bible stories you are puzzling about. One that keeps me from engaging in theological debates because I don't like to get caught up in details when exploring spiritual questions. It distracts me from being spirit lead in my thinking. It hold my heart too protected sometimes and confuses my search. Not one to debate facts in the context of spiritual thought. Seems counter productive to me.

What first struck me and gave me cause to comment on your post was the notion of 'going' someplace as though it were an actually physical destination, made up of mass and matter. And the notion attached to that 'going' of earning the privledge... of 'measuring up'.

I don't see the stories and lessons you were recounting quiet so literally. I see lessons about the choices we make everyday....lead by spirit or left with only our physical, mental and emotional dimensions to guide us. Its a message for me to remain connected and conscious of my spirit-ness. To be filled with the essense of God in all that I think and model the gifts of the Spirit and the lessons of the Prince in all that I do.

It's not for me a message about our rights of passage to be earned while alive and cashed in when our physical body dies or when time ends. It's for me about a perspective on living an earthy life acknowledging my spiritual essense. We all fit and operate and journey through the same universe of timelessness. Pathways will come and they will go from our midst and the journeys we take will be influenced by many factors. The question we face everyday is the one Jesus asks about. The path, the view that is lead by a spirit consciousness or the view that is lead outside the spirit.

What Jesus reflects for me is a life lead by spirit. So I figure if I live my life lead more and more by spirit.... which is essensially a physical manifestation of heaven.... the kingdom of God... the home of our spirit then I will be walking in wholeness on earth and in all other dimension.

I walk, talk, breath, feel and touch in real time. At the same time I exisit as a spirit in eternal timelessness. I exist as a spiritual being having a human experience in both a micro minute of my earth time experience and in a macro eternal life in endless spirt time.

opps.... meant to keep this short......