At one time. Yes. When they LIVED.
All the dead in Christ are united with Christ outside of time and space in eternity, at the same instant.
People are not up in heaven "doing stuff" now. The dead SLEEP in this continuum, and are raised at the last trump along with the Raptured all in the same immortal instant.
So for the person, the soul, the conscious sentient being, death, and resurrection happen INSTANTLY. And they happen AT the last Trumpet.
All the saints, all together, from Stephen the first to the very last person to die 2 seconds before the Rapture, we all "get to heaven" THEN.
The only people IN heaven who were NOT created there, are the Old Testament Saints who died BEFORE Jesus. From Able to the Thief on the Cross. THEY are in heaven now and "doing stuff".
Jesus went to the Abrahams bosom and freed those there and took them with him into Heaven. Closed the gates of Hell and only the wicked go there now.
Anybody know where the idea that the Saints aren’t in Heaven but are sleeping came from originally?
Is this something that came with the “Left Behind” rapture book series?
Rachel: Do you remember where you first heard it or read it?
Paul said we are surrounded by a “whole cloud of witnesses”. So rethink your statement again, the dead in Christ do have living consciousness. Christ had a living consciousness as he preached in Hell for the three days while his body lay dead in the tomb. The rich man had a consciousness of being in hell while noting that Lazarus was in the “Bosom of Abraham”.
Now your statements regarding time experienced by our spirits in God’s spiritual plane verses our temporal plane may have some merit but it is speculative. Paul spoke of these clouds of witnesses existing in the NOW(temporal) time. He didn’t say however that we were to try to talk to them; we were to be encouraged by their presence never the less!