They all died...eventually. What happened on the island, the flashbacks, and the flash forwards, REALLY happened. The “sideways” reality, as they called it, was somehow created by their collective consciousness after they all died. (This is my interpretation anyway. Anybody got a better explanation?)
Yes, after 30 minutes of trying to figure it out, I believe that is what happened too
On Jimmy Kimmel, the guy who plays Jack is saying the show was about Jack all along, that it was his journey to redemption that mattered, and the people who were with him on that journey.
Alert: spoiler and the Gospel being preached (by a woman, no less).
By the fact that we have accepted that there’s no “now” in the church, we have a lot of lee-way for interpretation.
With my very Bible based Christian background with a heavy dollop of science fiction, I find that I can handle a breech in the space-time continuum, with an alternate or parallel history as a result and going on while the other events are in their loop(s).
I can’t accept the purgatory concept and am uncomfortable with everyone just being good enough to go to heaven/move on/ or whatever. I’m a believer that the dead in Christ are asleep in Christ, and will rise to meet him in the air someday. (Although I do believe that Romans 1 and 2 might apply, especially, “The righteous shall live by faith.”)
No, I would say that the alternate history went on, created after Jack’s heroics to restore the “heart of the island”. The church gathering is not in time, as you said, but eventually.
We don’t really know what happened to the pilot Frank Lapidus or to Richard. The ones we don’t see must have experienced another eventual gathering, I guess. Ben deprives himself of this one, at least as far as we experience.
I’m holding on to a parallel universe/alternate history, with each of our characters - those who haven’t already - finding faith and the one Way to their salvation, which comes from Jesus Christ. Eventually, these all find heaven - they go into the light.
Note that we know all along that Richard is a believer and that Lapidus says “Amen” when he achieves take off.
Rom 1:17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Rev 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
IT’s fun to think about.....my daughter thinks that the sideways universe is what happened because they didn’t realize they had died till they all started making contact with ea other and “remembered”