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From Hebrews 11:40, as from many other passages of Scripture, it appears that those people are mistaken who decide that righteous men who have died before the resurrection and the end of the age actually enjoy heavenly bliss.

They who so think refer to the soul alone, as if the soul were able to feel joys truly without the body and to enjoy them thoroughly, and were indeed enjoying them. How much happier, I ask you, would they be than we are -- they, whose souls must be enjoying heavenly joys from so many ages already! Why, there would not be any need at all for the body if the soul separated from the body were able to experience everlasting joy! For the body feels nothing by itself, but is merely an instrument

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of feeling. It is the man who feels -- that is, a living bodily soul. For even if clothed with the body, it would not be able to feel those pleasures more exquisitely than it now does when stripped of the body -- according to this notion -- the body would be rather the greatest impediment to it for that purpose rather than an aid. For the soul would feel more clearly and purely without it than with it.

Therefore, this opinion, if we consider the matter rightly, quite overthrows the apostle's teaching that the future resurrection of the just is the hope on which we depend, so that if it is taken away there is no hope for the dead in Christ.

God surely is unwilling that any of the dead, except Christ our leader and head, should before that Last Day aspire to the rewards and joys of the divine life, and, one before the other, snatch them in advance. He would that all equally at the return of Christ and at the end of the age should then begin that new and blessed life and the happy ages. By this His glory will be rendered brighter, with so many men being presented at one time with immortality by Him.

For to the dead, although they will have slept for many ages, from the very beginning of the world, it will not be troublesome to await others about to live after them up to the end of the age, since they lack feeling throughout the whole time after their deaths, and therefore are wearied by no delay or tedium; and when they shall have been recalled to life, they will scarcely feel that they have lost a moment of time.151