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Realistically though, what’s an few hours to an immortal elf?
Long enough for an elfy quickie, I suppose.
In Letter 156 of Tolkien’s collected letters, he implies that Eru Illuvatar directly intervened and sent Gandalf back, so you can’t blame the guy.
He was sent by a mere prudent plan of the angelic Valar or governors; but Authority had taken up this plan and enlarged it, at the moment of its failure.
“Naked I was sent back - for a time, until my task is done”. Sent back by whom, and whence? Not by the “gods” whose business is only with this embodied world and its time; for he passed “out of thought and time”.