In chapter 16, the Buddha has made clear that he is alive at all times and, in this sense, universal or eternal. In chapter 17, having heard this, an incredibly large number of living beings, bodhisattvas, and bodhisattva mahāsattvas receive various blessings, such as the ability to memorize everything heard, unlimited eloquence, power to turn the wheel of the Dharma, supreme enlightenment after eight, four, three, two or one rebirths, or the determination to achieve supreme enlightenment. In all twelve different groups within the congregation assembled to hear the Buddha preach are mentioned here, each of them enormously large, and each having received various blessings as a consequence of hearing about the everlasting life of the Buddha.

In response to this joyous occasion, the gods in heaven(s) rained beautiful flowers and incense down on the innumerable buddhas of the ten directions who had assembled in the sahā world, on Śākyamuni Buddha and Many Treasures Buddha, then sitting together in the latter’s magnificent stupa, and on the great bodhisattvas, and on the monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen assembled there. Deep in the sky, wonderful sounding drums reverberated by themselves. The many Indras and Brahmas from the other Buddha-lands came. Then the gods rained all kinds of heavenly jewel-encrusted garments in all directions, and burned incense in burners which moved around the whole congregation by themselves. And above each of the buddhas assembled under the great jeweled trees, bodhisattvas bearing jeweled streamers and such, and singing with wonderful voices, lined up vertically, one on top of the other, all the way to the heaven of Brahma.

Clearly the events depicted here are both magical and cosmological in scope. The story involves countless worlds, buddhas, bodhisattvas, and wondrous events with flowers, sound, and incense — all in praise of the revelation, in the sahā world, of the good news of the Buddha’s ever-presence. Within the story it is, in a sense, important that there are many worlds in ten directions, and gods as well as buddhas, bodhisattvas, and humans. But, in another sense, how many directions there are, or how many different kinds of beings there are, has virtually no importance. In fact, here and I think only here, the text refers to nine directions, rather than the usual ten. What is important is that no matter how many directions there are, no matter how many worlds there are, and no matter how many kinds of living beings there are, all are delighted and transformed by and extol the ever-presence of the Buddha — the fact that none of them ever is or ever was or ever will be without the presence of the Buddha. The story uses a cosmological setting, but it does so for the purpose of proclaiming the significance and magnificence of Śākyamuni Buddha, the Buddha of the sahā world.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, The Lotus Sutra as Radically World-affirming, Page 186-187

Here there is an apparent contradiction — the sutra clearly insists that there is no time in which the Buddha is not present, but it also claims that he became a buddha. Chapter 16 answers Maitreya’s question at the end of chapter 15 by teaching that Śākyamuni has been a buddha from the very remote past, but this does not explain how he both always is and yet became enlightened. What is involved here, I think, is that on the one hand, in order both to affirm this world and to identify the Buddha with the Dharma, the everlasting process which is the truth about the nature of things, it is important to have him be eternal or everlasting. Just as there is, and can be, no place from which the Buddha is completely absent, there is no time in which the Buddha is not present. On the other hand, the very meaning of “enlightenment” requires that it be a process, and thus requires that Śākyamuni Buddha became enlightened. In fact, in several places the Lotus Sutra teaches that Śākyamuni Buddha became enlightened only after countless kalpas of bodhisattva practice. Further, only if he became enlightened could Śākyamuni Buddha be a model for others or an encouragement for them to enter the Buddha-way. So an apparent contradiction remains unresolved.

The sutra can be indifferent to such problems because they are soteriologically unimportant. Just as in chapter 24 when the Bodhisattva Wonderful Voice expresses to the Buddha of his own land his desire to visit the sahā world to pay tribute to Śākyamuni Buddha, and that Buddha warns him that even though the sahā world is not smooth or clean and its buddha and bodhisattvas are short, he should not disparage or make little of that world or think that its buddha and bodhisattvas are inferior. In this story too the point is that the sahā world is not to be regarded as inferior. In other words, the real point here is an affirmation of the sahā world. It is, we are told, a world which should not look for help from other worlds because it does not need help from elsewhere.

Thus the use of miracle stories in the Lotus Sutra is exactly the opposite of what is so often the case. Instead of using stories of other worlds as a way of encouraging escape from or negligence toward this world, in the Lotus Sutra stories of other worlds are used to radically affirm the reality and importance of this world.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, The Lotus Sutra as Radically World-affirming, Page 185-186