On the Timelessness of God -
05-31-2017, 09:11 PM
“A thousand ages in Thy sight,
Are like an evening gone.
Short as the watch that ends the night,
Before the rising sun.”
Consider those words for a moment...
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Beautiful, aren't they? The words are from the Hymn “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past”, a hymn by Isaac Watts that draws its inspiration from Psalm 90.
Psalms:90:1: LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
Psalms:90:2: Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
Psalms:90:3: Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.
Psalms:90:4: For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Psalms:90:5: Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
And now you should reflect deeply upon the verse Psalms:90:4: For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
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The thing that amazes atheists is that God is able to know everything – but, if He is timeless, then there is no more a problem than the man who has read the Bible and knows all of its contents.
For example, if Moses, when he was in the bulrushes, had asked the man who had read the Bible “Will I ever see Israel?”, the man could have answered, “No.”
So it is with God. He has read the Book of the Life. Not only that, He wrote it.
And thus we have a God to Whom time is meaningless. Before Him there was no time.
I need you now to consider what timelessness involves. It does not simply mean that you are immortal – for what is it but time that wears out our mortal frame? – it is indeed like knowing the contents of a book.
You may sit there now, thinking that if you were asked about any of the incidents in, for example, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” or relevant points in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, you would immediately be able to answer – no time is required.
This therefore brings us inevitably to human frailty – even the brightest among us would humbly expect to get no more than 95% of those questions absolutely right.
Let us say that you ask an aeronautical engineer if a 3/8” bolt is strong enough on the aircraft he has designed, he will say “Yes, of course, I am an engineer – I know these things.” And yet airplanes drop out of the sky…
God, however, is different. If He says something it is 100% correct.
I was brought to this point by remembering my granddaughter who was, in typical female manner, vacillating between marrying in the coming months, becoming a missionary’s assistant in Sarawak, and teaching young children.
That was about a year back, I heard her praying for guidance.
‘Lord, at which of the three will serve Thee best?’
On the timelessness view, God sees only the choice she actually made, He does not see the alternative futures that would have transpired had she chosen one of the others.
It is as if your daughter (a son would be too intelligent to ask such a thing) asks you to change plot of “Little Women” so that all the sisters are killed in a fire. You know what happens in the story (if you don’t, ask your wife – she’ll have read the garbage.) and you are powerless to intervene.
So how can God answer this prayer? Is He powerless!? No. His Book of the Life is written. Because He has written it, it is perfect because He is Perfect.
Does this mean that God cannot answer a prayer in your favor? Well, of course not! What He can do, is reveal the future to you – a future that you deserve. And is it not just that you should receive just recompense? Of course it is.
Heb:10:30: For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people.
I have spoken before of the immense number of prayers that God has to endure. His replies are the most honest that you will ever hear. They are no weasel words, no circumlocutions, no vague statements – there is no need for these – the truth, beautiful and unadorned is what you will receive.
Do not forget - your prayer is a request for that insight into the future that only He, as the author of the Book of Life, can give.
Bless you all.
As an aside, my granddaughter did not marry, become a missionary’s assistant or ever teach. She died of cancer of some woman’s bits at the age of 23. That is how the Book of Life was written, and I, who am in perfect health for a man of my age, thank God daily for what has to be a perfect decision.
To think that it was not a perfect decision would be blasphemy.
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