TIMELESS ONE

Rev.1:4 – John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before His throne,

This verse touches on one of the great mysteries of God and His creation. It is quite hard to understand certain things about the Lord, this may be the hardest of all; God created time itself and lives outside of it. Time exists only as part of the created world, the Lord and all of the inhabitants of the realm called heaven live in sort of a timeless state. That is what Paul meant when He said to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. This is also what Moses discovered when he peered into the burning bush. He is the great I am, the One who exists outside of time. Here is how C.S. Lewis describes this.

“Well that is of course what happens to us. Our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment disappears before the next comes along: and there is room for very little in each. That is what Time is like. And of course you and I tend to take it for granted that this Time series—this arrangement of past, present and future—is not simply the way life comes to us but the way all things really exist. We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do. But many learned men do not agree with that. It was the Theologians who first started the idea that some things are not in Time at all: later the Philosophers took it over: and now some of the scientists are doing the same. Almost certainly God is not in Time.”

What a statement, “God is not in time”. If this is true we are forced to re-evaluate some things. First I need to rethink death. When I leave my body as a Christian I am immediately in the presence of the Lord. I don’t sleep or rest in peace until the appointed time, I am instantly with the great I am. If that is true maybe those who have gone before us aren’t really waiting for us at all. Could it be that we all arrive in the Lord’s presence at the same ? That is if you could even call that moment time because we have stepped out of time into eternity. I don’t think we will ever quite understand this thing called time, it may be as difficult as understanding God Himself.