God and Time

There is, at the moment, orbiting above us a relatively small but extremely sophisticated optical instrument known as the Huble space telescope. Scientists put the Huble telescope into orbit because with it they could have an unobstructed and undistorted view of the cosmos. Earth bound telescopes have a problem in that their instruments have to cope with distortions and obstacles that come with the earth's atmosphere but the Huble telescope is above the atmosphere so it has a has a clear view. So, even though it's many times smaller than the major telescopes on earth, the Huble telescope nevertheless allows scientists to see much deeper into space.

Previous to the advent of the Huble telescope scientists believed, based on very careful calculations, that the universe was about 15 billion years old. But the Huble telescope was able to see so much further into space that scientists are now saying that the number is probably closer to 20 billion. They also say the Earth is about five billion years old, that dinosaurs flourished on the earth for 250 million years and died out about 65 millions years ago and a recent discovery has them now saying that anatomically modern human beings appeared on the Earth something like 160 thousand years ago. Those are numbers that play havoc with the world views of many Christians. Many if not most of us believe in a relatively young Earth and the more conservative among us believe that the Earth and the universe for that matter were created by God about 6 thousand years ago based on a their understanding of scripture. To arrive at that figure you take the statement in Genesis that God created the heavens and the Earth in 6 days as meaning six literal 24 hour days. Then you take the genealogy in Luke's gospel and calculate the time for each generation and add that to the nearly 2000 years that have passed since Jesus' death and resurrection you will wind up with figure somewhere around six thousand years for the age of the universe. Some Christians take Peter's statement in 2 Pet 3:8 that one day is like a thousand years for God to mean that God created the Earth in six thousand years. That would double the previous figure to 12 thousand years. Still there is quite a discrepancy between 12 thousand and 5 billion years.

Now there are really two problems here. The first of these concerns the way that science interprets its data and the other, I believe, may be the various Christian understandings of the way time functions in the Bible. I am not a scientist so I am not going to address the way that scientists come to the conclusions that they do, I'll leave that to Christians who are scientists, but I am a Bible student. I do have theological training and I've spent a lot of time studying Biblical interpretation. And one of the biggest problems confronting anyone who seriously studies the Bible is the whole question of how time and words related to time are used in Scripture. Today I would like to talk about some of these problems and more specifically to talk about God's relationship to time. I've entitled this talk "God and Time" because the key to understanding time in the Bible is understanding God's perspective on time.

The first Bible verse I would like to look at today is John 8:58. It’s a very short but important verse. "I tell you the truth", Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am".

This verse occurs at the end of a long section in John's Gospel in which Jesus is defending his authority to do the things he is doing against attacks on his personal integrity from the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders. In much of this passage Jesus talks about his own person and his relationship to God the Father. When he finally says "I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am" the people decide to stone him because with this statement Jesus comes very close to claiming to be God. In Hebrew the words "I am" sound very close to the words for "The Lord Almighty". Jesus was probably speaking Aramaic at the time, which is a close sister language to Hebrew, so the effect would have been much the same.

What I'd like to do with this verse, however, is to take it out of it's context for a moment and look at it grammatically. Those of you who know me well will know that creative writing is a passion of mine. Therefore I tend to be quite sensitive about the correct usage of the English language, particularly with regard to writing. And this sentence is grammatically incorrect because Jesus is mixing his tenses. The first part of the sentence is in the past tense and the second part of the sentence is in the present tense. Its that way in the Greek too. If it was grammatically correct the sentence would read, "Before Abraham was born, I was". But that's not what it says. It says before "Abraham was born, I am." To us this is a clear grammatical problem because our existence is governed by linear time. We have moved from the past into the present and we will move from the present into the future. We're on a time line that is continually moving forward. Our use of language reflects this fact of our existence. But Jesus does not say "I was" when referring to the past here, he says "I am". And in doing so he reveals that his relationship to time is not the same as ours.

This is not the only place an "I am" statement occurs in relationship to God. In Exodus 3:14 God uses it in response to a question from Moses about his name. It reads "God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I am has sent me to you." Now this is a very important Bible verse Jewish people because it is how God chose to identify himself before leading the Jews out of Egypt. It is also why the Jews were so offended by Jesus's use of the words "I am" because by doing so he identified himself as God.

The Exodus passage is odd because God answers Moses' question about his name with a simple statement of existence. I am, I exist, I am present. What a strange thing to say in response to a query about your name. Presumably Moses already knew that God existed other wise he wouldn't be taking to Him would he? Actually, at this point, Moses was talking to a burning bush, a bush that although it was burning was not being consumed. So Moses knew he was talking to an entity with supernatural power. And God had already identified him self to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So Moses already knew what He was. What he didn't know was who he was. He wanted a name. And God identified himself with the simple statement of existence, "I am."

If you asked me my name you would not only get a name but you would get a history. Every part of my name has a historical context and I suspect the same is true of everyone's name here. In my case you get Gregory, a name my parents liked and chose to give me, you get John, a name that has been given to every first born male in my family tree for the past four generations, you get Clark which is my mother's maiden name and you also get McKitrick, a Scottish name that has been traced back 600 years to the Ettrick forest in Scotland. But God does not give Moses a name that has a historical context. He gives him a simple statement of existence, "I am". Because God has no history.

Now wait a minute, Greg, you say. What about all those things that God did that that are described for us in the Bible? Those are historical events. From our perspective, yes, but from God's perspective they are not. Because the Creator of the Universe not only created the Universe and everything in it, He also created time. And just as God exists separate from his creation and is not part of it, his also exists separate from time and it's passage. In Malachi 3:6 God says, "I the Lord do not change." He means that statement quite literally. Change is a fact of our existence brought on by the passage of time but it is not a factor in God's existence because God is outside of the passage of time. He exists in a perpetual non-changing present tense. The "I am" in these two passages is a simple statement of his non-changing outside-of-time existence.

When you think about it, this has to be the case. God can not be an all-knowing God unless he has the whole picture. When you and I pray there are probably thousands if not millions of Christians praying at exactly the same time. Ever wonder what kind of computer God has that allows him to handle all that simultaneous input? He handles it because he has and controls the whole picture. Not only is God aware of all our prayers simultaneously, He is simultaneously aware of every prayer that has ever been spoken in the past and every prayer that will be spoken in the future. He is simultaneously aware of a butterfly flittering across the Nile 2000 years ago, how each of you is receiving this message right now and what the descendants of my children will be doing in a hundred years time. God sees all of creation including the entire passage of time. And he sees it all at once because he is an all-knowing God. What all this means is that's God's perspective on the passage of time is very different from our own.

There are a couple of passages in the Bible that touch on this problem. The first is PS 90:4 which is in a psalm written by Moses and reads "For a thousand years in your sight is like a day that has gone by or like a watch in the night." The other verse is 2 Pet 3:8 which I referred to earlier and which reads "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day." Both of these verse point to the problem of our perspective on time being different from God's.

2 Pet 3:8 is particularly interesting because it was written very near to the time of Peter's martyrdom around 67 A.D. By that time the Christian Church had been expanding for over thirty years and for much of that time the Apostles had been talking about the imminent return of Christ. They had been telling the Christians that Jesus would return soon. There are several places in Apostle Paul's writing, for instance, in which he talks about the return of Christ as if he expected the event to happen during his lifetime or at least during the life time of his fellow Christians. He doesn't come right out and say this will be the case but it is clear that he expects it. In Rom 8:23 Paul says "We wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." In Phil 3:20 he says "Our citizenship is in Heaven and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ”. You don’t wait for something that you don’t expect to happen in your life time. I am not waiting for the birth of my children’s grand children because it doesn’t make any sense for me to wait for an event I’m unlikely to see. Paul is not only waiting, he is waiting eagerly for an event that he clearly sees as immanent. In I Thes 4: 13-18 it's even more obvious. In this passage he is talking about what will happen to people who believe but die before the return of Jesus. It reads "Brothers we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a load command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that we who are still alive and are left will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever." And it's not just Paul. James 5:8 reads "Be patient and stand firm because the Lord's coming is near". And of course at the end of the Book of Revelation in verse 22:7 we have Jesus saying "Behold I am coming soon!" So the expectation that Jesus would return during the life times of the early Christians was very real. And so in 2 Peter 3:8 the apostle is addressing a problem that had begun to show up in the early Christian church, that of unfulfilled expectations. And his way of addressing this is to simply point out that God's perception of time is very different from ours. "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day."
In the book of Revelation we have Jesus saying "Behold, I am coming soon" and yet here we are 1900 years later and he has not returned. Now I'm sorry but from my perspective 1900 years is not a short period of time and were Jesus to return today I would not say that he returned soon based on his statement in the book of Revelation. 1900 years later is not soon from my perspective and that's where the problem lies. There are statements about time written in the Bible which are written from the perspective of an all-knowing all-seeing God who stands completely outside the passage of time. He simply sees time differently than we do and that means we have to be very careful when it comes to interpreting time statements in the Bible. 1900 years may in fact be too soon from God's perspective. And the only human beings that I can think of who would see 1900 years as a short passage of time are astrophysicists, geophysicists and paleontologists, the very people who say that the universe is 20 billion years old, that the earth is 5 billion years old and that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

When my son Sam was three years old we had a little drill we used to use to teach him about the family. We'd hold up one hand and we'd use fingers to represent the members of our family. This is Sam, this is Daddy, this is Mommy, this is Isaac and we'd include Jesus in the family by making him the thumb. We'd make a fist and say, "see how Jesus holds our family together?" Sam got quite good at reciting this little explanation. One day Sam and Isaac were out on the landing playing in a basin of water. They'd been at it quite a while when Sam suddenly burst in the house all excited and ran up to me. "Look Daddy, "he said holding up his hand," Mommy is wrinkled, Daddy is wrinkled, Isaac is wrinkled, Jesus is wrinkled! He found the idea that Jesus could be wrinkled utterly amazing. Yet this is one of things that we, as Christians, have to deal with when we consider the person of Christ. That for a brief period of time The Lord of the Universe allowed his Godhead to take on human limitations, including the problem of having his skin becoming wrinkled if he stayed in water too long. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." And because God did this we are now able to approach His throne, enter into a relationship with Him and receive forgiveness for our sins.
God's decision to become human, however, presents an interesting problem for us with regard to the things we have been considering. Because if God exists outside of time, what does that say about the person of Jesus in whom God took on human limitations? Because if Jesus was truly human then he has to have functioned within the same parameters as each of us function. He would have to have lived his life in linear time, going from one moment to the next and changing as a result of his fleshly experience. And in fact that's exactly what happened. Both the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew give us accounts of his birth, and Luke also tells of an incident that occurred at the temple when Jesus was twelve. So we know that he went through the human experience of being born and growing up. However most of what we have in the gospels deals only with the last three years of Jesus's adult life. Nevertheless we know that he experienced hunger, pain, fatigue, thirst, weakness and other aspects of human physical existence. And we know he also experienced a variety of human emotions, including joy, sorrow, compassion, humiliation and the feelings of being betrayed and abandoned. To go through all of Jesus's human experiences we would need to read through the four gospels, but I'm going to assume that most of your have already done that or are at least aware of the basic facts of his life.

The problem is that these are historical events and, as I mentioned earlier, God has no history. I pointed out that God exists outside of time and I quoted Mal 3:6 where God says, "I the Lord do not change." There is also a parallel verse in Hebrews 13:8 that refers specifically to Jesus. It reads "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." It's an interesting problem because we have the accounts of the historical acts of Jesus set against the idea that he has never changed, that he remains the same, yesterday, today and forever.

Again what we have here is a problem of conflicting perspectives, ours and God's. Because from our perspective every thing that happened in Jesus life is historical, an aspect of the linear time that governs our lives. But, remember God has the whole picture. You and I see time from a point on a line on which the past is behind us, the present is now and the future is ahead. God sees everything that has happened, is happening and will happen at the same time because He is outside of time. For him it is one big picture. What this means is that God knows, has always known and will always know every aspect of Jesus' life.

Now here's the interesting part, even though it is true--and I will not pretend I understand exactly how this worked; its one of those mysteries that we will understand more fully when Jesus returns--even though it is true God has the whole picture and sees time in its totality, when he became Jesus he had to step back from that. Now exactly how he did this, by somehow dividing himself up so that God the Father, who has the whole picture outside of time co-existed with God the Son who took on human limitations and became part of creation, we don't know. But we do know that Jesus, when he was on the Earth, was totally human including a linear perspective on time. Or to put it more simply Jesus, during his early ministry, was not all knowing. He had limitations. Even with his limitations his knowledge was far greater than any of us, but he never-the-less had limitations. Let’s consider Matt 24:36. This verse occurs near the end of a lengthy discourse given by Jesus on the end times. God the Father had given Jesus the Son a prophetic understanding of the things to come but he had not given him a total understanding. Jesus says, "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father." So we know that Jesus, during his earthly ministry, did not have the whole picture. He had very human time limitations.

I'd like to read one more verse where this limitation is clearly evident but I'd like to read it in the context of a much longer passage. The verse in question is Mark 15:34 but I'd like to start way back at Mark 14:27 and read from there.

27"You will all fall away," Jesus told them, "for it is written:
" 'I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered.'[a] 28But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee."
29Peter declared, "Even if all fall away, I will not."
30"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice[b] you yourself will disown me three times."
31But Peter insisted emphatically, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." And all the others said the same.
32They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." 33He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. 34"My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death," he said to them. "Stay here and keep watch."
35Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. 36"Abba,[c] Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."
37Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Simon," he said to Peter, "are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? 38Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak."
39Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. 40When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him.
41Returning the third time, he said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!"
43Just as he was speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, appeared. With him was a crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders.
44Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: "The one I kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard." 45Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, "Rabbi!" and kissed him. 46The men seized Jesus and arrested him. 47Then one of those standing near drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
48"Am I leading a rebellion," said Jesus, "that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? 49Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled." 50Then everyone deserted him and fled.
51A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, 52he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.
53They took Jesus to the high priest, and all the chief priests, elders and teachers of the law came together. 54Peter followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. There he sat with the guards and warmed himself at the fire.
55The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. 56Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree.
57Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: 58"We heard him say, 'I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.' " 59Yet even then their testimony did not agree.
60Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, "Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?" 61But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer.
Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ,[d] the Son of the Blessed One?"
62"I am," said Jesus. "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."
63The high priest tore his clothes. "Why do we need any more witnesses?" he asked. 64"You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?"
They all condemned him as worthy of death. 65Then some began to spit at him; they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, "Prophesy!" And the guards took him and beat him.
66While Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came by. 67When she saw Peter warming himself, she looked closely at him.
"You also were with that Nazarene, Jesus," she said.
68But he denied it. "I don't know or understand what you're talking about," he said, and went out into the entryway.[e]
69When the servant girl saw him there, she said again to those standing around, "This fellow is one of them." 70Again he denied it.
After a little while, those standing near said to Peter, "Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean."
71He began to call down curses on himself, and he swore to them, "I don't know this man you're talking about."
72Immediately the rooster crowed the second time.[f] Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken to him: "Before the rooster crows twice[g] you will disown me three times." And he broke down and wept.
Mark 15
1Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, reached a decision. They bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.
2"Are you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate.
"Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied.
3The chief priests accused him of many things. 4So again Pilate asked him, "Aren't you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of."
5But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed.
6Now it was the custom at the Feast to release a prisoner whom the people requested. 7A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. 8The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.
9"Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate, 10knowing it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. 11But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.
12"What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?" Pilate asked them.
13"Crucify him!" they shouted.
14"Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"
15Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.
16The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. 17They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. 18And they began to call out to him, "Hail, king of the Jews!" 19Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. 20And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.
21A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. 22They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). 23Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. 24And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get.
25It was the third hour when they crucified him. 26The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. 27They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left.[h] 29Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30come down from the cross and save yourself!"
31In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! 32Let this Christ,[i] this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.
33At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"[j]

You see when Jesus asked God why he had been forsaken this was not a rhetorical question. It was not a question that he already knew the answer to. One does not ask a rhetorical question when one is bleeding to death from having been nailed to a cross. Rhetorical questions are the stuff of intellectual discourses and are not spoken amid the agonies of the most painful death imaginable. Because even though Jesus knew he would be crucified, there was something about that horrible experience that he had not been prepared for. Something that made him ask "Why, God?" Just like many of us have when something goes terribly wrong in our lives. It is a question that comes right out of the humanness of Jesus. It is question that each and every one of us can relate too. So we have in Jesus a God who understands our humanity not only because he created it but also because he experienced it, he lived it and died it. But I'm taking in the past tense here and God has no past tense.

The apostle Peter says in 1 Pet 3:18 "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous (dying for) the unrighteous, to bring you (all of us) to God." This statement of Peter’s is also in the past tense. Peter is stating a truth about what Jesus did for us in human terms. But from God's perspective there is no past tense. Jesus died on the cross nearly 2000 years ago to save us from our sins. We are grateful to him for having done that because we who believe in him are receiving the gift of eternal salvation. And every Easter we take special pains to remember what he did for us all those years ago... But God has no past tense. We remember what Jesus did for us on the cross but God, who sees the whole time picture, right now in his continual present tense is continually aware of every second of the agony and humiliation that Jesus suffered. That why Jesus could die on the cross once and achieve eternal forgiveness of sins for each of us, because from God's perspective that act never goes away. It's front and centre in His all-knowing consciousness. It's something he went through when he took on human limitations in the person of Jesus, but it is also continuous present tense for a God outside of time. So when we read in Hebrews 13:8 that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”, we are reading a statement that has a divine and not a human perspective. We can rejoice in what that means for our salvation, but we also need to thank God for what He is continually going through on our behalf.

Greg M