Time and Timelessness

Part 1:Introduction - Starting with an Intelligent Designer
Part 2: Overview of Human History - God's Agenda Unfolds
Part 3: How I see the Future & Answering some Misconceptions
Part 4: Time and Timelessness

Let's take a look at the differences between time and timelessness, or eternity, and our options for how to spend them wisely.

We live on earth in a dimension called Time. Because the earth spins every 24 hours we have past, present and future. We can't go backwards - except in our minds.

God lives in eternity where past, present and future is all in the NOW. That is why Christ's death on the cross, and His resurrection is effective for saving our souls, no matter what era of human history we live in. The invitation to receive this gift of forgiveness, salvation and new life stands until the end of time, and on throughout eternity!.

Yes, time as we know it will come to an end.

God intends to remove us from this dimension and bring us into His timeless eternity - which shall never end! That is usually referred to as Heaven, but eternity encompasses the whole universe.

Eternity is really another dimension in which many other dimensions will be available to us. Time will be that restrictive skin or shell we have shed, freeing us to live with God on His plane, as members of His Family! Wow! I can get quite excited thinking about that!

Everybody ought to know this, and to prepare by believing and obeying God. Time is ours only temporarily. It WILL run out. Only what is done for and in Christ will last for eternity.

Someone who understands the urgency of this ought to know is Ruthe, the heroine of my novel. She really works at getting that message out, despite her natural timidity. In fact, she overcomes her shyness again and again, to introduce people to the God she knows personally.

In the very first chapter she senses an urging to go into a certain loud rock music discoteque with pulsating strob lights because Ruthe senses there is someone in there in great need. She has no clue what she's going to do to help such a person in here, but when she wins over her fears she dashes into the building. Immediately she spots someone crouching under a coat rack who needs help. She knows what to do and does it swiftly.

Later when that new friend's mother is dying, but wanting to see all her children, and the older sister is off at a party, with plans to elope from there, Ruthe boldly decides to go look for her, she takes along the younger sister and brother. They have no time to lose. The mother is on the brink of death. Ruthe's rashness pays off, and they bring Cathy back just in time.

Ruth shows that hurry to redeem the time for eternal values in a number of other situations. When she rushes up a fire escape because she heard a woman's blood-curdling scream - she knows she could not live with her conscience if she didn't.

The same idea holds true when she is in a prayer meeting with women friends while one of their newest friends goes off to meet her former gang, to tell them what has happened to her. Suddenly Ruthe had a momentary vision of someone holding a gun to that friend. She grabs the wrist of Lisa, the friend beside her and off they go to the rescue. Of course, they walk in upon an enormous crisis, which doesn't work out like any of them had imagined. But -- rest assured, in the end, Ruthe has done the right thing again!

All of this just to show that when we dare to take on the unknown with a rash boldness that believes the right thing to do is always the right thing to do, no matter what personal dangers stare at you from every side, then God works with us to honour our daring faith with wondrous outcomes.

There are those - and often writers with vivid and altruistic imaginations - who like to transport themselves or their book characters into time and space travel. These are known as science-fiction or SiFi for short. Some stories turn out to be allegories of truths here on earth. Some writers say they are setting human conditions and relationships in another world scene to show them off more simply.

I grant you, that works for some readers. Most look rather contrived to me, and if I dwell on their inconsistencies I get upset with them.

I've read a few where I suspect some writers just wanted to invent their own empire and were too lazy to research and see how it might fit into a time and place here on earth.

Be that as it may, I have read some SiFi books where the writer tries to imagine the future when the earth has been devasted with some atomic bomb, or even the rapture of the saints, and now they picture what it is like for the remaining survivors. They tend to end up organizing another world system such as we have right now. That doesn't line up with what God has foretold in the Bible, so I get a little preturbed.

God is gracious enough to allow us to use our imaginations as we will, but just as with our actions and words, there are consequences for not staying within the framework of His boundaries and laws.

I rarely ever even read of someone with an imagination as colourful and vivid as mine, (Though that has happened! :) However, I give God's Word, the Bible, a place of honour. I count it as the highest truth, and anything I say or do that differs with it is a lie. So I feel justified in judging others by the same standard.

What about you? Have you ever really thought about time and that timeless state eternity which lies before us? Where will you spend eternity? And doing what?

Do you realize that the choices you make now, - for or against Jesus Christ - will determine where you spend eternity? Furthermore, how you spend the time of your present life is going to affect what you will do in eternity?

That's quite something to think about, isn't it? Our smartest move is to make those decisions now! At the point of our death, or the end of time our choices, whether deliberate or by default, will become irrrevocable. No more opportunities to change your mind and direction.

This is more important even, than making a will! Don't put it off.

Would you like me to review the options you can choose from?

1. Default: Continue to live for pleasure and yourself, go with the values you pickup from the media and people around you.
Consequences: paying for it all with eternal suffering in Hell.

2. Deliberately consider your short-comings against God's holiness, and His provision of a substitute, His Son Jesus Christ, who has already died in your place. The transaction is not complete however, until you choose to receive that salvation gift by faith, and invite God to transform you by His Holy Spirit into a holy, good, and pure person.
Consequence: You will be ready to dwell forever in Heaven with God, Jesus and all the saints and angels. You will receive guidance for right living, which involves overcoming temptations, sin nature, and troubles and attacks from the Evil One, but with victory guaranteed!

3. You can glibly say, "Oh yes, I believe in God. Jesus is okay too." Yet you continue to live for pleasure and yourself, or to please others, and you tend to live by the values of the world you see in others. You make no effort to learn God's ways.
Consequence: paying for it all with eternal suffering in Hell. Probably with gnashing of teeth because you had opportunity, and treated it too lightly.

1. Allow yourself to be bumped along by the things that happen to you, or that your friends force you to do. When no one motivates you, slump into laziness.

2. Do all the good that you know you should do, and can fit into your life, and hope blindly that it will be good enough when evaluation time comes.

3. Take time to evaluate your own life. Seek advice from wiser Christians than yourself. But even those will not all be the same. Some might give advice that works for them, but not for your own personality and the gifts God has given you. So best of all would be to study the Bible. Study it on your own and take whatever courses you can to improve your understanding and your ability to study it better for yourself. Above all that pray continually to the Lord, and ask His help about every little thing, and when your sanctified (made holy) conscience tells you that something is the right way or the wrong way, give it some heed. But that will work best when your mind and sub-conscience is saturated with God's word and principles.

Realize that just as plants need time to grow from one stage to another, you will too, in your spiritual growth towards maturity and wisdom and grace. Don't expect it all to happen at once, but do steadily work towards that goal.

Stop from time to time, and ask God to show you whether you are still on track or have wandered off on a wrong tangent. He will bring you back if you humbly desire His will.

You will want and love God's will more than your own when you designate time every day to praise and thank and to worship Him. Get absorbed in how marvelous and wonderful He is. When you are in love with someone it is much easier to please that One.

I'd invite you to consider ordering my novel, which really illustrates how Ruthe manages her time in light of eternity. I can try to answer questions too, if you have some.