It is heartening to be part of the maturity in the discussion and sharing in this Thread.
Ray gives us “an analogy for God” ....... you can’t find the beginning and you can’t find the end.... Therefore TIME has NOTHING TO DO WITH ETERNITY. L Ray Smith
Though time be billions of years old to a human mind, and a human perspective, it remains so, that God, is not human.
“Still, we are hardly able to visualise this spacetime continuum, or deal with it in practical terms, because human consciousness is bound to the human body, which is in turn bound to a single reference frame. “http://www.thebigview.com/spacetime/timedilation.html
This scientific insight might be seen to be Scripturally confirmed in the following :
Rom 8:20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope:
Hope, unfettered to the human consciousness bound to the human body, in turn bound to a single reference in birth, ageing then death, is what we are finding in Christ who simultaneously is both Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, at the same TIME. That Time is Now, set free of past or future and liberated into a portal of time that God Himself calls Today. Heb 4 : 7
Neither having beginning of days, nor end of life, is the Son of God, the Alpha and the Omega of everything, and of Whom, we are, His Children.
God has answered Time for all Time in the creation of His Son, the Alpha and the Omega. Sounds like a Paradox that God the Eternal, would create a Son who is beginning and end. Yet to a human mind, the paradox is unfathomable because a human mind sees differently to God.
1Co 2:10 But God has revealed them to us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God.
Jesus is Alfa AND Omega, simultaneously, at the same time, as in both cause and effect. Not over there Alpha and over here Omega, but THE Alpha and Omega, Total, Perfect, One in God, of God and with God.
A human will distance cause from effect, God from His Son, and time from eternity, though the Scriptures clearly state:
Act 17:28 For in Him we live, and move, and have OUR being...
Who is with us until the end of the world.
The end of the world is not the end of us, but of the world. Mat 28:20 ..........lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen
Certainly the duration of a human life is an instant by contrast to the backdrop of the age of the Universe being some 14 billion years old. Yet, extend this thought for just a moment.
For a human, birth and death are a beginning and end. Yet Jesus clearly demonstrates a breaking out of the box. Jesus broke a human lock on time, being death.
The way to the Resurrection and the Life of God has nothing to do with death that has nothing of Christ, Who has overcome death and is our wholeness and salvation made certain.
In a nut shell. God the Father has answered Time for all Time in the instant His Son showed us death is obsolete and has no tabernacle in His Life nor altar of worship in His mind.
How unlike a human can you be?
Jesus is the “missing link”.....
Arc