Unlike the circular/cyclical view of time taken by the ancient Greeks and today by Hindus, biblical time is linear, centered around the resurrection of Jesus Christ and building to the final climax in history when He returns again.
Our conventional view of time is insufficient to explain the eternal nature of God. As the one who created our space-time universe and stands outside of time, God always was and always is; there’s never been a time when He didn’t exist. He alone is able to survey time in its entire duration. Some of the things related to God’s purposes, such as free will, election, and divine sovereignty, are mysterious to us because of our own limited view of time.
The fact that God’s view of time is different than ours and that there are many instances of precognition (seeing events before they happen, as in the case of John and the book of Revelation) are two reasons to reject our conventional view of time as complete. While some have proposed multiple dimensions of time to explain these phenomena, there’s much we simply do not know, except that our ordinary sense of time seems to be inadequate.
Ken Boa discusses how the findings of physics have had an impact on our understanding of time. Rather than seeing it as absolute, we now understand it to be relative to a reference point. Also, as we can see from verses like 2 Peter 3:8, God is not constricted to a certain time framework as humans on earth are.
Adapted from a chapter in Ken Boa’s book “God, I Don’t Understand,” this series will explore how the Bible views time, including the relationship between God and time and between humans and time. Part 1 gives an overview of the mystery surrounding time, emphasizing the limits of the human perspective and the evidence that there is more to time than we often consider.
Was the star of Bethlehem a natural phenomenon or God’s divine proclamation of the birth of Christ? Read about Ken Boa’s thoughts in this article.
“A unique look at the evidence for intelligent design as described in Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell.”
Is there scientific evidence that suggests that a Creator exists? Modern critics of Christianity often claim faith and science are opposed. However, history reveals that many of the great progenitors of modern science were faithful Christians.
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