James Cagle 

“In the Creation account, God had to have some place to put matter so He created space. He had to make room for motion so He created time. . . . time is the medium in which things change. . . . In order for change to occur, there must be a sequence of change. We call that sequence time.” — (A.W. Tozer)

When man was created God put him into a world of time, space, and matter. Man understands time, space, and matter. He has been subject to them from the beginning, and has them down to a science. Though man is conscious of time, he is aware of eternity (Ecc.3:11).

Time is what marks our forward movement. When man learned to measure time by dividing it into increments he was able to measure this forward movement. Time falls into three categories, past, present, and future.

Eternity is something else altogether. We cannot conceive what eternity is like, so we have no measurement for it. We use the word “forever” to try and describe it.

Eternity belongs to God. The past, present, and future are always before Him. God has always been and always will be. We were born at a certain time and will die at a certain time (Ecc.3:2).

When we die we enter eternity because our soul is immortal and will live as long as God does, somewhere, either in heaven or hell.

The eternal God entered our world of time, space, and matter as the man Christ Jesus. He came for the specific purpose of saving sinful man and giving him eternal life to live with Him for all eternity. On the day of His crucifixion, when His hour was come (Jn.8:20, 13:1, 17:1) He died, was then resurrected, and ascended to the Father in heaven with the promise that He would return for all who put their faith in Him (Acts 1:9-11).

This promise of His return was made some 2000 years in the past. The Christian believes He could come now at any “moment” or split second.

To comfort and encourage the persecuted Christians of his day, who longed for Christ’s return, and who thought God was “slack” or slow in keeping His promise, Peter used Psalm 90:4 to give them some idea what eternity was like. To span the gap from the known to the unknown he used the measurements or increments of time, days and years, that we understand. He used days, and years to compare our time with timeless eternity. His description of eternity was, that a day in timeless eternity is like a thousand years of time (II Pet.3:8). This is how God, Who lives in eternity, counts time.

We get anxious when we’re running behind time.

But God’s not anxious, nor is He running behind time. He’s always on time and never late.

James H. Cagle is a resident of Ray City.