Temporal and eternal portions of the Bible.
Utilizing both the temporal and eternal perspectives, let us put the entire Bible history in its appropriate context (Figure 5.).
Figure 5. The Entire Biblical Landscape Within the Context of Eternity
In Figure 5 the Biblical timescape shows that all of human time and history, and the entire timescape of the cosmos, are an island in eternity.
Bible history contains the entire world timescape from the beginning of human history to its end, as illustrated in Figure 5. This figure is a more expansive version of my personal week seen in Figures 3 and 4 of the previous post (Time and Eternity #6), but it is still the same concept. This conceptualization presents the overall view of human times and history from the perspective of eternity. This is why the Bible is such a valuable book. The Bible tells human beings not only where they have come from but where they are going, their purpose in this life and even, in fundamental outline, what their future contains. The Bible presents the only hope for those who wish to escape the shackles of time.
The solid line in the center of the cylinder of time represents all of human history in the Bible with the exception of the vertical bars at its beginning and end. These two bars represent the portion of the Biblical story which relates to the eternal realm out of time, and essentially consists of the first two and last two chapters of the Bible—Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22. Genesis 3 is a transitional chapter, which records the temptation and fall of the first man and woman and their ejection out of eternity into the time-cursed world that we currently inhabit as their descendants.
As previously described, I think a careful reading of the first two and last two chapters of the Bible reveals an eternal perspective free of temporal shackles. Hence it seems not unreasonable to understand the first two and last two chapters of the Bible as descriptive of events and reality in the context of the transcendent eternal realm rather than from the evanescent passing context of the temporal realm.
All the intervening chapters describe the motives and actions of human beings and the consequences of those motives and actions within the quarantine facility of time. According to this view, God’s creative works and the action in Genesis 1, 2, and 3 take place in an environment in which death and entropic historic earth-time are not components. Everything is “very good” by God’s description, and our current temporal perceptions of time, death, and entropy are not a part of the environment in God’s eternal holy presence.
The creation in Genesis 1–2 is God’s description of events in and from the perspective of eternity. In that creation God speaks and reality substantively occurs. No mechanical processes in time are required, but the whole account has an orderly sequence of cause and effect in “God’s time.” God speaks in eternity and reality comes into being without mechanistic explanations being given. The “days” of that eternal realm and creation are not the same as the “days” that men measure in the time-cursed cosmos we currently inhabit, for “God’s time” is different from “man’s time” (Psalm 90:3-4 & 2 Peter 3:8-9). In my opinion, it is presumptuous to a fault for men to impose their notions of days and time on the eternal realm of God, as is done in virtually all interpretations of Genesis.
No time scale in contemporary human existence can be applied to the account of Genesis 1–2, because our world of time and death, which was actualized as a consequence of human rebellion, does not encompass the eternal creation. The actualization of the cursed world awaits Genesis 3, with the human temptation and fall in rebellion against God’s command. Human rebellion against God is what the Bible calls sin. And sin actualizes death.
Death is incompatible with eternity, and sin is incompatible with God’s holiness. Hence, sin actualized the time-cursed cosmos that we currently inhabit. God created the time-cursed cosmos from the depth of eternity, with the ancient structure we now perceive, for God created the cosmic structure with the components of space, matter and time—as large and massive and long lasting as He desired. What more powerful impression of the horror of sin could be given than seemingly endless eons of cosmic death and regeneration rampaging through billions of years “without prospect of a beginning or end,” as the geologist James Hutton described this earth we now inhabit?
Time is nothing to God. He is free to create a cosmos with as much time as he wishes, because time is simply another building block of his creation. God does not create this cursed cosmos deceptively “with the appearance of age.” He creates the cursed cosmos with real and actual age, because God uses time, like a contractor uses bricks or boards in a building, to construct the cosmos.
This time-cursed cosmos, which sinful human beings presently inhabit, may very well be billions of years old, if God created it using billions of years as building blocks to make a quarantine facility for those who could not be allowed to live and propagate their rebellion forever in eternity. Cosmic death reveals the depths of God’s displeasure and intolerance of sin. But the Bible reveals his infinite grace and love to redeem his people from death. For “he is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and eternal life” (Hebrews 3:9). In this quarantine facility all of us have the same choice that the first man and woman had in eternity (in Genesis 1–2). That choice is to trust and serve God or to trust and serve self. That choice and perseverance in faith realizes the grace of God in a person’s life, or denies it. Acceptance of Christ by faith actualizes the eternal plan and life for those who believe, but denial of God’s gracious provision in His Son actualizes eternal separation from God.
This realization of grace through faith is the fulfillment of all divinely implanted human potential, and it is entry into eternal life in Paradise in union with the God who is love (1 John 4:7-8). This is the “abundant life” Jesus promised (John 10:10), which begins in time and continues without interruption into eternity. This realization is solely and completely the work of God’s grace through Jesus Christ, and we must receive it as a gift, or not at all.
Failure to realize God’s grace through persevering faith and fulfillment is to enter the judgment of eternal death for unrepentant sin. Eternal death consists of unending and unbridgeable separation from God with the personal torment of never being fulfilled or satisfied as God intended us to be.
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