Tremendous comfort can still come from knowing that God has always been in control and will never relinquish it. One might also draw a deeper comfort from knowing that God is in time with me right now, not unreachably transcendent, but right in this moment with me. And because He’s in this moment He can act to respond to my needs and prayers.

I believe that God proved to us that he had control over time when Jesus turned water into wine (John 2: 1-11.) Look at what the master of the banquet said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink, but you have saved the best for last.” Choice wine is aged with perfection and I believe that part of Jesus performing that “water into wine,” miracle was to show God’s control over time. (This has nothing to do with this topic but I believe the wine was non-alcoholic)

People now a-days are still trying to intellectually understand the unexplainable. Our human minds can’t fully comprehend God and Heaven. There are words of description that I believe God has not revealed to us hear on earth, that could explain more, but we as humans can’t understand. What about the people that come to God and say “God look how big my problem is, can you fix it.” How about going to the problem and saying “Problem, look how big my God is.” Some people put God into this little box in an attempt to limit his capabilities, unconfident in his power.

This stuff is fun and all to talk about, but we can’t loose focus on what’s truly important. When we come before Him on judgment day, I don’t think God is going to give me his definition of time. He will be conducting a DNA test, checking my blood type. “Your covered in the blood of JC, your part of the family, come on in.” The enemy can’t take all of our Bibles or Churches, but he can use the “act to distract” as a weapon which leads our focus to the things of this world instead of the what our minds need to be focusing on, eternity.

See this post for my view on the idea that God lives outside of time. Eternity, as I conceive of it, does not require an absence of time. Time going forward and backward to infinity seems like a perfectly coherent concept of eternity which continues to include time.

On what do you base this assertion Robert? It obviously is not true since there are concepts of eternity where time does exist.

Excellent question, but it will require a separate post, stay tuned.

It has me thinking about judgement day now. What a decision time that will be. I am now wondering how excruciating some decisions might be for God. Sometimes it might be better to claim a lot of ignorance rather than almost none.

This might be a case for believing that final judgement might be much more based on who we are other than what we have done. Decision making is difficult enough in simple and objective things.

So Jacob, how ‘final’ do you think final judgement is based on God-like decision making? That decision could be a whopper!

lol, I hope you don’t get any blowback on your prayer comment. Let me know if you want me to edit you back into anonymity.

Sometimes people use an argument like the one you gave about atom bombs to explain prophecy. I personally don’t think that kind of explanation holds up because I think things are far more unpredictable, when left to themselves, than could ever be used to make specific prophecies. Geoff has suggested many times here that the basic “plot” of history is the same on all worlds (see links in his comment above), but I assume he means something more high level than the timing of the invention of atomic warfare (e.g. he has suggested the time of the second coming is not set in advance, but flexible and based on what we choose and do).

Considering the kind of things that are aired around these parts, I probably should just be more brave. If the ~ didn’t give me away, maybe the C- grammar and dyslexia would. ;)

re: Atom Bomb and history having regular schedule. Good point – how many different would it have taken for the Romans to have stumbled into the scientific method, for instance? This could be an area where enough of the enlightenment actually comes through God’s channels that He is able to influence the timing. Or, it could just be that the governing principles are tight enough that it plays out more or less the same way over and over again, in a more or less predictable way.

No importante?

~