Time and Eternity - Mankind’s Destiny

The Ignorant Fishermen Blog ^ | 5/25/09 | DJP I.F.

[The Ignorant Fisherman]

In attempting to make a comparison of time and eternity, one finds there is no real comparison at all to be had. The chasm between them is actually so vast it practically defies description. Chronicling Biblical history from the creation of Adam and Eve to the end of the thousand year “millennial” reign of Christ, human existence on the earth is only about 7000 years. In light of the “foreverness” of eternity, this amounts to only a “brief moment” of time. In fact, any finite amount of time is negligible (nothing) next to an amount which is infinite.

As humans bounded by and dwelling in time, we tend to only think and see things from our brief and narrow perspective. The wide majority of people on planet earth are totally enslaved to a subjective and earthly vantage point, which renders them completely oblivious to the realities of God’s Word and their own imperfect estate. They cannot see “outside the box” of this natural, time-governed world in which they exist. Another fact also is that they have absolutely no comprehension of their future abode in eternity.

[The Ignorant Fisherman]

As a baby in its mother’s womb, it must be delivered forth in birth to begin its existence in time (this physical world). It cannot abide in the womb forever, but at the appointed time it must come forth to exist in time. So is the human soul and spirit. It cannot abide here in time forever, but it must be brought forth out of time to exist in eternity. Eternity is the final destination of every human being born on planet earth. There is no escaping our future destiny. At some point we must all exit time for the foreverness of eternity!

[JPG]

How long is eternity? Try this. Imagine the entire Earth being transformed into solid diamond. Now, imagine that once every 10,000 years, a tiny hummingbird lightly brushes its wing on the ‘diamond’ Earth. When this Earth is worn away into nothing, eternity will be in its first second.

[BlueStateBlues]

A very intersting methaphor. Thank you. And don’t tell my wife about the diamond as big as the Earth.

[boatbums]

“Time is an island in the sea of God's eternity.”, gives me a good view of it all.

[PIF]

Actually they found a dead star which is all diamond 50 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus - “Astronomers spy 10 billion trillion trillion-carat diamond” - story no longer found at original source.

some info below - there is an old FR article from 2004 but source link no longer works:
http://www.driverheaven.net/news/37871-astronomers-spy-10-billion-trillion-trillion-carat-diamond.html

[AustinBill]

Eternity is timelessness, not "infinite time" (a common misconception). Instead of unending duration eternity is simply the "now" in which Time does not exist.

Can we comprehend this? Not really, but we have analogs. If one asks "How long is the number three?" we perceive immediately that the question is wrongly worded. The number three has no embodiment in time.

Another common analogy is that of a movie. A movie consists of a series of still frames which when viewed in time give the appearance of motion. Contemplate a DVD which contains the film and you are contemplating the movie abstracted from its temporal instantiation.

Now consider a library of many DVDs. Each of these can be viewed "in time" by imposing a sequence on the individual frames of the movie it contains. Or it can be viewed from an external perspective in which it is a descrete object.

Now imagine the path of your life as a series of 3-dimentional "frames" from birth to death. By "projecting" these "frames" in a fourth dimension we call "time" your life can be "lived" in time. However, the "movie" can be considered from a higher-dimensional perspective as a static entity which is timeless. This is the perspective of eternity, not that of a movie which never ends.

Admittedly these are very crude analogies but perhaps helpful as a starting point.