Understood. I still haven’t found any scriptural authority for saying God is outside of time. The Systematic Theology text our Sunday School class is working thru gets to that chapter next week, I think...should be interesting, since I think the text is wrong.
I'm THINKING (guessing?) that the problem is multi-faceted and more philosophical than anything else. That is some of the attributes of God are difficult to reconcile with his being in time.
For one thing, as a teaser, time seems to be about measuring motion or change. If everything that is is not changing in any way, how can we say time is passing. And if "before" creation, God is the only "thing that is", is He changing? If not, then no time.
Another way to say it is that time is about things that change, and only creatures change.
When we think not only about a thousand ages being short as the watch that ends the night but also a day's being like a thousand years, we imagine ourselves being able to expand or contract our experience of time. But then WE still change in reaciton to what's around us, what we perceive. So in our imagination we posit a third "time", the short time in which I am as a thousand ages pass, or the other time in which a day is so very long - my eperinece of time as I say, "That was a short time," or "That was a long time."
Further we have to struggle with the thousand ages being like an evening in some respects, but in others, as God sprinkles grace on the mired and slow-moving soul, the complex ALMOST-instant in which the soul turns from doubt to faith, can be imagined as the slow intricate gracious work of God and His angels in the mysterious depths of that soul. So we're going to end up positing an indefinitely (if not infinitely) large array of subjective times for God to operate in as he straightens recalcitrant Mad Dawgs out and keeps them safe and manages the internal economy of the sub-atomic particles in the Magellanic Cloud.
If, on the other hand, we have God outside of time, while the basic notion is incomprehensible, the rest falls easily into place. "Before Abraham was," or, indeed, anything or anyone else, "I AM!" Also during and after ....
Something along those lines.
Yes you did, you just didn't understand it. "Eternal" is outside of time by definition. Without mass (the physics kind) there is no time, and prior to creation, mass did not exist. Therefore, anything not part of creation stands outside of time by definition.
Here's some Sunday School discussion for you:
Dan 2:21 "And He changeth the times and the seasons; He removeth kings and setteth up kings. He giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding. 22 He revealeth the deep and secret things; He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him."
Acts 17: 26 "And He hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation."
Rom 11: 36 "For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things, to whom be glory for ever. Amen."
Acts 1: 7 "And He said unto them, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power. "
Regards.