Posted on 07/09/2021 6:54:30 AM PDT by HarleyD
I think “time” has meaning to God (after all, He created it), but that God clearly reckons time much differently than we do ... which helps me deal with some of the things we face in this life. Cheers!
A thousand years is as a day and a day as a thousand years..................
The thought that someone born in a remote Chinese village who never heard the word of God, lived a decent life committing a few minor sins throughout his life will end up tortured in Hell for eternity is a thought that shakes many peoples’ faith.
Time is a creation/construct of Man. There is no “time” to a true God making the notion and concept of “time” irrelevant. A true God is not restricted, entwined, or constrained by the construct of “time.”
The thought that God is a merciful and kind God is a comforting one.
Life and Time are like a roll of toilet paper.
The closer you get to the end the faster it goes!
We do not know what happens with those people. It is my belief knowing my Father that everyone will have the chance to say yay or nay to Gods plan of salvation. Meanwhile it is our job to reach as many with the good news of the gospel as we can
We see time relevant to the speed of light. There are formulas for time dilation related to velocity.
If you could fly into space faster than light, you could look back at earth and see yourself being born, at the right point.
The key to that question is the idea that your remote Chinese person ‘lived a decent life committing a few minor sins.’
God is the one who sets the standard for ‘decent,’ ‘few,’ and ‘minor.’
God judges according to how each of us responds to the revelation we’ve been given.
‘But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.’
Time is a function of the frequency of consciousness from which you view it.
You’re referring to: 2 Peter 3:8 (KJV) “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
Time collapses as individual consciousness expands to be “One with God.”
C.S. Lewis addresses this in various writings. Among other things, he talks about the idea of Jesus saving such people in other ways.
I believe time is a 4th dimension: it's existence as a dimension is what it is regardless of how we perceive it.
I also believe God is omnipresent across all dimensions, including time. That may also explain His miraculous intervention across time, such as knowing what we pray for before we pray them, or giving prophecies about the future.
It's possible He's able to do those things because He's really smart (omniscient) and can predict the future perfectly. But it's possible He knows the future intimately because He's in the future "right now" just like He's in the present and the past.
I personally believe that no person can come to God without knowing Christ. That said, by the very limitations of our humanity, no person is capable of knowing Christ perfectly or completely. Hence, it becomes a matter of what the threshold is for our imperfect knowledge.
TIME...
The kingdom of Heaven is seed, time, and harvest. Everything has a time and a reckoning. Then time will be no more, only eternity. Choose wisely.
To whom much is given much is required has logical a flip side. How much that matters in spiritual things is up for discussion though.
Also, the idea of the LoF as punishment for deeds done rather than being a response to what the finally lost are maybe should be addressed. No one is going to be cast into the LoF because of what was written in the books, but only those whose name isn’t written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
We are told that Christ came to destroy the works of the devil and sin is the work of the devil. We are also told by Christ Himself of two aspects of the estate of the lost: the worm and the fire.
Clearly on account of the first no sinning can remain even if the consequences for having sin may.
The implications of the second require some speculation as to the nature of the worm and the fire.
If the fire, wrath, is logically external to the damned then would the worm be internal?
Consider the earthly sensation of an itch that you just cannot scratch and the frustration it may cause directly in proportion to the strength of the itch.
Speculation: the worm is the sin nature of the finally damned, or rather the frustration they experience because an external force, wrath (the fire) is being applied to restrain the sin nature from ever again being expressed.
A person such as you describe would have difficulty having a strong sin nature since they never knew much about the Father or Christ and only had ordinary morality of their culture to rebel against. Even in the worst case scenario for such a person a weak sin nature would be relatively easy to restrain, not much wrath needed, not much of a worm as a result.
Which is to say that wrath can be exacting, remedial, and not punishment and torture.
The BENEFIT, yes “benefit’, is that the restrained sin nature cannot grow worse and the damned become as bad as bad can possibly be.
There is a possible sort of continuity between this speculation and what might be inferred for the state of the redeemed. With the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, no matter their old body of death, once that body of death is removed the saints will have a nature with a god-itch of its own, one that they will be free to scratch till they are as righteous as righteous can be as created beings.
Recall that the Lord is called a raging fire … the intense stuff is not necessarily where the damned are but where the redeemed are and they have a nature to both endure and enjoy it.
… and as a side note the construction of the New Jerusalem includes all that gold like glass … gold has some very interesting properties when it comes to light and heat … did you know we use gold to make glass face shields to protect men from intense fires even now?
The created physical universe consists of space-time and matter. Thus time is
part of God’s creation.
“ Thus, God has all of your life before Him every time you kneel in prayer. He can relate to you in a more real manner than you can even relate to yourself”
I have some questions about his timing I hope to ask about one day but things have managed to work out and must be for the better due to His foreknowledge.
I have always had this speculation that when Christians die and go to spend eternity in glory that the concept of time will have no meaning. On earth, we are aware of time and our limited allocation of it. Awareness of time is part of our innate sense of coming judgment, along with our awareness that time here is limited.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.