Bible Study: Eternity

c. God Sees Events in Time, and He Acts in Time. Yet once all this has been said it is necessary to guard against misunderstanding by completing the definition of God’s eternity: “God sees events in time and acts in time.” Paul writes, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal. 4:4–5). God observed clearly and knew exactly what was happening with events in his creation as they occurred over time. We might say that God watched the progress of time as various events occurred within his creation. Then at the right time, “when the time had fully come,” God sent forth his Son into the world.

It is evident throughout Scripture that God acts within time and acts differently at different points in time. For example, Paul tells the men of Athens, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed” (Acts 17:30–31). This statement includes a description of a previous way in which God acted, God’s present way of acting, and a future activity that he will carry out, all in time.

Indeed, the repeated emphasis on God’s ability to predict the future in the Old Testament prophets requires us to realize that God predicts his actions at one point in time and then carries out his actions at a later point in time. And on a larger scale, the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation is God’s record of the way he has acted over time to bring redemption to his people.

We must therefore affirm both that God has no succession of moments in his own being and sees all history equally vividly and that in his creation he sees the progress of events over time and acts differently at different points in time. In short, he is the Lord who created time and who rules over it and uses it for his own purposes. God can act in time because he is Lord of time. He uses it to display his glory. In fact, it is often God’s good pleasure to fulfill his promises and carry out his works of redemption over a period of time so that we might more readily see and appreciate his great wisdom, his patience, his faithfulness, his lordship over all events, and even his unchangeableness and eternity.

d. We Will Always Exist in Time. Will we ever share in God’s eternity? Specifically, in the new heaven and new earth which are yet to come, will time still exist? Some have thought that it would not. In fact, there is a hymn that begins, “When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more.” And we read in Scripture, “The city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb … and there will be no night there” (Rev. 21:23, 25; cf. 22:5).

Nevertheless, it is not true to say that heaven will be “timeless,” or without the presence of time or the passage of time. As long as we are finite creatures we will necessarily experience events one after another. Even the passage that talks about no night being in heaven also mentions the fact that the kings of the earth will bring into the heavenly city “the glory and the honor of the nations” (Rev. 21:26). We are told concerning the light of the heavenly city, “By its light will the nations walk” (Rev. 21:24). These activities of bringing things into the heavenly city and walking by the light of the heavenly city imply that events are done one after another. Something is outside the heavenly city, and then later, this thing is part of the glory and honor of the nations that are brought into the heavenly city. To cast one’s crown before the throne of God (Rev. 4:10) requires that at one moment the person has a crown and that at a later moment that crown is cast before the throne. To sing a new song of praise before God in heaven requires that one word be sung after another. In fact, the “tree of life” in the heavenly city is said to be “yielding its fruit each month” (Rev. 22:2), which implies a regular passage of time and the occurrence of events in time.

Therefore, there will still be a succession of moments one after another and things happening one after another in heaven. We will experience eternal life not in an exact duplication of God’s attribute of eternity but rather in a duration of time that will never end. We, as God’s people, will experience fullness of joy in God’s presence for all eternity—not in the sense that we will no longer experience time, but in the sense that our lives with him will go on forever: “And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22:5).