The Lord Of Time

The Lord of Time

Remember the things I have done in the past. For I alone am God! I am God, and there is none like me. Only I can tell you the future before it even happens. Everything I plan will come to pass.

Isaiah 46:9-10

You must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.

2 Peter 3:8

“I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.”

Revelation 1:8

Have you ever watched a TV show or movie or read a book about people who travel back or forward in time? It is the stuff of science fiction, because we know it is impossible. As humans, we are bound by time. We can’t stop it. The clock is always ticking, and the calendar is always moving forward.

But God is not limited by time the way we are—just like he is not bound by gravity or space as we are. He doesn’t age like we do. God exists apart from time, or outside time. And while he sees events in time and acts at particular times in the past and the present and the future, time to him is not a succession of moments or a progression of days. He sees all time as if it just happened. It’s hard to understand, isn’t it? Because it is so different from how we experience time, it’s hard to wrap our minds around it.

Although God is not bound by time the way we are, the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is a record of the way God has acted over time to redeem his people. Paul writes, “When the right time came, God sent his Son” (Galatians 4:4). He is the Lord who created time. And he is the Lord who rules over time and uses it for his own purposes.

DISCUSSION STARTERS

If you were like God and could see all events as if they just happened, what past or future event would you most like to see?

How does understanding God’s timelessness increase our confidence in what he says about what is ahead for believers?

How does this knowledge about God being outside of time help us understand Ephesians 1:4: “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy”?