GOD'S CONCEPT OF TIME

Can I pray for you in any way?

Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.
.
In Christ, Mark

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

** Like posts and send friend requests to the author of The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn

** Become a Follower of The Christian Walk at http://the-christian-walk.blogspot.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

2 Peter 3:8

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

So much of the way we live is based on time, isn’t it?

At the most fundamental level, the clock begins to tick for us the moment we emerge from our mother’s womb. It becomes our birth date and that day becomes a special day of celebration for every year afterwards, a “Happy Birthday” occasion.

From that point of birth on, we form milestones based on time. We start to crawl and then walk and then get, before inevitably losing, our first teeth.

We start going to school, away from our parents and homes for the first time and this beginning point of our education carries with it a subsection of measuring points. We move from elementary school to middle school to high school until we eventually reach that point of graduation, graduation from our youthful days with a promotion to adulthood.

This emergence into personal independence, embarking on our respective journeys to form a legacy within our own lives, takes us through even more possible time benchmarks like college graduations, marriage anniversaries, births of children, and different employment ventures. And as we march on from one year to the next, we do so knowing that our time here on earth has its limits and we will eventually grow old and die. Such is the finite nature of our time in life.

Why go into all this today in this message?

Because as we can see in our scripture verse, God’s concept of time is nowhere near the same as ours. Look again at the eighth verse of 2 Peter, chapter 3:

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

Here, we find Peter following up on his prior warning about the scoffers who would mock the promised second coming of Jesus. As a refresher, here are the verses that formed the foundation for yesterday’s message:

Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ He promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. 2 Peter 3:3-7

Immersed in “following their own evil desires” initiated by none other than Satan himself, these ungodly scoffers used their words as a weapon against the potential impatience of the Christian believers who were as anxiously awaiting the return of their Savior as we still are today. Paraphrasing their words, it was as if they were asking, “Are you sure He is really coming back as He promised because if so, He is sure taking a long time to do so. As far as we see it, nothing is any different as it was since the beginning of creation and the death of our ancestors.”

To counter these views, we find Peter letting his “dear friends”, his Christian brothers and sisters in ‘the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia” (1 Peter 1:1), know that while human beings are finite in nature and in time, God is infinite and eternal. He doesn’t concern Himself with time as we do because with Him “a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day”. He isn’t saying that with Him a day is a thousand years and a thousand years a day as some have wrongly interpreted this verse. He is only saying that a thousand years is like a day to the Lord.

Since the beginning, God has had a perfectly detailed plan for how things will happen and shared that plan through His Holy Word. He has executed that plan in His perfect time and in His perfect way, and as the old Gospel song asserts, He is always right on time, every time. If He wants to do something within a day, He will do it. If He chooses to take a thousand years to accomplish something, He can do that too. He created time and He therefore is the Master of it, able to do what He wants whenever He wants.

Through His Word, God promises His Son will return to judge the earth, condemning Satan and all unbelievers to Hell before ushering His disciples into the new creation, the new heaven and earth with the New Jerusalem as the dwelling place (Revelation 20:10-15, 21:1-3). It’s not our place to try and calculate the time this will happen because we have no concept of the time of our God. All we need to do is ensure that we are saved, unlike the scoffers who choose to mock our Lord, so that when Jesus does return, our eternal future in the glory of Heaven is secure.

It will be well worth the wait.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.