Does God live inside our observable universe?
I have just finished reading three pages of responses, and come to one conclusion - Some of the terminology needs to be defined.
What does it mean to say "God lives (anywhere)," when He is alive wherever He chooses to place His foot. To "live" in "place" is not the same as saying He is "Contained" in that place. That seems to be a common mistake of not defining terms...
Man is confined to whatever space His physical body requires for life.
God lived within the camp of ancient Israel, in the fact that He commanded the Israelites to carry a spade with a paddle on one end, on their belt so that when they had to relieve their selves, they would go outside the camp, dig a hole into which they would relieve, then cover their extractions; so God's foot would not tread upon unhallowed ground. So, in one sense, God lived within the camp of Israel (Deuteronomy 23:12-14)
Sometimes we conflict over whether God is bound by "time" and/or "space."
When God made covenants with Men, He bound Himself to the terms of the covenant; and expected Men to honor the same "binding" of themselves to the terms to which they agreed.
For example; some sacrifices were to be kept the same time every year; The "Sabbath" was to remain a day of rest every week, and sometimes an extra "Sabbath" was thrown into the schedule for special reminders, like for example, Jubile, which was every fifty years.
"And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years.
9 Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth
day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land.
10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout
all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.
11 A jubile shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather
the grapes in it of thy vine undressed.
12 For it
is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.
13 In the year of this jubile ye shall return every man unto his possession.
14 And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest
ought of thy neighbour's hand, ye shall not oppress one another:
15 According to the number of years after the jubile thou shalt buy of thy neighbour,
and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee:
16 According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for
according to the number
of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee.
17 Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I
am the LORD your God.
18 Wherefore ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety.
19 And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety.
20 And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase:
21 Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years.
22 And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat
yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat
of the old
store.
23 The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land
is mine; for ye
are strangers and sojourners with me." (Leviticus 25:8-23)
God is wherever He wants to be at any given time. And He is limited to time and space only insofar as His own word limits Him, in responding to those Covenant arrangements to which He has bound Himself to Man.
There is way too much evidence that this is so, for me to post it here, but it makes a most interesting study, if one is really wanting to put the time into it.
