God and Time: Does God exist in all points in time?

[Bible Highlighter]

If God did not have a past and future, He would be frozen on the spot like a still photograph.

Well, I am not saying that God did not exist in the past. I said before that God existed from Eternity's past. I also believe God will forever exist on into the future with His faithful ones for eternity. Nowhere did I suggest that God would not exist in the future, either.

He couldn't exist. For anyone, including God, to exist, he has to be in an environment where there is a succession of events.

Agreed.

The difference between time and eternity is that our time has a beginning, middle and an end one day. But eternity is an endless series of events that has no beginning nor end.

Agreed.

We have no idea what God did in eternity past, where He went, what and who He created.

We have no idea at all. It is possible He may not have created anything yet, either.

All we know is at some time He created our universe.

Well, Christians know more than just about the creation, but I am sure that was not what you meant when you said "all we know". The most important thing to know as a Christian is that Jesus died for us on the cross, and that He was risen three days later from the grave to give us new life in Him. For there is no salvation in any other name but Jesus Christ.

We have no way of know how long ago He did that. Could have been billions of years. We have some idea when Adam and Eve were created, and some think it is about 6000 years ago, but we cannot be sure, because much of the genealogy was in cultural groups rather than individuals. For instance, Cain kills his brother and then goes into the land of Nod and marries a wife. That couldn't have happened in just a short time. There could have been hundreds of years between the murder of Abel and Cain's marriage, because there was a culture in the land of Nod and a population that would have taken several generations to form. We might have some idea when Abraham came on the scene by calculating back through his family line because the genealogy involved individuals and not cultural groups.

I would say we do have a way of knowing how old the Earth is. Both the Bible and Science confirm the Earth to be about 6,000 years old approximately. Luke 3 is a genealogy of Christ's line from Mary to Adam. It would be pointless to give us a genealogy like this if there were gaps in it. It is showing that Jesus is descendant of Adam. If there is a missing link in the chain, it would destroy that. I know this is not important to many of us Gentiles, but to a Jew, tracing one's family history means a lot. So they were meticulous record keepers in this regard. Also, God wants us to know that Jesus is truly of Adam.

The point I am making is that past, present and future are absolutes. If we are aware of our past, God is aware of His past. If our future is being created by the decision we are making today, then God's future is being created by the decisions He is making.

I agree that our decisions today can effect our future and that we can be aware of our past.

The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ happened 2000 years ago in our time, and also in the same space of time for God too if He measured time in the same way we do. But God doesn't have to measure time in terms of the rotation of the earth and the orbit of the earth around the sun, because He doesn't have to, because there is no point for Him, because there will be no end for him, whereas our time is limited by our life span, so we are conscious of its measurement.

But the conundrum you run into is if God does exist in some future time (in this special pocket of time where time does not operate like our time and He experiences time differently), then that means we have lived out this present time already in order for God to experience it in some future time line. But I get no indication in Scripture that we are living out a re-run (sort of like on TV).

 

[Kaon]

While God has no limits to what He can do (See this thread here), does God actually exist in all points in time?

I imagine somebody out there believes God had hit the rewind button. Now, while God could have let events in human history to unfold rapidly fast to view it all and then He could have pressed the rewind button, I do not get any indication He has done that. Also, how could God do that if the future is still moving ever forward? It is like a never ending movie or story.

Others may believe God also has the power to exist in some outside dimension where our time moves super fast from his perspective while we experience time normally. Five of our years of our time could be like 5 minutes from his perspective (when a part of Himself exists in this dimension). But what about the other part? The part of God that is ever active and presently involved in our creation? Does this make sense in light of what we see in Scripture?

The most popular belief among Christians is that God exists in all points in time. However, does God really exist in all points of our time? Does God exist in the past, present, and future simultaneously?

While God most certainly has the power to do this, I do not think this is so.

If God rested (stopped from His work) on the 7th day, and God existed in all points in time, this means that God would still be working in the past in creating everything on the 6 day creation.

"But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;" (Hebrews 10:12).

Jesus offered one sacrifice for sins forever. Jesus only did this once. For all time!!!

But if God existed in all points in time, God would still be doing this right now. He would be sacrificing Himself more than once. But He would be sacrificing Himself over, and over, and over, and over again. As if God was a slave to time or something. But I do not believe that is the case. Nowhere does Scripture tell us that God exists in some past dimension. Also, nowhere does God say that He is in the future right now, either. Yes, God is our future because our end is in Him, but God does not exist in all points in time.

Everything that will happen has already happened. Time is an illusion; it is coupled to certain dimensions of space, and breaks down as a PARAMETER in higher spacial dimensioms. It is for our benefit, so that we can experience things once at a time.

Perfect beings do not collapse under the reality of that. Existing at all "points in tjme" is tantamount to being at all "points in space for any given n-dimensional space that contained a one-to-one parameter called time.

Time stops being "one-to-one" when you reach higher dimensions as a consequence of geometry. This is nothing for an ANGEL, let alone the Most High God who created every single dimension and process within them.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

I’m not sure what you mean by God being part of his creation - in what way do you see God as being part of creation, as opposed to interacting with creation?

Well, I am not suggesting Pantheism. I am talking about the many occurrences of GOD that we read about in Scripture when GOD interacts with mankind here upon the Earth. In fact, GOD lives on the inside of His people. This is what GOD desires. A relationship. This is what I mean when I say that GOD is a part of His creation (i.e. His interaction with mankind).

Maybe the issue you are having is just one of definitions. To state the obvious, we don’t know how this works in any kind of detailed, technical sense, but we can draw some conclusions from what we can find in the bible:

God created ‘creation’, or at least put into order something that was already there. This doesn’t make him ‘part of’ it, quite the contrary, creation is a thing, God is a being, they are separate.

Creation is subject to progress, one moment follows another, time is how we measure that. God, being infinite and eternal, isn’t subject to that.

Yes, GOD and the creation are separate things. GOD is spirit. He revealed parts of Himself as spirit within our physical realm. In reading the Bible, the physical realm and the spirit realm operate together. When God had seen that the people were building a tower to the Heavens, He had come down to the Earth to check it out personally. GOD interacted in this physical universe. God confounded their language. This event did not happen prior to God coming down to check things out. So we can see a progression of events taking place in our universe even with GOD. We see GOD operate in the same way we do in time. While GOD had the power to move beyond living in succession of events like we can (as we read about His interaction with man in the Bible), that is how we see Him revealed in Scripture 100% of the time. We don't see GOD showing us how went back into the past and changed something or how GOD told us about how we are reliving time that He has already experienced and that we are merely in a re-run like on TV.

God sustains and interacts with creation, from outside, outside as in ‘not part of’. In some sense creation is within God, but not part of him, which would be impossible - the universe and everything therein is subject to change, God isn’t. He doesn’t have bits of him that are, and bits that aren’t. See Acts 17:27-28 for example - God is not far from us; but we have our being in him; the same dual sense is found in Colossians 1:16-17, in him, through him. God sustains creation in some sense but is spirit, i.e. not a physical part of what we think of as the physical universe, although he affects it.

Yep. I don't believe in Pantheism. But God does show us that He experiences time like us. While GOD can most certainly move beyond this time (if He chooses), I do not get the impression He has done so with us. It would mean that we would be living out a re-run like on TV if such were the case.

Re. ‘Stopping his work’ - if you take this to be a literal description of God ‘doing’ creation a bit at a time, then stopping, then this is God interacting with creation according to the ‘rules’ by which creation functions; creation itself progresses, God, when he interacts with it, takes part in that progression from the perpsective of creation, not from his perspective. If you take it more as it was understood when it was written, God brings order to creation, directing it and providing for it kind of like some mix of composer and conductor, and the same applies in terms of interaction in progression (the progression of creation); he then ‘rests’ or ‘takes up his position as ruler and sustainer of’ the universe.

No. It means that GOD is not working on the 7th day. If He was connected via some future time whereby He is still working, this would mean He did not rest on the 7th day if you want to be true to the text in what GOD meant by that day. The Sabbath is a day where man (at one time) was to do no labor. GOD set the pattern for men of God under the Law of Moses (when it was in effect at one time) to follow that pattern.

The essential thing you need to grasp is the idea of separateness. For a crude and non technical illustration of the idea if you can imagine space time as a long cylinder then from our perspective it is constantly getting longer, as it progresses. From God’s perspective it has a beginning and an end. God can interact with any part of it at any time (time as a property of the cylinder - a part of what it is and how it functions) from the outside. Outside of it, the question of time is irrelevant; God is interacting with our then, now and not yet from his eternal ‘now’.

Again, this is a problem. If GOD is able to interact with our future, this means that our future had to have occurred at least once before whereby GOD has merely hit the "Rewind Button" on our timeline so as to set it back to where we are now. This (or something similar) is what has to be in order for GOD to experience our future physically. Otherwise we cannot assume GOD is existing in our future time line (Which is what is meant when we say GOD is timeless and He experiences all points in time at once).

 

[Bible Highlighter]

Everything that will happen has already happened. Time is an illusion; it is coupled to certain dimensions of space, and breaks down as a PARAMETER in higher spacial dimensioms. It is for our benefit, so that we can experience things once at a time.

Perfect beings do not collapse under the reality of that. Existing at all "points in tjme" is tantamount to being at all "points in space for any given n-dimensional space that contained a one-to-one parameter called time.

Time stops being "one-to-one" when you reach higher dimensions as a consequence of geometry. This is nothing for an ANGEL, let alone the Most High God who created every single dimension and process within them.

If time is an illusion, then nothing matters. What Jesus did for us would not matter and it would only be an illusion of time. But what Jesus did was very real and it does matter. It was not an illusion or trickery of time. Jesus loved us so much that He died on the cross and He rose from the dead three days later to give us new life. Jesus did this to forgive us of our sins. This is not an illusion of time. It is very real.

 

[Kaon]

If time is an illusion, then nothing matters.

Of course everything matters - even precisely because there is no time. There is nothing to give you certainty in termination. The strength of your character and existence depends on the definition of you, rather than how humans romanticize their progress over time, or even wait before the decide to better themselves - because humans have the luxury of experiencing linear time flow (at all).

What Jesus did for us would not matter and it would only be an illusion of time.

What The Redeemer did transcends time - which is why His works (especially in the Gnostics and Enoch) talk about Him being the Ancient of Days, and The Lamb Slain from the foundation of the world. These descriptors are for us to understand His character, and why we should have been well aware of who He is, and what He will do based on His name, and the prophets. Christ Himself was already the Lamb slain before Adam sinned.

But what Jesus did was very real and it does matter. It was not an illusion or trickery of time. Jesus loved us so much that He died on the cross and He rose from the dead three days later to give us new life. Jesus did this to forgive us of our sins. This is not an illusion of time. It is very real.

Time is the illusion - neatly packaged for the human mind for the purposes of preventing overload, breakdown and ultimately premature destruction. This is part of grace that we get the luxury to be ignorant of what we will do in the future - this way, we can justly observe our character based on the circumstances for which we face. The Redeemer didn't do anything illusions or tricky.

But, Time is definitely an illusion for our benefit. Prophecy should be a blatant example of how time does not flow linearly in all spaces (if, at all).

 

[Bible Highlighter]

Of course everything matters - even precisely because there is no time. There is nothing to give you certainty in termination. The strength of your character and existence depends on the definition of you, rather than how humans romanticize their progress over time, or even wait before the decide to better themselves - because humans have the luxury of experiencing linear time flow (at all).

No, your logic is flawed. You are saying that things matter because there is no time. Okay. The fact that you can count from 1-10 proves that you are bound by time. Time is essential to our creation. If time was not important, then you would not be able to keep a job, or show up to your own wedding on time, or meet up with other believers on time, etc. Jesus came at the appointed time and not too early and not too late. In the OT God told his people to observe certain days. The Sabbath, and the Passover all occurred on specific times and they mattered to God. Yet, you are saying the exact opposite and that there is no time and that is what matters. We are given time on this Earth to repent and follow Jesus. You cannot deny we have a limited amount of time do that. This time is not an illusion but it is very real.

 

[Petros2015]

God is outside of time. For example, in catholic tradition, I believe the communion of the saints. That communion is not just shared between the people in the room. It is also 'outside of time' in it's own way. It is with all the saints that ever were, and all the saints who ever will be, and with Christ himself.

 

[Petros2015]

Maybe a better way to say that is not that He is outside of time, but rather that the 'bubble' of time and space which we call the universe from start to finish is within Him?

 

[Bible Highlighter]

God is outside of time. For example, in catholic tradition, I believe the communion of the saints. That communion is not just shared between the people in the room. It is also 'outside of time' in it's own way. It is with all the saints that ever were, and all the saints who ever will be, and with Christ himself.

Right. This means God exists in the future, right? If so, then that means we have lived this life once before. Do you believe that?

 

[Kaon]

No, your logic is flawed. You are saying that things matter because there is no time. Okay. The fact that you can count from 1-10 proves that you are bound by time.

What you are doing when you count is you are taking two places in space, and you are distinguishing them with an action. Humanity has been led to believe this parameterization of your existence is called time. It is not; it is an evolution of events.

I am not saying things matter because there is no time; I am saying they should matter more to an entity considering the entity is not under the psychological crutch of seeing one's life as a sequence - whether linear or non-linear.

Time is essential to our creation.

Time is essential to human romanticism of creation, but to perfect or higher-order beings, time is a consequence of the flow of events in a particular space.

If time was not important, then you would not be able to keep a job, or show up to your own wedding on time, or meet up with other believers on time, etc.

All of these things are human constructs and illusions of importance. Time is used as the boundary to demand an entity move itself from one location in space to another location in space based on other evolutions of events (dark, night, rooster calls, a New Years Eve celebration, etc.) That humans have decided to parameterize the progress of their lives with the so-called time operator is something humans do to make the world around them easier to explain. It is a psychological and intellectual crutch, but very much so needed for finite entities.

Jesus came at the appointed time and not too early and not too late.

That appointed time was described by events and signs (events in space), not times. Why? Because of your next question...

In the OT God told his people to observe certain days. The Sabbath, and the Passover all occurred on specific times and they mattered to God.

All of the holy days are based on events, not time. You are observing locations of events in order to get the days. For example, when the new moon occurs, then that is the new month. Six "days" or, in the Hebrew, six "moonrises after that new moon" is your Sabbath. Humans, yet again, have made doctrine that timescales the holy days of the Most High God. Passover is the 14th day after the first new moon around the spring equinox - when the barley turns green. But, The Most High God never appointed a Timex to His people, and He never used a Julian or Gregorian timescale. He put the luminaries, moon and sun in the sky for time keeping, because they sweep out measurable changes in location.

Yet, you are saying the exact opposite and that there is no time and that is what matters.

There is no time; but that isn't really important. It seems like a paradox or ridiculous no because humans are bred to be "on time," "in time," and "with the times." But, once we see that time is something we have created (at least, in terms of seconds) then it should be a freeing notion.

We are given time on this Earth to repent and follow Jesus. You cannot deny we have a limited amount of time do that. This time is not an illusion but it is very real.

This is why you think time matters, because you have an expiration date. So, you must measure the amount of things you do based on the limited ability you have to do them. In other words, your atomic structure of your body will eventually vibrate out its last quanta of energy since you began decaying from birth.

The second is defined as 9,000,000,000 hyperfine transitions in the Cesium atom - an (arbitrary) evolution of events.


You are also painfully aware you must die, which is also an easy way for finite creatures like humans to believe time actually means the same thing for things with a death sentence. Mathematics shows the pseudonature of time in higher dimensions, which begs the question of why it is so coupled to space on the lower 7 dimensions. I am sure when science catches up to the druids and magi of the antediluvian world, they will admit time is a construct.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

Maybe a better way to say that is not that He is outside of time, but rather that the 'bubble' of time and space which we call the universe from start to finish is within Him?

This still does not solve the problem of God living in our future time that has not yet happened for us yet. If God lives in our future that we have not experienced, this means that we are merely reliving events over again with God.

 

[RDKirk]

Maybe a better way to say that is not that He is outside of time, but rather that the 'bubble' of time and space which we call the universe from start to finish is within Him?

And before God created that bubble, there was only God comprising a dimension of God and nothing but God.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

Again, how can God exist in our future that we have not experienced yet?
Are people saying that we are living in re-run like on TV?
How can God experience our future if we were not there living it with Him?
The only logical conclusion is that we are living in a re-run like on TV if you believe God exists in the future. Do folks honestly believe we are reliving our lives over with God? What about the first time line that was not a re-run like on TV?

Stop, and truly think about it.

 

[ToBeLoved]

Well, there are not that many explanations of a believer's erroneous view on God and time. Notice that I put the "etc." in there. This means that it could be any of of the views that you have about God that goes contrary to Scripture in the fact that God is timeless (even though He has the power to be in a timeless state - hopping continually from the past to the present, to the future, etc.).

Okay. So why don't you share with us your belief on God and time? Is it a secret?

Well this is not an answer.

You can reread my post and reply with something relevant.

This has nothing to do with what I said.

 

[ToBeLoved]

Again, how can God exist in our future that we have not experienced yet?
Are people saying that we are living in re-run like on TV?
How can God experience our future if we were not there living it with Him?
The only logical conclusion is that we are living in a re-run like on TV if you believe God exists in the future. Do folks honestly believe we are reliving our lives over with God? What about the first time line that was not a re-run like on TV?

Stop, and truly think about it.

How can God not exist?

Forget about the past, present or future part.

 

[Kaon]

How can God not exist?

Forget about the past, present or future part.

This is a lot more succinct than I put it - especially the last part. But, also especially the first part.

 

[zelosravioli]

I would agree with posts here that say 'time is not a thing, time is simply a measurement'. Like an inch, a mile, an inch, or a pound; none of these things exist. They are not physical things - things you can be outside of.

Time is an odd concept. unlike space, which is three dimensional, time seems to have only one dimension. Physics tries to conceptualize and even demand other dimensions in time, but the debate seems to be still with the singularity of time (quantum theory noted). Or, the future has not happened, because then it would not be future, it would be 'now'.

Nevertheless, I do not see 'any reason' for God to 'have' to be outside of time, either to see or do something past or future, because God can do 'anything' from the here and now.

His Word says God "I will, bring it to pass" over and over. He 'knows' the future because God can control and cause the here and Now. So I see God as being able to do 'all things' from the here and 'Now'.

 

[Hieronymus]

While God has no limits to what He can do (See this thread here), does God actually exist in all points in time?

Do you mean simultaneously?
"He who IS, WAS and COMETH."

I imagine somebody out there believes God had hit the rewind button. Now, while God could have let events in human history to unfold rapidly fast to view it all and then He could have pressed the rewind button, I do not get any indication He has done that. Also, how could God do that if the future is still moving ever forward? It is like a never ending movie or story.

I have thought about this a lot too.
I landed on this view:

We are on the progressing point on the time line we call "NOW", moving from the past towards the future.
God is not on that point, He's not even on that line.
He's overseeing that line, the timeline.
However, the time line has to be real, otherwise cause and effect would get messed up, synchronicity would not be there.

Others may believe God also has the power to exist in some outside dimension where our time moves super fast from his perspective while we experience time normally. Five of our years of our time could be like 5 minutes from his perspective (when a part of Himself exists in this dimension).

We can only speculate and speak metaphorically about this i.m.o., because time and the time line and even the speed with which time progresses (laws of nature) are real and can't be tinkered with in our reality. (Some say it can because of Einstein's theories but tend to i disagree, but that's an other subject)
But i would picture it as the distance from the time line which determines how fast or slow it seems to proceed.
When you look close, it travels relatively fast, when you take some distance it seems to proceed slower.
So it would depend on the 'centre of gravity' of the viewpoint.
But again, this is just a feeble attempt at imagining what time is like to God.

But what about the other part? The part of God that is ever active and presently involved in our creation? Does this make sense in light of what we see in Scripture?

God's Omnipresence?
Is that even imaginable from a human's perspective? Not for this human..
One can seriously wonder also if God is involved always and everywhere.
Often seems like God's 'intrusions' (for lack of a better word) in our reality are quite rare.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

I would agree with posts here that say 'time is not a thing, time is simply a measurement'. Like an inch, a mile, an inch, or a pound; none of these things exist. They are not physical things - things you can be outside of.

Time is an odd concept. unlike space, which is three dimensional, time seems to have only one dimension. Physics tries to conceptualize and even demand other dimensions in time, but the debate seems to be still with the singularity of time (quantum theory noted). Or, the future has not happened, because then it would not be future, it would be 'now'.

Nevertheless, I do not see 'any reason' for God to 'have' to be outside of time, either to see or do something past or future, because God can do 'anything' from the here and now.

His Word says God "I will, bring it to pass" over and over. He 'knows' the future because God can control and cause the here and Now. So I see God as being able to do 'all things' from the here and 'Now'.

While I disagree with your first two paragraphs, I do agree with your last two paragraphs. Well said in regards to how God being able to do anything in the here and now.

May God bless you this fine day that He has made.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

How can God not exist?

Forget about the past, present or future part.

You are not really expressing your belief here. What is your view of God and time?