September 7

THE ETERNAL PURPOSE / PART 19

TIME AND ETERNITY

According to George Hawtin:

-"Lastly, let us consider briefly that great age which the Word of God describes as the dispensation of the fullness of times. Ephesians 1:10. Time is not eternity. There are many times and many dispensations, but there is only one eternity. Eternity does not begin; neither does it end, but times, dispensations, and ages all have beginnings and all have ends. It is wrong to assert that, when time ends, eternity will begin, because eternity has no beginning. Neither did it end when time began, as so many charts indicate. Ages have their place in eternity in the same way that minutes have their place in years, except that years end and eternity does not. Therefore it is very important that we make a clear distinction between ages, which belong to time, and eternity, which is timeless. It is more important still that we, in our study of the Bible, search out diligently those passages which refer to time and those which refer to eternity. In making this search, I strongly recommend that wherever possible the searcher avail himself of a good, exhaustive concordance such as Young's Analytical or Strong's, available at almost any good book store. Both of these give the correct meaning of every Greek and Hebrew word in the Bible." ( The Restitution Of All Things, George Hawtin )

According to J. Preston Eby:

-"A concept we must immediately grasp in order to understand God's plan of the ages is that time is a created phenomena consisting of past, present, and future just as man is created phenomena having youth, middle age, and old age. No, you cannot smell, touch, or feel time, but it is there, ever-present, always marching into the future. Time was created; it had a beginning, it shall have an end. It is only one thing among countless other things that are part of the entire created universe. It is as much a "species" of creation as, for example, rocks, elephants, trees, and water are species of creation. Before the creation of the universe, there was no time; at the end of the ages when the present material universe is dissolved and replaced by a new, spiritual universe, time shall cease to be. It will be swallowed up into eternity just as all death will be swallowed up into victory, and there shall be no more death. Time - composed of milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millenniums, ages was created in the beginning, and will be dissolved at the end of the ages. ETERNITY IS A STATE OF ABSOLUTE TIMELESSNESS, not of unending time. Eternity is a STATE OF BEING, resident in the very nature and person of God in which such concepts as past, present, future, before, after, change, transition, growth, decay, etc. do not exist. It is wrong to assert that, when time ends, eternity will begin, because eternity has no beginning. Neither did it end when time began, as so many charts indicate. Therefore it is very important that we make a clear distinction between ages, which belong to time, and eternity, which is timeless." ( Eternity, J. Preston Eby )

-Eternity is that which IS! It is part of the very nature of God. It is for this reason that God refers to Himself as the GREAT I AM, not the I WAS, OR I WILL BE, but the I AM. He is that WHICH IS.

-HE IS ETERNAL!-