Time is on our side? Heaven, HG Wells and Hunches.

 Portions of the last two evenings have been spent in front of our entertainment center's HD screen watching Hollywood's two attempts at capturing HG Wells' futuristic book, entitled "The Time Machine".

I've been interested in the elastic nature of time - first having read Einstein's thoughts as a college student and then, in my 20's having read the New Testament accounts of Jesus' post-resurrection travels, disappearances and reappearance's. He walked through time and space. Wow...think of it.

HG Wells's provocative writing (and the 2 adaptations to film in 1960 and 2006 - plus one to TV in 1978) provide a picture of a creator-less creation. Jesus' now-provocative explanations of what Heaven and the "after-life" will be cause a rift deeper than we can imagine. It's become science at the throat of faith...

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Science discoveries are just that: Discoveries. Like the north american shoreline to european sailors of long ago, the land was always there. The sailors stumbled across it...so are the "ah-ha moments" of you and I discovering truths that await our "land ho" calls....

 Since my son's death, my fascination with how the New Testament describes the timelessness of eternity is amazing to me. I am captivated by the bigger picture of life and death and life. I suppose we all are at some time, aren't we? 

We just happen to be on that trail right now.

Our companion book on these "travels" has been Randy Alcorn's tome, "Heaven". It is painfully long and all-too-short, at the same time. Don't misunderstand me - it is THE book on heaven. And as I read it, I had to take it in bite-size amounts, chew on them and then move on to the next. Each small segment forced me to take time on it....and I'm 16 months into the book - marking the start of the time period from the death of my son, Nate.

And along comes The Time Machine - 1960 and 2006. I saw the first flick in the theaters, as a child. The next version I saw as an adult... and it came in a disappointing second place. Both versions, though, reflected HG Wells' disability of acknowledging a creator and an eternity.

        
 
 
 
So what? Well, I've got a good hunch....

 If Jesus is accurate about time...and the fact that He said when we die and leave time and space, we will travel in marvelous ways, then why do we often spend so little time even discussing it - let alone studying it in the Bible?

Equally importantly, His post-death appearances, as recorded in the NT, stand as examples as to how we will travel, once we pass through the veil of life to new life - then the best is yet to come!!

And HG Wells may stand foolishly on the sidelines of time and space, wishing he had not spent his life climbing to the top, up a ladder that was leaning on the wrong building.

Am I doing that? Are you?

Food for thought.

Den

PS: Here's the trailer from 1960. Kinda fun.

Comments

[Beau]

I think traditionally we humans think of eternity as "time extended beyond our furthest reach." In other words, as if time were a large measuring tape extending from eternity past into eternity future. Each mark on the tape marks time itself, so eternity is "times after times after times after times," extending out on the tape until the horizon swallows it up. That's the linear explanation of time as I think we humans have traditionally viewed it.

I believe that "eternity" with respect to the Bible's view is something far beyond the linear. As humans we are limited to the linear concept, because we are linear beings: We can recollect the past, we experience the present, and we anticipate the future. Yet the Bible testifies that God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. Therefore, He knows all things, has authority over all things, and is even present in all things, irrespective of the constraints of time. So God must himself exist in the realm of eternity - a place that is unconfined by time, or space.

In fact, God must Himself be intimately involved with eternity. The Bible claims that He "inhabits" - literally, "dwells within" eternity (Isa. 57:15). Jesus, as God, literally stepped out of eternity - a realm which He inhabited - into time, a realm which we inhabit. To me that's amazing. That he would "stoop down" to our level, willingly constraining Himself to be a man, to be constrained by time, and pay the ultimate price for our sins.