The nature of eternity is a mind-boggling subject to me. … So it must be that all events are experienced simultaneously. But then how do you distinguish them?
What happens to spatial relationships in such a scenario? It seems that they must completely break down, because I cannot be here and then there. This implies a now and then, but there is no now and then! In some way, this must be related to the omnipresence and omniscience of God.
I mean, think about this: if I were to exist outside of time, I could not learn a new thing, because that implies time! It implies a now when I don’t know and a then when I do, but there is no now and then!
It’s even wrong to say there is just a now. It is perhaps more right to say, in such a scenario, there is just an is, just an existence. And in fact, that is what God says in the OT, I AM (Ex. 3:14).
You’ve about got it nailed.
To God, who is outside of Linear Time, everything is simultaneous. And everything there is to know He already knows. This is one way how He is omnicient. This is how He can know what we, who are within Linear Time and bound by its rules, will do before we do it. It is God’s great genius that is able to concieve of a way to distinguish a progression of events and create a situation where such a progression can exist, which is Linear Time.
God created Linear Time so that Free Will could exist. God created Linear Time so that we could choose where we will spend eternity.
Spatial relationships still exist in eternity, and once in heaven we may be able to recognize the difference between here and there, but there is no travel between here and there. Jesus talked about it in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus:
Lk 16:22-26 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’
At best we may have a memory of being able to move, which will magnify the joy of the saved ones, and will compound the regret of the unsaved.
2 Thess 1:9-10 They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at in all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.
As to God’s omnipresence, I turn to something that may have been glimpsed dimly by Augustine, was theorized by Einstein, and has been proven in the space program.
To us standing on this earth, light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Light can not be sped up or slowed down; that is the speed of its travel until all of its energy is absorbed.
However, when an object accelerates beyond the speed at which we are traveling through space, the passage of time on that object slows. Astronauts traveling on the space shuttle actually experience less passage of time than we do here. At the speeds they are moving it’s only a few seconds difference, so it is of little consequence in our world, but still it is there.
Now project the implications of this: Forget all the Star Trek stuff about traveling at warp speeds and coming back home to friends and family. That’s all total fiction. An astronaut on a starship traveling at, say, 10% of the speed of light would experience the passage of a few months and return to earth to find that hundreds of years had passed there.
An astronaut on a starship traveling at 99% of the speed of light would experiencing only a few moments time himself while seeing the entire universe grow old and reach its end.
An astronaut on a starship that could actually reach the speed of light would see time come to a halt. He could, in effect, be everywhere at once.
God, who is outside of time, is everywhere at once. He is omnipresent.
(Before you ask, accelerating past the speed of light does not make time travel backwards. That’s all fantasy, too.)
I know that’s a bunch to chew on at once. Try to get some sleep tonight anyway.
Nan
And when I broke from the chain of events in my dream by bypassing the highway on-ramp, I was left wondering whether the truck I glimpsed in my dream would have really hit me.