Time is not an Eternal Concept

Angels and heaven itself werethe first creations of God!

 

Everything was created, only God Himself is eternal!

 

Time is only a concept. It is how we measure the space between events or a space within which any event may occur. Matter does not have to exist in order for time to exist because time is really actually only a conceptual thing. If you could some how exist within some black nothingness where no matter was present you could not measure time. Time on earth is measured by the rotation of the earth and its location in its orbit around the sun. Absent any of these how would you know a moment of time had passed or a year of time had passed? Answer...you wouldn't. Therefore if time is only a human conception then we can conceive of time existing infinitely in both directions from this present moment. Therefore conceptually time would be infinite or eternal.

This will blow your mind... When John was transported into heaven, from the isle of Patmos, and given the things he was to write in the book of Revelation, he was transported into "future" heaven and not current heaven. That would mean that John was the first and so far only known human time traveler. It's not entirely inconceivable that in heaven he even saw "future" John and spoke to him. But again time is only a conceptual thing and in eternity has no real meaning. That's why God says a thousand years to Him can be as one day or one day can be like a thousand years. In other words our concepts of time have no intrinsic value to Him. In Isaiah 48:12-16 and Hebrews 1:1-10 the Lord speaks of a time in which He was stretching out the heavens, forming the worlds, and laying the foundations of the earth. If the Lord can conceptually speak of time before the universe existed then why can't we?

 

Matter and energy as we know them are time related entities. Neither of them for us exist without their element of time.

 

Yes absolutely. I didn't think that I implied that they could. What I am saying is that time itself is just a human concept. Consider the mayfly which I am told only lives for 24 hours. When my wife asks me to clean out the garage and I tell her I will, she expects it to happen within the next month but the mayfly doesn't expect it to happen in his entire lifetime. That's just a silly little analogy to show how we are so entwined with our concepts of time that we have convinced ourselves that it is a real tangible property. It is not. We live around thirty thousand times longer than a mayfly so our sense of urgency for something to get accomplished is much less. Likewise if a creature lived thirty thousand times longer than us (about 240,000 years) his sense of urgency is diminished even much more than ours. Now consider someone who is eternal and does not ever die. To Him our concepts of time have absolutely no meaning. He would only care that something did or did not, will or will not happen. An event that happened billions of years ago or only seconds ago are just as relevant. The point here is that time is only a concept and not a physical tangible thing, and as a concept there is nothing wrong with talking about time before the formation of matter or after its destruction. A concept is just that.

 

Psalms 90:2, ". . . from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. . . ." Psalms 119:89, ". . . For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven."