
Today, I am reflective. I have been wondering about eternity, what it is, and how it effects all of us. Man has pondered this question for centuries and the answers that man seeks is found in the Word of God—the Bible. As I read the scriptures today I wrote down my definitions for eternity. They are:
- eternity is without time
- time never ending
- life as a continuance
- eternity is continuance
Within scripture we find that the King James Version used the word “world” for eternity. Curious, I went to the Hebrew to find the word for world, and found the Hebrew word owlam. Here, this definition from the Strong’s Hebrew says eternity is time out of mind, or always. Eternity is perpetuation.
Is eternity used by God for us to hope for in terms of our obedience to gain from this sinful world? The answer is yes, but there is more to how God used the word eternity. In his word spoken by Solomon, the wisest man in the world, he spoke of eternity as a veil, that God used eternity to be set in the hearts of man to conceal the works of God so that man would not discover his works from the beginning to the end. Why would God, the God I call Jehovah and Jesus, conceal these works from man? Here are my thoughts:
- If we were to know the works of God, or created to know the works of God we would work to make ourselves like him in spirit, and continue the pride set in us by sin, and this pride would be for eternity and render us unredeemable; meaning without the means of salvation.
- God wants a relationship with man. The knowledge we have he wants us to search for him. Eternity in our hearts gives us an innate knowledge that we are eternal beings, whether we are good or evil.
- It is a communication by God to man that God is real and exists. We are to receive this communication of knowledge by faith as well.
- His desire to protect his image. We are made in his image and he wanted us to have a means of salvation. We are innocent and have not seen God’s reality has the angels have seen and experienced. He wanted us to be with him for eternity. He does not wish for anyone to perish.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 KJV
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
What other way would God use the word eternity? God speaks to us in his word of eternity in our “time” so that we can understand eternity. Peter wrote that a day is like, or is as, a thousand years. Is this literal? I perceive Peter is trying to explain eternity to man in terms of time that we will understand. There are people who believe that 1000 years is a day, but I think it is a comparison. Does eternity have a past? I think that eternity only has a past when God mentions it in his word, or refers to history on Earth. We think of time as past, present, and future. In our thinking we see a past because we have known a past in our dimension of time. Thousands of years to us will seem like eternity. God looks forward I do believe, and we should as well. Looking backward we see our failures, and that may angst our hearts if looked at negatively, or with a heart of a desire for the old life.
How will we know God’s definition of eternity, or “time”? The only way to explain this is to tell everyone to be obedient to God’s word, and at the end of our time on earth we will come to know God’s eternity when we enter it. No matter, we will enter eternity whether we are obedient or not, but our destination will be different if we do not obey his commandments. I want to know God’s eternity by living by faith, in righteousness, and know I have eternal life being able to see light, and partake of life in God’s eternity in his heavens, new universes and earth, and other planetary creations he has prepared for us.
Eternity is God. For he has been and always will be.
Isaiah 43:13 KJV
Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it?
Notes:
All scripture has been taken from the King James Version Public Domain Biblegateway.
messie3vie.fr website, Strongs H5769
