…before all ages, now and forevermore!
The nature of time is an interesting and much-debated topic. It exists to help us navigate life by dividing our experiences up in three ways: past, present, and future. God’s view of time is different than ours (See Psalm 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8). In fact, time may not have any meaning in heaven except as it relates to our world and our need for temporal structure.
Jude writes that God is God, “… before all ages, now and forevermore!” He is covering all the bases. There never has been a time when God wasn’t God. There never will be a time when God is not God.
Why is this important?
When we choose to believe Jesus is God’s Son, the Christ, we choose to trust that he is who the Bible says he is. There is a whole bunch of stuff that is confusing if we trying to fit it into human terms. After all, how could God be three “persons?” How could Jesus exist before everything was created and then be born as a baby boy two thousand years ago? How could he allow himself to be killed and then show up again three days later?
The answer is that we don’t know. That is the mystery of faith. And yet faith in Jesus is not unreasonable any more than faith in atoms is unreasonable. After all, who has ever seen an atom? We have seen pictures of atoms made by machines that we trust. People believe what the machines show us because … well … we trust the scientists who tell us what the pictures mean. Anything more requires faith. Faith in the machines, faith in the scientists, faith in the science.
Like a science book, the Bible gives us the facts about God. In the Bible, God has recorded the history of his contacts with the human race and the content of what was said and done. He has validated this information with a people he called to be his own, the Jews. He has given the Jews a small parcel of land in the Middle East and even now, at the end of days, has returned his people to their land.
The evidence for the validity of the Bible is extremely strong. It is more convincing than the evidence for the existence of the atom. I say this because the atom is a relatively recent discovery in the history of science and as our knowledge of atoms grows, our understanding changes with new data. God is unchanging. (Hebrews 6: 17, 13: 8) In contrast, the Bible doesn’t speak to changing ideas of who or what God is, but rather reveals who God is.
Application: Read the letter from Jude from beginning to end. Read it out loud.
Food for Thought: How much time does ‘’now” include?
That is an interesting question brother. I would love to hear a scientist try to define how long “now” lasts. It appears to me to be a thin line separating past from future. That line is moving on a continuum that keeps converting the present into the past as it moves into the future.
From God’s perspective our lives are like a blip on that timeline. They are a mist that appears and vanished as we are told in the book of James. Jim Elliott once said: “He is no fool who loses what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Faith in Christ and investing in His work is how we impact that ongoing timeline for an eternity.
(Edited to include Rich’s correction – Jeff)
The answer is that we don’t know. That is the magic of faith.
I would rephrase that ‘magic of faith’ to now read ‘mystery of faith’.
NOW is all we have at any given moment. It is our full life hanging on whatever we decide to do next- the ‘now’ then.
Now is also where our past and our future , like tectonic plates, rub together.
As unpredictable as our future may be, it is our past(in my experience) that holds us captive. Bad decisions, bad experiences, wrong friends, and poor judgements, all can hold us captive and unable to enjoy our ‘now’.
The future, the unknown , can be frightening. There is something about our past that is known that the future lacks.
This narrow band of time, this now, is why we pray… this is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice in it. He is our guiding light.
Anon-
Thank you for your suggestion about using the word “mystery” rather than “magic.” That is an important distinction. I agree completely.
(Post corrected.)
I remember one day when my youngest daughter told me she wished one of her friends would grow up. I explained, “boys never grow up, we just get bigger bodies.” She reminds me of this little piece of homespun insight every now and then and we have a chuckle. At 76 I celebrate birthdays like everyone else but I know they are just a world thing. When I accepted Christ, I received eternal life, so I will never die, I will simply change bodies, and finally grow up.
As a young christian, I kept God in a box. (Imagine, the clay keeping the potter in a box.) As time passed, I kept trading for a bigger and bigger box, then one day I threw the box away. I had finally accepted the fact that God is beyond my understanding, cannot be contained, and I have peace knowing this.
God Self-existent, Self-sufficient, Eternal, Infinite, Never changing, All Wise, All powerful, All-knowing, Holy, and more. God lives in NOW, there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, with God it is always now. It makes my head want to explode, I cannot comprehend the reality of God and this is why I threw my box away. I know He loves me, which is more than I deserve and I am happy to be His clay.
Thank you all for your answers! They are all excellent!
The reason I asked that particular question was because of the way Jude phrased his reference to time. He begins with “before all ages.” Some translations phrase this, “before all time.” Then he refers to “now.” I wondered, “Did Jude mean to miss the time between the beginning of the ages and now?” It was then that I started to realize that “now” could mean all “nows” from the beginning to the end of time. This only makes sense if we accept that God is outside of time and we, like fish in an aquarium, are inside of time.
As I look over all of your responses, I think all of the answers agree. There is a mystery to “now” that transcends a particular moment. It is not a particular “now” that is no longer now but some now in the past. It is what might be called the eternal now.
Great question Jeff. My page will often be blank until I post, then the comments of others show, which is good. It’s great to see the thread of agreement as we come in from different viewpoints. Live in the now.
Thank you all. I appreciate your comments and learn from them.