HoHum:
Age to age He stands; And time is in His hands; Beginning and the End, Beginning and the End
WBTU:
Exegesis of Isaiah 43:9- 13
Vs. 9
This is probably alluding to the prophecy about Cyrus again considering vs. 14. Because of uncertainty of that time the pagan nations will seek comfort from their own gods.
God is calling them into assembly to present His case before them.
Vs. 10
The people of Israel are the witnesses and so will be the Messiah.
God knows that there are no other gods. Must be cautions however. “Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.” 1 Corinthians 10:19, 20, NIV.
Vs. 11
The true God is the self-existing, eternal, and Unchanging Being.
God is going to deliver the Israelites through Cyrus is alluded to here in the word “Savior”.
Vs. 12
God has not merely “revealed” truth about himself to them, nor has he merely “saved” them, nor has he merely “proclaimed” the meaning of what he has done. He has done all 3 together and simultaneously so that his revelation is a complete one.
It is the Living God who has revealed Himself to us in His Word.
Foreign god- “The LORD alone led him; no foreign god was with him.” Deuteronomy 32:12.
Vs. 13
before the day was (before the creation, and, consequently, from eternity) I am he."
God is a being from eternity and He was in this world before there were either idols or idolaters (truth is more ancient than error); and God will go into eternity, and will be worshipped and glorified when idols are famished and abolished and idolatry shall be no more. Truth will keep its ground, and survive all opposition and competition.
God not only foretold what no one else could foresee, but has done what none else could do.
On God Isaiah bases all his hope and confidence. A vision of the Everlasting God dominates Isaiah’s thoughts. The Everlasting God, the First and the Last, the Living One, whom we meet in Isaiah 40-48, is the one on whom all our hopes must rest.
Want to dwell upon time some more to understand something about the open theists position. In part open theism is a reaction against one of the dominate theories of God and time that has been largely accepted as truth that might not be truth. They have a point, even if it is an overreaction. What is this theory?
Complete timelessness or simultaneity- With God there is no succession of moments in any sense. The whole of God’s being, including everything that He experiences, exists in a beginningless, endless, eternally unchanging NOW, in one eternally enduring simultaneous moment. From God’s perspective, there is no past or future. In other words, there is no sequence of thoughts in God’s mind; He is eternally thinking the same, all inclusive thought.
According to this theory, this simultaneity also applies to God’s actions. Though His actions occur sequentially within creation, from God’s perspective they are not sequential but simultaneous. Everything that God does- creation, incarnation, atonement, judgment day- is performed at exactly the same time as one all inclusive, complex act in the one eternal NOW.
This also means that none of God’s activities are never not occurring. God never begins to do anything or never ceases to do whatever He does. His one timeless act is forever the same, since for a timeless God there exists nothing except the single, eternal, changeless, frozen present. What is the problem with this?
If this is true then God is never not creating, never not incarnate, and never not suffering the penalty for sin. (I have used this many times to explain how Jesus Christ is still paying the penalty for our sins. Because He is timeless, He is eternally suffering the penalty). This is problematic because then the doctrine of creation out of nothing becomes meaningless. God is never not creating. This thought of a timeless God for whom everything happens simultaneously in one all inclusive, eternal, unchanging moment is incoherent and even bizarre
Thesis: What is a more logical and Biblical understanding of God and time that does not force us to forsake God’s foreknowledge?
For instances:
Without Beginning or end
When we think of eternity we think of unending time. Timeline that extends without limits in both directions, past and future. God has existed from eternity past and will continue to exist into the eternal future. God is the Great I Am.
God has existed from of old (Psalm 55:19), from eternity (NASB, Isaiah 43:13). He is from everlasting to everlasting (Psalm 41:13).
How are we to understand the Scriptures which suggest that God does not count time as we do. “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” 2 Peter 3:8, NIV.
To God one period of time in this universe is no more significant than any other period of time. What is actually a long period to us is no more than a short one to God.
Only God has existed from eternity past. Everything in creation had a beginning.
It is God’s will that human spirits shall continue to exist forever into the future, but this does not mean that they have always existed.
Outside the flow of time
God is unlimited by the flow of time and not bound by its limitations. In our world, there is a sequence of past, present, and future as measured by change and motion. The critical moment in time is always the present; and the present is constantly moving along like a sliding marker, like the bow of a ship cutting through the water. Another illustration, it is like one great cosmic hoop through which the whole universe is jumping at approximately the same time. All other time is relative to the moment of passing through the hoop (the present). The present is the moment of experience, the arena of action and motion.
We experience the awareness of the sequence of past, present, and future. We all move along with the flow of time, sharing a common present. We are personal beings so we are conscious (remember self conscious this morning) of being in the present.
This moment of the present is the fixed point of experience and consciousness for the creature. We are limited to a single point of consciousness by the nature of time. We cannot go back into the past, nor can we go forward into the future. This limiting is not a curse; it is part of the good creation and part of the very meaning of creaturehood.
God is different from creation in respect to time. God is outside the flow of time in that His consciousness is not restricted to the single moment of the present as distinguished from the past and the future. God’s transcendence of time is mostly incomprehensible to us.
Isaiah 41:21-26 declares the inability of anyone besides the true God to break out of the limits of time. The Lord declares His sovereignty over time in Isaiah 42:8-9.
Because God stands above time and can see it all from the beginning to end, God is able to “plan ahead” as it were. God can project His own purposes into the fabric of the future, announce His plans, and then carry them out as announced. Only the true God can do this!
An alternative to complete timelessness or simultaneity
Time is one of God’s attributes. God exists along His own timeline, an eternal timeline; in some sense He exists “in time.” Does this mean that God is subject to time as some kind of higher force to which He must bow? No, this means that time is part of God’s own essence or being. Time is an attribute of God in the same way that logic is. God cannot make a square circle, why because it goes against logic! Law of non contradiction. Time is same way
God’s thoughts and actions are not locked into one single, unchanging, ever frozen NOW, but are experienced by God in an ever progressing now. We cannot say that the whole of history literally exists simultaneously in a single moment, an eternal now for God. When God acts, He acts in the present. Once the present has become the past, it is unalterable. God can no more change the past nor interact with the past than we can. Likewise God must wait for the future to become the present before entering into it, though God many have planned and prophesied a particular action long in advance.
Must understand that God’s knowledge is not limited to the now. Our past, present and future do not exist for God as far as His knowledge is concerned, but they do exist as far as His actions in relation to the world are concerned. God is not bound by time. To be truly bound by time is to have consciousness only of the present, as is the case with us.
Revelation 22:1-5- Look up and read
The only time most people think about eternity is at funerals. “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart.” Ecclesiastes 7:2, NIV.
