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Time. Past, present, future. We have no difficulty comprehending the passage of time in these terms for this is what we know experientially from the time of our physical birth to the time of our physical death. It is when we attempt to contemplate the existence of God in terms of the eternal and eternity that our mind is stretched beyond its intellectual capacity and must therefore, thankfully, resort to spiritual faith in order to believe in something that we cannot otherwise intellectually comprehend. God has always been there. What was before that-God. And what was before even that-God...

God, He Himself not being constrained by time itself, but rather that time is a thing of His own creation-something which He Himself dispenses; as we see in Ephesians 1:10, "That in His dispensation of the fullness of times..."

It is useful therefore to herein consider how God looks at things from His point of view in that He is always in the midst of eternity. For Him time in the past recedes forever without beginning and likewise proceeds into the future forever without end; He sits, unmoving, always in the static midst of eternity. Everything that we perceive as being existential issues forth from Him as He sits in the static, unmoving midst of eternity. Christ Jesus has entered into this state of eternal being with Him. Since He does not experience the constraints of time as we perceive them; past, present and future; it is for Him always the same, constant, static state of being; it is always the same time-it always being the midst of eternity...therefore He says of Himself, "I AM".

Incorporated within this concept is the fact that as the flesh and bone man, Jesus Christ, has been resurrected by the Father and restored to this eternal realm beyond the constraints of time, it so being, that this same man, Jesus Christ, who died upon the cross in order to secure our redemption is the same man who appeared to Abraham before the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. He is the same man who wrestled with Jacob. He is the same son of man (who was the Son of God) who stood with Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego in the midst fiery furnace. He is the same man who appeared on numerous occasions to the Patriarchs of the Old Testament-at the same time both before and after His crucifixion...

In this thing God, being statically in the midst of eternity, looks at Abraham and sees the nations that he would father and likewise He looks at those nations and sees Abraham. He looks at Jacob and sees the nation of Israel that Jacob would father and conversely He looks at the nation of Israel and sees the individual Jacob.

Whereas we tend to look upon any group as being made up of the individuals of which it is comprised God, on the other hand, looks at a group as being one "body" or individual. We perceive things similarly when we refer to "the body politic." God looks upon His church as such, it being both "the body" of His Son, Christ Jesus and also the Bride of Christ...the personification of the group as an individual.

Likewise with "the beast" of the Revelation, in references to it in the Scriptures it is referred to seemingly as an individual and the use of individual personal pronouns are applied to it when indeed it is a group of individuals; an organized, governing body which comprise that "body politic," initially installed by Babylon, that will exercise global control at the End of the Age and which will eventually have as its leader the individual personage of the False Prophet/Anti Christ...

Learn more about this author, Mike Kottke.
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