[BTT006] What Does the Bible Say About Time?

Previous: [BTT005] Creatures of Time, Creatures of Eternity

This is the essential question. As Christians, we can trade personal theories about Time as much as we want, but we must keep our discussion grounded in Scripture. We may compare and contrast what the Bible says about Time with scientific models, but science can tell us very little about how spiritual, non-physical beings relate to time.

Scripture does not give us an explicit explanation of how Time functions, but then again, it doesn't give us an explicit explanation of how the human circulatory system functions either. There is no pull-out chart of human anatomy in the Bible, no discussion of physics. The Bible is not science textbook.

This does not mean that the Bible has nothing to say about time. Some of it is practical, such as verses in Proverbs which exhort us to make proper use of our time. Some of it is prophetic, as with Daniel's “time, a time, and a half a time.” Some of it refers to “times and seasons,” that is to say, the Jewish calendar of feasts and festivals. Instead of throwing up our hands because Jesus never discusses thermodynamics, I think it is appropriate to concern ourselves with what the Scriptures do say about time rather than bemoaning what it does not say.

I've broken this section down into five main parts:

1. The Time Before Time - What does the Bible say existed before the Genesis 1:1? How do angels relate to time? How does God relate to time?

2. The Creation of Time - What does Genesis 1 tell us about the nature of time? What was time like before the Fall?

3. The Fall of Space and the Fall of Time - How has the Fall affected time? What is the nature of time in a fallen world?

4. The Fall of Time and the Three Curses – How do the three curses on the Serpent, Eve, and Adam relate to the Fall of Time?

5. The End of Time – How does the Bible describe the Day of Judgment? What happens to Time when Space is destroyed?

Next: [BTT007] The Time Before Time