On Eternity

1. How deeply or well you know God?
2. How is your relationship with Him?
3. Do you really know God?

These are 3 of some of the basic questions that all believers should ask to themselves. From these basic questions, we can gauge our level of understanding of HIM being our God. As well as what we should do to be pleasing to Him Lastly, Do we really know how important is our God in our lives?

Today let us go deeper on our understanding of who God really is.

1. THE ETERNITY OF GOD
> Eternity Past and Future
This Psalm 90:2 is from the Homily of John Wesley #54
Eternity – “boundless duration.”

– If eternity is from everlasting to everlasting, it can be thought of as distinguishable in two directions:

(1) Eternity past is that duration that reaches from everlasting, eternity before creation, time viewed as before, the eternity that precedes this now and all past nows, which Wesley calls a parte ante.
(2) Eternity yet to come is the duration that reaches to everlasting, which will have no end, the whole of time after now, everything eternally on the future side of now (a parte post).

Time is that portion of duration that begins when the world begins and ends when the world comes to its final days. We do not see all of time, but only a momentary glimpse, which we call the present. When faith receives God as the Lord of time, everything is changed, all relationships are reshaped, all are reborn, Only the renewed, whole person who is serious about eternity is rightly prepared to work effectively to make a better society.

Wesley offered a practical way of thinking personally about the eternity of God by placing his hearer imaginatively on the brink of a here-and-now decision: think of yourself as deciding now for or against eternal life.

2. TIME

Every moment of time has the fleeting (Short) character of beginning and ending. That is what characterizes it as time. It is not a sad thought that time, which had a finite beginning in God and which has a fleeting present, will have a consummate ending in God. We have great difficulty in grasping the very concept of eternity because of this condition of being so wrapped up in time. It is right here in time that we are called to understand ourselves within the frame of reference of eternity, living life in this world as if accountable to the giver of time.

b. God in the Now

What divides the past and future is now.

God meets us in time, but as the incomparable Creator of time, God is not bound by time. Only one who is simultaneously present with every moment of time can fully know the future and past reaches of eternity.16 That one we call God. 

3. Faith Transforms the Temporal World

The remedy for human despair over ever-passing time is faith. That means coming by grace to trust in the trustability of the Eternal One who gives life. God presides over every individual life as patiently as over the whole universe. Each of us has a short time to live in a bodily sense, perhaps a few decades at most, perhaps no time at all, since even the young and healthy are vulnerable to accidents and illness. But no one, however vulnerable, is deprived of some level of recognition that time is coming and going. 

How Faith Requires Decision

Eternity places a decisive challenge before our lives, calling us to a specific decision: a relation of eternal happiness with the eternal Life-giver, or a relation of eternal misery in turning away from that eternal happiness.

No one becomes eternally happy or miserable except by his or her own choice. Grace provides choice with constant options to move toward the truth.