Tags
creation, faith, insanitybytes22, opinion, origins, perception, time
“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” 2 Peter 3:8
My dad and I used to have some great discussions about the nature of time. He was a physicist and loved to talk about how time was not really linear, nor really confined to our human perceptions of it.
I remember when I was younger, ten minutes could feel like a life time. I’ve been waiting since forever, an eternity. One supernatural near death experience however, and you can re-live your entire life in less than a minute. Time can be a very subjective experience in the human world. Time flies, but time also drags. Sometimes, time ceases to exist at all.
Our clocks and calendars are not really accurate, not scientifically. They require constant adjustments to make them work. We have leap years, lunar calendars, and time zones. A day is measured by the Earth spinning its axis, what we see as the rising and setting of the sun. Right now where I live, “a day” isn’t very long in terms of daylight.
Given the nature of time, I don’t worry too much about people who demand to know how old the earth is or those who claim God could not possibly have created everything in 7 days, or six rather. I certainly don’t get excited about those who shriek at me, “The universe is 13.82 billion years old!” Meh. I once spent 13.82 billion years waiting in line at a grocery store.
So in the Ancient of Days, before there was light…… we would just aim a network of radio telescopes at a distant quasar, kind of like keeping a stop watch running on God? Then the scientists who existed before the earth was even created carefully logged the progress of the universe? Or perhaps we went with atomic time, a second as exactly 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a cesium-133 atom?
Regardless, once the earth was made, the darn thing has always insisted on not keeping perfect time for us. It’s like a really cheap watch, most uncooperative. The liquid core causes us to spin faster…. or slower, at least in theory. This causes the need for more adjustments so we periodically must add leap seconds. As far as I know, we’ve never had cause to subtract a leap second. The earth apparently likes to speed up far more than slow down. The change is very slight however, perhaps in a hundred years it would amount to two minutes.
Of course, in a universe that is allegedly 13.82 billion years old, we’ve only understood these things for about 40 human years. To suddenly declare ourselves experts on the nature of time and insist that God Himself got it all wrong, is a bit arrogant to say the least.
There are 13.82 billion variables in our discussion of the nature of time, many of which we do not even yet understand. The speed of light is the fastest thing we know of and yet according to scientists who study the big bang, there was inflation, a time when the universe simply doubled it’s size in less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. The edges of the universe itself somehow managed to travel faster than the speed of light. That of course is impossible, in theory anyway.
Impossible too, at least at the moment, is time travel and teleporting into another dimension. We haven’t even pondered wormholes yet. Warp drives. Black holes.
My point being, time is simply not written in stone.
“For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” – Psalm 90:4
Salvageable said:
We are accustomed to linear time, flowing like an ever-rolling stream; but God sees all time at a glance, however much time has occurred since he created the heavens and the earth, and however much time remains before Christ returns in glory to make everything new. Physicists now speak of another dimension of time, which they call imaginary time, in which matter/energy can spring into being in what they call a singularity. Only God knows for sure when the singularity we call the universe began to exist. When I see him face to face, he might tell me that thirteen billion years is correct and that I took the opening poem of his book too literally. If that happens, I’m sure we will both have a good laugh over my mistake and proceed to enjoy the new world together, along with all his people from every time and every place. J.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Amen, Salvageable. There are so many things beyond even our imagination. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
I often laugh about things being written in stone. God once actually gave us commandments written in stone….and we promptly broke them, literally. I sometimes imagine God saying, “now see, this is why you people can’t have nice things.” And of course, even when he made us a new set, we’ve been breaking them ever since.
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dawnlizjones said:
Brilliant. Period.
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Joseph E Bird said:
There are thoughts and ideas in this post that will find their way into one of my stories. Excellent post, IB.
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insanitybytes22 said:
How delightful! I can hardly wait for you to tell us a good story…. 🙂
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Mel Wild said:
“I certainly don’t get excited about those who shriek at me, “The universe is 13.82 billion years old!” Meh. I once spent 13.82 billion years waiting in line at a grocery store.”
Haha! Loved this line. Amen. As Einstein told us, it’s all relative. 🙂
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Rebecca LuElla Miller said:
Me, too. Laughed out loud! :-v
Becky
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Susan Irene Fox said:
“Meh. I once spent 13.82 billion years waiting in line at a grocery store.” Kinda says it all, doesn’t it? I long ago stopped listening to theologians argue over doctrine and dogma, jots and tittles that are truly meaningless without love, without an intimate relationship with God. Time is one of those on the odd spectrum of theological arguments that cause division rather than unity.
That said, Happy and Peaceful New Year.
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Julie (aka Cookie) said:
and then there was blessed Padre Pio and his whole bilocation business…but I digress 😉
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mltrautz@yahoo.com said:
I have waited a billion years in traffic before. It really is a wonder.
I remember all the stories I have heard of people talking to spirits/angels and how time is a human concept. Like everything human, it can’t be perfect.
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Dan Ledwith said:
Love it! Reading your posts is always time well spent… Linear or not. 😉
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dawnlizjones said:
Then there’s the argument of infinite regress. DAYYAYAAAYYYAHHHH!!
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newenglandsun said:
why are you being so rude and disgusting?
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newenglandsun said:
I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU CHOOSE TO RIDICULE VIRTUALLY EVERYONE ON YOUR BLOG!!! WHAT MAKES YOU SUCH AN ENTITLED BRAT?!?
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newenglandsun said:
SERIOUSLY WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU???!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?????@@?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????
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insanitybytes22 said:
Well,I have some idea of what is wrong with me. Would like that list in alphabetical order?
Have I now inflamed the tempers of time travelers or something?
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newenglandsun said:
YES! I WANT THAT LIST ASAP!
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newenglandsun said:
What’s wrong with me:
A: Autism
B: Boy
C: Claustrophobic
D: Dumb
E: Engulfed by demons
F: Fired
G: Gutted
H: Havoced
I: Ill
J: Just not doing well
K: Killed (wish someone would)
L: Lost
M: Mad at things
N: Not here in mind
O: Only wanting everything to go away
P: Pulled in a multiplicity of directions
Q: Quitting on everything
R: Run-over
S: Sat on
T: Totaled
U: Unemployed
V: Vexed
W: Whipped
X: Hexed
Y: Yoked
Z: Zapped
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insanitybytes22 said:
Well shoot, I see you have a real list! I’m so sorry you’re having such a hard time. Breathe, it’s going to pass, it’s going to be okay.
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newenglandsun said:
will it? or will it get worse and worse? people getting killed in other civilised parts of the world and soon it will spread here…
not to mention getting crushed and force-fed a liberal, anti-christian agenda here at home…
and then a demonic book was a christmas present. a biography of mother theresa written by an obvious heathen who basically just wanted to harp on the saint’s faith. i didn’t know whether to return it or to put into the pile of fire-wood after i discovered what was written on its pages and it still is haunting me…
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insanitybytes22 said:
It will not get worse. This too shall pass, I insist on it. You sound like a survivor of the holidays to me. You need to debrief and get your peace back. Breathe.
Sorry about the book! Mother Theresa is always getting picked on. I have no idea why.
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newenglandsun said:
It’s all an act of the demonic. Satan and his minions who have thrown out their free will in order to descend to darkness hate her because she is one of the closest to God in our modern age. So he calls on these mind-controlled people to rage against her the most because he has declared war on God long ago and so he attacks God’s saints as well. It’s a very theological explanation, my friend 🙂
The book is way out of the house but the effects of seeing what was written still linger…it’s one of those things where being exposed to something demonic leaves an effect on you for a while. I used to be a Satanist. There is no meaning in waging war on God as these people who hate Mother Theresa do. They’re all Satanists (in the general sense of being servants of the Devil) as well–they just don’t realise it because he’s good at deceiving people into thinking their free when they aren’t.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Well, I would suggest sweeping your floor. Crazy, I know, but you really need to sweep all that dark stuff away, and praise God for His protection.
Sweep and sing praises. It always works for me. 🙂
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newenglandsun said:
🙂
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newenglandsun said:
i’ve been trying to sweep the dark stuff away…
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insanitybytes22 said:
Good for you. Focus on something positive.
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newenglandsun said:
WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME?!?
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insanitybytes22 said:
I’m guessing I was probably away from my computer. I actually do that from time to time. Work, family, life, they all interrupt my blogging sometimes.
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SLIMJIM said:
Good post on time. I think time is one of those things that God has allowed us to think about to confound us that we don’t have it all together even with what we know or think we know. Even defining it is difficult but yet even the less intellectual one of us know it. And there is that relative aspects you mentioned in this post such as measuring a day, day light, etc.
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