WHAT IS THE TIME PLEASE?
Someone somewhere at this very moment is asking this question – what is the time, please? This dimension is sought after for many reasons. Perhaps time does not really exist, but is the relationship between distances covered, activities enacted or events. What we do know is that everything takes time and we measure incidents in our lives by their beginnings and endings.
The bible fails to define time but recognizes its existence. In everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3). The writer continues to identify happenings and beginnings, particularly in relation to our world creation and God’s order of events.
Whatever time is, we are stuck with it and we cannot eliminate it. World history is divided into times punctuated by various outstanding events. Our lives are punctuated by all and every event that takes place.
When we approach the bible let us appreciate that time is fundamental and inevitable.
Time is expressed by scripture in various ways ranging from a ‘moment or twinkling of an eye to the staggering everlasting.
The in-between embraces hours, days, weeks, months, years, seasons, generations, dispensations and millenniums, all relevant to the overall plan of God’s dealings with mankind and reconciliation.
Special persons, patriarchs, prophets, Kings and Nations are interwoven into the pages of history and prophecy. The beginnings and endings are noted and offered as encouragement for us to identify the present and likewise the future.
A particular theme running through the Old Testament is that of the time of the End, the Day of the Lord, Armageddon and Christ’s return.
Most prophets spoke not only of contemporary timing but promoted a particular time for a fundamental theme of scripture – the setting up of the Kingdom of God here on earth. All scriptures promoted this particular theme. To this end, we are given many identifying signals. Nations and their emblems are described, and the apostate and the political are emphasized. Nuclear devastation, international distrust and conflict, social problems, and economic frustration are predicted accompanied by the return of the Jews to Palestine and Jerusalem surrounded by friends and foes alike.
Ethnological migration and of course the wonderful outpouring of the Holy Spirit in this (our) day to provide an escape.
Actually, the bible has drawn together every identification and aspect of man or regions and of sciences to identify a particular time and we say that particular TIME IS NOW.
There are of course thousands of direct and indirect references to timing in the scriptures and one could not attempt to piece the whole story together at this time, but there is perhaps ONE all-important reference to time relevant to us now – today” …I have heard thee in a time accepted and in the day of salvation I have succoured thee.
Behold now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). The New Testament and Paul’s letters to the churches are for our time. The DAY of salvation started and will finish. We are not in the day of old Israel, nor are we in the Kingdom yet to come, but according to the scriptures, we are exhorted to seek salvation TODAY! As we realize TOMORROW may never come and he who hesitates may be lost.
Peter said: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, for the promise is unto you and to your children (timing) and to all that are afar off. Acts 2: 38 …and the same day there were added to them about 3,000 souls…Good timing.