I decided to read through What the Bible Teaches, by R.A. Torrey again. It’s a great book – you can download a free PDF here – so we’re doing a little Bible study every Thursday. Subscribe over there to make sure you don’t miss anything, but come back and add your voice in the Comments! >>>
This may sound funny to say, but I think the eternal nature of God is one of my favorite things about Him. It is at once inexpressibly comforting, and quietly terrifying.
(I just deleted the word “terrifying” a dozen times and replaced it with more accurate, literally understood terms like “humbling” and “awe-inspiring,” but none of them quite capture the expanse of the sensation, so I’m letting terrifying stand regardless of how you may judge my theology by it.)
Torrey’s only states three propositions in this short chapter:
- God is eternal.
- God is unchangeable.
- God is self-existent.
The fact that God is unchanging should be a believer’s greatest comfort in any situation or any season.
People like to say that there’s nothing that God cannot do, but I don’t think it’s true. God cannot be unjust. He cannot be unmerciful. He cannot refuse the worst person who turns to Jesus for salvation and forgiveness. He cannot refuse to forgive me when I turn back to him again and again. He is.
I don’t think any human mind can really grasp eternity, or the concept of self-existence, and that’s what terrifies me.
When I was little, before I knew Him, I used to sometimes imagine myself rocketing through space. Beyond Pluto, out of the Milky Way, past the known universes … what would be there? More darkness? More stars? More of the same? Or something new? Every adventure ended in a white-out because even a child’s untempered imagination can’t hold eternity.
Now, I like to sit and think of God the same way. I usually start in fascination, and end up in humility and the fear of the Lord. Who is this God I worship? Who is this God that sees me? Speaks to me? Requests my intercession? Who is this God that I so flippantly complain to when my tiny little finances become too tiny for my minuscule little life? And who is this God that He hears, and cares, and acts?
Sit for just five minutes and consider the eternity of God. Then, let us know what you learned.
It’s nice to hear that little girls ponder the wonders and depths of the starry sky and the universe. It is mind boggling to think of an eternal God who is outside of and independent of that massive creation, yet dwells inside the believer’s heart. Intimate and terrifying at the same time!
I have always had some interest in the universe and in earth history. God is beyond Time and the Universe because He created time and the universe.