ETERNITY HAS BEGUN

10/27/14

11 He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. Ecc. 3:11

Many years ago when I had first become a Spirit-filled Christian I remember traveling west from my home town in Kansas. I was leaving a Bible Study where several of us had come together to meet in a farm home a few miles out in the country. As I was driving and looking at the surrounding landscape, I noticed the sky as it turned a pale pink and orange, with blended cerulean blue and grayish tones in it. It was late fall. My thoughts were steered towards eternity for some reason, because I knew that my home was there.
And yet, it wasn’t really a thought at all; it was a realization, it was a sense of time. I saw myself in the reality of the framework of eternity.
For I knew in the existence of eternity and had framed its parameters within my own mind and limited understanding. But I was caught-up, as it was, in seeing that my present moment in time somehow blended into the everlasting. I knew that I was to live forever, and that reality struck me with such a force that there was no denying it.

We are told in Eccl. 3 that God has set eternity in our hearts. We have this assurance that eternity is set there and we believe it. But to experience it now is quite different. We are told that we have this hope and that God has set aside a place for us.

11 He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. Eccl. 3

But what I'm' trying to get at is that our time now that we are living in is like a road that travels off into eternity. We are on that road now; it is never-ending. Yes, death will overtake us at some time, unless we are of those who will live and will see the Rider on the White Horse before death overtakes them. Now we have a foretaste of what is to come, and yet we need not wait. For now is eternity. Now time in our limited way of understanding it, will not end, but will blend into the realm of timelessness.

God as we know lives beyond time and space. He sees the past, the present, and the future all at once. He knew us from the beginning. He knows our future. He knows what will unfold as his prophetic time table opens up more and more. Yes, we have free will, and we have choices. But he sees us through the eyes of his son, and his eyes are set on eternity.

We are spirits living within this framework of flesh and blood. Our spirits are what is eternal, for we are made in the image of God.
Either way we will live in eternity, whether it is with the Lord or away from his presence for eternity.
Eternity is defined as infinite or unending time. It is a state to which time has no application. It is timelessness. Some label it as endless life after death, and yet, what I am saying here is that we are now on that endless road.

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: I John 5: 13-14

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish , but have everlasting life. John 3:16

2 In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. John 14:2

When we've been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we first begun.

Stephen Hanson