Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Does the great God of heaven, the Creator of the cosmos, care about "time"? Isaiah 57 says that He is "the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy" (vs. 15). Can anyone who "inhabits eternity" care about us down here who are immersed in the limitations of time? Care about us who get anxious because of delay?
To put the question a different way, Does He care when the second coming of Christ will take place? Or does Jesus have His own way of looking at "time" so that when He tells us "Behold, I am coming quickly" (Rev. 22:7), He actually means something wholly outside our perimeters of consciousness?
As one writer for a respected church paper said, could it mean another 400 years before He comes? Has God used the words "quickly" and "soon" with a meaning totally different from what we humans can understand? If a father tells a little child, "I am coming home soon," when he means 50 years, is that not being deceptive?
The Son of God stepped down low, relinquishing His prerogatives of divinity (but not His divinity!) and became one of us, "Immanuel, ... God with us" (Matt. 1:23). So, "in Christ," He has subjected Himself to the limitations of time, for our sake.
He gave us the holy Sabbath, which is "time" set apart for sanctification. He "blessed ... and sanctified it" (Gen. 2:3). Yes, He that "inhabits eternity" is immersed in time! He has given us certain specific time prophecies in Daniel and the Revelation that make eminent good sense.
Christ Himself is more desirous, perhaps anxious, for "the marriage of the Lamb" to come, than we are. Christ in His glorified state is still human as well as divine, "with [us] always" (Matt. 28:20). He is an eager Bridegroom longing for the marriage day to come! In divine/human impatience, He finds it hard to "wait."
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: July 27, 2001.
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