"It
is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a
matter is the glory of kings. "
God wants us to understand his Word; it's just not always simple at first. Perhaps he wants us to show we're serious . . .
Anyway, for many months I've been thinking about understanding how God can be above time. And about all things He created. Some of these things I've posted about, others I have not.
The other day, God showed up during my prayer time with him. Now I want you to understand that God is ALWAYS there when we/I pray. But as I hope you know, there are times when he manifests himself in a way that is "more than" usual. It was so this particular morning. I LOVE it when he does that! And daily pray for it to happen a LOT! Now God is God and shows up this way when he wants to, so I wait patiently for him and once in awhile, am blessed with his presence.
That day when he showed up, it seemed as if a lot of the things I've been working on just gelled- poof! So I'm going to try to write it all out here. Mostly for me, but if it gives you something to think about, so much the better. (Still working on a title . . .)
In the beginning . . . actually BEFORE the beginning . . . was God. We cannot describe him fully with time words, but it's all I got. He just WAS/IS. We say God was, is, and will be. But that's for us, who live in time. One of God's names is I AM. I think that describes him before time (and always). He just AM (IS). That's about as BIG as I can make it in my small mind. He existed as ONE, yet THREE. There was fellowship of THREE in ONE. But at some point (there I go with time words again), he decided to create "others." So he played it all out in his mind, allowing all of us to make the choices we wanted to (free will and all), THEN actually created everything. All at once. The whole time-line in one fell swoop. That's how we can have free will AND be predestined. He KNEW our choices before he created or before we made them and incorporated all of them into his creation. All of them- you get that? All decisions of all people and created beings of all time! Mind blown.
So he created and started the time line. The time line of everything, not just our planet/universe. Whenever he wants to, he can enter/look at any point in the line. He knows it all. To him, every point exists all at once . . . anyway.
I think God is the only being above time. It appears the other Elohim are just as stuck in time as we are. I believe this, because if they were also above time, they could enter time at any point as he does and they would be a whole lot more like God than we would want! And he would want- hence he is the only one above time. Now they ARE in higher dimensions than we are aware of. They do have the ability to move in and out of our physical existence. That's how they can be around us without our seeing them.
Scientists talk of the time/space dimension. However, while I understand their fusing these two together, it appears to me that time is the ultimate dimension. Especially since God is above time and no other being is. What makes sense to me is the next dimension above our third dimension is the spiritual dimension.
At the beginning of OUR time line (as opposed to all creation's time line) He created the heavens and the earth. Stop.
I believe (at the moment) that there is actually a LOT of things that happened between verses one and two of Genesis. What? I don't know, but apparently, Satan fell during this time, since he shows up in Genesis as "the bad guy." AND for some reason, the earth has become formless and void. Did Satan and his fallen cohorts, mess it all up? Did they bring down the beautiful world God created and leave it in a mess? Who knows? (Well, God does. Maybe he will fill us in some day.) I do not believe God created the Elohim as evil. I believe they also had a choice and many chose poorly.
Back up a bit. After the stop. God created other Elohim- beings like himself. Make no mistake- God is THE Elohim. There is none like him. In fact, when scriptures use the term in the singular, it refers to him. However, when it uses Elohim in the plural, it means the other gods he created (small "g"). I think these are all the beings he created at that time. No angels, because angel is not a specific type of created being. The word angel means messenger. So when God sends other Elohim on a mission, they are temporarily called angels. I suppose when they finish, they lose that moniker and go back to being "just Elohim." Hmmm.
So God calls these other Elohim together for his council meetings. Hence the wording in Genesis "Let US make humans in OUR image." There are many scripture passages that mention this council. If you've not seen them before, look them up. They're there. I must admit, I was surprised to find them.
As a part of this council, God named one specific Elohim his "Satan." The term means something like a prosecuting attorney or maybe a "devil's advocate." Actually, I like the thought of a "first officer," because it is the first officer's responsibility to bring up other possible ways to do things- even opposing the Captain specifically to make everyone look at the situation differently. So it was with God's Satan. His role is seen quite clearly in the story of Job.
Perhaps Satan presented another option instead of creating humankind. Either way, since those days he has always been about thwarting God's plan. Ultimately he will not be successful. He only temporarily messes things up. God's plan is too great to be trashed completely. And his plan includes fixing the Satan's (and our) mess.
Interestingly enough, we never get the name of this Satan. You might assume it is Lucifer, but after I read a good book on the subject, I now see that applying the name Lucifer to the Satan, was something someone once thought of (it was a stretch) and the church at the time, decided to go with it, even though it really refers to the bright morning star seen in the sky in those days. Hmmm.
Then we move on to the second verse of Genesis and the story of humankind's creation. I think we were created in higher dimensions, but lost that as well as our purity when we fell. Too bad. I wonder what things would have been like if Adam and Eve had not taken the Satan's bait in the garden. What would this world look like today if we had not fallen? We will one day get a glimpse of that, but until then . . .
Well, that's enough for today. Maybe I'll go further on with this train of thought in a future post.
