“What does it mean to be outside of time?”

Steve Brown:
“What does it mean to be outside of time?” The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s no guru, but he does have honest answers to honest questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase, and worship. So, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hey Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. How you doing?

Steve Brown:
You know you got me into a lot of trouble.

Pete Alwinson:
Really?

Steve Brown:
You know what I did yesterday? Spent the whole morning answering critical letters. And a couple of them were your fault, when we were talking about you. You know, we probably shouldn’t have told people that we have guns, that made some people kind of, I got one from a guy that said he was never going to listen to this broadcast. So, he’s not listening now. So, I can tell you what I told him. I told him, dear so and so, you may be right, but you’re probably wrong. Sincerely, Steve Brown.

Pete Alwinson:
You wrote more than that.

Steve Brown:
Well, I did, I said you ought to trust God, but keep your powder dry.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I mean, you know.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. I just don’t want to want a gun and not have one.

Pete Alwinson:
We’re not trusting guns over God. Come on.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s true. But you know, you never know what’s going to happen in this world, and most people that have guns are law abiding people.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
The Bible says if it’s random violence, you can use the gun. If it’s for your Christian faith, you probably have to take it.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And if you don’t take it, he’ll forgive you later. So, it’s sin now, repent later. That’s Pete Alwinson and he comes in on Fridays. We answer your questions. We love your questions. By the way, check out ForgeTruth.com I keep telling you that and you’ll be glad if you do. We love to get your questions. You can send them to the mailing address

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Pete Alwinson:
All right. Father, we do come to you on this Friday. What a joy it is to come into your presence just for a minute and to remember that we are your deeply beloved and redeemed daughters and sons. We revel in the fact that we’ve been adopted into your family, that our sins have been washed away and that you are continuing to build us into the image of Christ. And so, Father, we just ask that you continue that process. Lord, you know us and, and we run back to you asking forgiveness because we still sin, even though we’re not treated as sinners by you. And so, we confess our sins, Lord, you know us where we need to grow. We ask that you continue your process in us. May your grace so overwhelm us and energize us that we don’t even want to sin anymore. And so, we give you the issues in our life, Lord. And we ask for our pastors, teachers, priests, and all those that will stand and preach grace to us this week-end, may you empower them to be true to your word and Holy Spirit will you fill them as they speak to us. Prepare us to receive your grace. And now thank you for Q&A. Thank you for Steve and all those who do so much behind the scenes here at Key Life. We commit this time to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, this is an e-mail question and we’ve talked about this on occasion. What does it mean that God is outside of time?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Well, I mean, he created time, right?

Steve Brown:
He really does. And time is an artificial construct.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. What do you mean by an artificial construct?

Steve Brown:
Well, we have a timeline everything moves on. You’re married at a, you’re born, you’re married at a certain time, you die at a certain time, but God’s not there. He’s not in that timeline, which is artificial. What is, is. And you get, you get all kinds of things that give you a hint in Scripture. Before Abraham was, I am. You get the Christophanies of the Old Testament where Christ, you get a statement like the Lamb of God, the Lamb of God taketh of the way the sins of the world, from the foundation of the world. What in the world does that mean? Well, it means that all of those things are all present with God right now. And I got that from C.S. Lewis. In his Mere Christianity, he says that we think of things in a timeline, but that God looks at everything at once on a plane. And so, everything is there. Your great, great, great great grandchildren, your great, great great grandfathers Abraham and Moses and Paul. And all of those are present with him presently. And so, when you die, you move into that place instead of the timeline. And so, everything’s different and it answers a lot of questions. I don’t know whether what I just said is exactly true, but I think it’s helpful. You know, it kind of fixes things like how could Jesus, if he was God, pray to himself. Well, he was in the timeline praying to himself, the second person of the Trinity who was not in the timeline. His prayers were there all along. And so, you begin to understand some of the seeming contradictions, to be absent is to be present with the Lord. At the sound of the last trumpet, the dead in Christ. When you go, wait, wait, wait. Both of those things can’t be true. Now, there are ways to deal with those kind of texts, but one of them is that when you die, you’re outside of time. And the time language is no longer relevant.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. So, it solves some big theological issues.

Steve Brown:
It really does.

Pete Alwinson:
But there still are some mysteries because the Bible is written in time and it seems to be linear in how it presents itself.

Steve Brown:
Absolutely. And you know, we can’t think of what it’s like to be non-linear.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
Because we live in the timeline too.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Right.

Steve Brown:
And so does the Bible. And so does the history of the church, all of it. So, to think these ways is to move into an area where nobody’s sure.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. And so, this is where an area of faith, understanding that God is eternal in a way that we are not eternal and that we can trust him, with the future as well. He’s got the future in his hand.

Steve Brown:
That’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
But for us it’s a time thing. For him, it’s a certainty.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. You know, it does say, you know, Calvin said that Scripture was God’s baby talk. It has to be in order for an infinite God who understands what we’re talking about and knows the truth, and we don’t. If he’s going to communicate to finite people like us with pea brains, he’s got to keep the fodder down low.

Pete Alwinson:
And that’s probably the biggest area that it, that this view wreaks havoc on is eschatology, is understanding how all that works out, the resurrection of the body and all that. So, when we die to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. In his eternal present, does that mean we get our resurrection bodies right away? Or

Steve Brown:
Do we get it later.

Pete Alwinson:
later when Jesus returns to earth, which is what Paul says in I Thessalonians.

Steve Brown:
Historically that’s been the way those texts have been dealt with. And I’m just presenting an alternative, Fred Smith used to say, and it was a profound statement and it’s true, he said.

The essence of Christianity is to have a high tolerance for ambiguity.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And he’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
But this is not inconsistent with Scripture.

Steve Brown:
No, no, not at all.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s very, but it is a mystery to us in that it’s not a contradiction, it’s not foolishness, it’s just a mystery. We don’t have the capacity to grasp this intellectually.

Steve Brown:
And the person who asked the question is now saying, thanks a lot, didn’t understand a word that you said. What does the Bible, this is an e-mail too, what does the Bible teach you about profanity?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. You know, always the first one that comes to my mind cause I used to really struggle with this, was.

Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as good for edification according to the need of the moment that it may give grace to those who hear.

You can see I had to memorize it, right?

Steve Brown:
Yeah. I’m impressed.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I’m not even a Navigator.

Steve Brown:
You don’t have to have profanity with it. But with all of that being said, what is called profanity changes with generations. I mean, our language really does change. There was a time when G whiz would’ve been considered profanity. And if I say G whiz, which I just did on this broadcast, people don’t even blink an eye.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. They didn’t say, Hey, Steve cussed on air.

Steve Brown:
And that changes, and you have to recognize. And sometimes without violating the Scripture you taught. And I agree with that Scripture, sometimes strong words are important.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And I think that oftentimes as we grow spiritually, if we’re out of the Spirit’s control, we often do lose our temper.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
And say things that we regret. And so, unwholesome words can be, not even cuss words, but

Steve Brown:
but cutting and hurting words

Pete Alwinson:
cutting and hurting words. Yeah. Unwholesome. And the idea is that our speech ought to be seasoned as it were, results so that we might know how to respond to other people, but also how to build up other people.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Christian’s ought to be more positive, that’s our role in this life, is to bring the positive gospel to people.

Steve Brown:
But sometimes shucks isn’t enough, it’s not seasoned with salt enough.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And so, you need something stronger. R.C. Sproul, we used to teach a course or a seminar on communication. And one of the things I remember he said that any words that to bodily functions or bodily parts are unacceptable.

Pete Alwinson:
Hmm.

Steve Brown:
And then he said, we can talk about the others. And he said some of the things that I learned from him that I just said.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Right. No, I think that’s a really, really good point.

Steve Brown:
Now, why don’t you say a cuss word, so we get some letters and you have to answer the critical letters.

Pete Alwinson:
No, I’m not going to do it, but I will say this, that sometimes a word like. I’m sorry, and I love you, but that’s an absurd statement you just made.

Steve Brown:
Absurd is a strong word.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s strong. You can be strong and not be unwholesome in your life.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. Good point that. Got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.