Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.

• Deuteronomy 29:29

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

• John 3:16

A voice says, “Cry out.”
    And I said, “What shall I cry?”
“All people are like grass,
    and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
    Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    but the word of our God endures forever.”

• Isaiah 40:6-8

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For,
“All people are like grass,
    and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
    but the word of the Lord endures forever.”
And this is the word that was preached to you.

• 1 Peter 1:23-25

The elder,
To the lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the truth—and not I only, but also all who know the truth—because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever:
Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.

• 2 John 1:1-3

Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads.

• Revelation 4:4

The Lord will keep you from all harm—
    he will watch over your life;
the Lord will watch over your coming and going
    both now and forevermore.

• Psalm 121:7-8

“Leonard: Because I want to go back and keep myself from getting a time machine.
Sheldon: You can’t. If you were to prevent yourself from buying it in the past, you would not have it available in the present to travel back and stop yourself from buying it, ergo you would still have it. This is a classic time travel mistake.
Leonard: Can I go back and prevent you from explaining that to me?
Sheldon: Same paradox. If you were to travel back in time and, say, knock me unconscious, you would not then have the conversation that irritated you, motivating you to go back and knock me unconscious.
Leonard: What if I knock you unconscious right now?
Sheldon: It won’t change the past.
Leonard: But it would make the present so much nicer.”

• The Big Bang Theory, Season 1, Episode 14, The Nerdvana Annihilation

First, to tie Revelation 4:4 with the quote: I had a discussion in a Sunday school class a few years ago, before I started teaching again.  We were studying Revelation and one of the 24 elders calmed the Apostle John down.  I suggested that he, himself, calmed himself down, and someone in the class became horribly irate.  I was speaking heresy.

But my point was that John had passed through a door and was now outside time and space.  Most scholars will argue about half the elders, but the other half is generally accepted as being the Apostles.  Thus one of the 24 elders was John, himself, in his glorified state, possibly unrecognizable.  Thus, the apostle John could calm down the apostle John.  Not thinking that possible is a rookie time travel mistake, or in this case, a rookie time and space travel mistake.

Which comes to my point, if Heaven is outside time and space, we would be in all time.

My wife once had a dream.  She dreamed of getting to Heaven and seeing her life in a series of scrapbooks.  There was one difference, the scrapbooks had videos instead of mere photographs.  She opened a few.  She saw her slipping on the lava as she and her Dad walked up a volcano in Indonesia to look at the molten lava inside.  She saw Orangutans hanging from a tree staring at her while she stared at them.  In another scrapbook, she saw herself ice skating across a lake In the Netherlands because walking to school around the lake was much farther.  Then she reached for another scrapbook, but the angel said she was not allowed to look into that one.  It is possible that the last scrapbook had her future in it.

Whether we can see our past or not, in a scrapbook or on the silver screen, we are outside time and space.

My question, that may not be answered until I reach the other side, is, “Are we with Jesus forever or are we with Jesus in all time?”

If we are with Jesus in all time and we are outside time and space, we could conceivably see the moment we were born.  Better yet, we can witness God creating the heavens and the earth.  We are outside time and space. Anything could be possible, but is it going to be allowed?

If we have a choice of seeing our past or seeing Jesus, the past can wait.  Thus, in being with Jesus forever, is it only going to be a fast forward type of thing?  It does not matter who did what in all those controversies that we hear about.  We are with Jesus and that is enough, and our curiosity simply melts away.

The point is that we will be glorifying God, forever, regardless of what “time and space” it might be at the moment.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.