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Time is.

Let me explain. God says "I AM that I AM". In Ecclesiastes Chapter 1 we read: "9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no anew. thing under the sun. 10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. 11 There is no aremembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after."

Now let's discuss time in a different way. You go on vacation with your camcorder and you tape your children, your friends and anything else. You do this for archival purposes of what? The answer of course is "a special time in your life". That video tape has a beginning, it has a middle, it has an end. You can pick the tape up and hold it. All the "time" you recorded is existing at once in that tape in your hand. Suppose we setup three rooms. In each room we have a VCR. We decide to take the vacation tape and run it through all three VCRs in sequence. Room 1 sees the tape first, room 2 next sees the tape, and finally room 3 sees the tape (the take-up reel is in this room). In essence room 1 is visiting a different time than the other two rooms. Why? Because time co-exists. It simply matters where you are in time. Somewhere you are being born, somewhere you are middle aged, somewhere you die. God is omnipotent and omnipresent because he can view time in all three rooms at once.

Summarizing, God IS. All time coexists. You occupy one of the "rooms" in time.

Posted September 7, 2001

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This is indeed a good question because of the very fact that it is posed to a pastor instead of physics professor. Our age of technology tends to restrict "time" into the realm of physics where, nevertheless, two intrinsically different "times" are studied -- the relativistic time of the cosmos and the molecular time of quantum mechanics. Fortunately by its naughty nature it ventures into the interdisciplinary domain of artificial intelligence and further into domains of cognitive sciences, humanity and aesthetics. I think time does have multiple dimensions which are mutually irreducible -- finely cutting out the unit of time, a second, as 192631770 cycles of the frequency associated with the transition between two energy levels of the isotope cesium 133 does not undermine the tangible sense of its unreversable flow in our experience, just like gaging the 7000A wavelength does
not explain away the redness of the color red. Physical time should not be confused with mathematical time, clock time, experiential time, or biological time -- assuming for a moment that these concepts can be well defined. After all, "What is time" is a legitimate inquiry for a plumber equally as for a philosopher, a poet equally as for a physicist, a biologist a psychologist, a materialist a Christian, yielding a unique answer for each of them.

Nichols, in 1891, wrote the first review of time in psychology, in which is a catch-all passage that I like:
"... Time has been called an act of mind, of reason, of perception, of intuition, of sense, of memory, of will... It has been explained by 'relations', by 'signs', by 'luminous trains', by 'blocks of specious-present'... It has been declared 'a priori',
innate, intuitive, empirical, mechanical. It has been deduced from within and without, from heaven, and from earth..."

However, one stumbling block for the psychological analysis on time is the difficulty in identifying its "organ" of perception(like eye for vision); or pointing to a physical continuum(like the wavelength of light) for objective measurement. Thus there is no
immediate point to launch an "objective" research.

Steven Hawking's "Brief History of Time" is of course most readable and sensational, and does enlighten with its methods and offers food for thoughts. He also analyzed "three arrows of time" in physics in some other popular essays on cosmology. There was a thought-provoking passage on the time arrow characterized by growing entropy in any closed system in nature, and the asymmetry that we remember the past but not the future... I had fun absorbing the ideas but took caution in taking that as a fundamental paradigm, since the author is iconized by the general readers and getting closer and closer to declaring himself as God.

Two thorough philosophical works on time -- "History of the concepts of time" by Heidegger, and Oxford
philo-serie book "The philosophy of time" -- are rigorous in their treatment but leaning toward pedantry. Feynman's chapter on time in His "Six Not-so-easy Pieces" and Peter Coveney's "The Arrow of Time" are best for amateur science-lovers. With some bias :), I found Sklar(my former professor in Univ. of Michigan)'s "Physics and Chance" gives very good insights with moderate scope and depth in the direction of time(chapter 10 and 11) and irreversibility(chap 8).

"Time's Arrow Today -- Recent Physical and Philosophical Work on the direction of time" edited by Steven Savitt is high on my recommendation list for its organized inclusion of most recent interactions of philosophers and scientists and lucidity. The
occasional chunks of math need not intimidate the readers or break the thematic flow of the book. Meanwhile, despite active updates in the field, legacy works like Lincoln Barnett's "The Universe and Dr. Einstein" remain extremely edifying.

One thing to notice is that ideas on the experience of time are always applications of general worldviews. Kant, for instance, held time to be an a priori construction of the stand-alone, self-contained human mind; while Locke attempted to derive it from external occurrances and "the succession of ideas". Bergson stressed a relational subjective approach from the general ideas of relativity theory(1920). T.S. Eliot, my favorite Christian poet, in his "Four Quartets", used time as an instrument of musicality; a melting pot of sense, memory, imagination and their transcendence by a universal truth; a point of departure for the progress of the soul from commonplace experience; a vessel for change, integration, and redemption--
"But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint --
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetimes's death in love,
Ardor and selflessness and self-surrender..."

I personally am bewildered by the role of time in creation -- is it a bit closer to truth to say that God created time, or time is one of the eternal characters and schemes with and in which he created the universe? "In the beginning was the Word" seems to
suggest that time existed before the creation of the world. On the other hand, the assumption of an "initial point" of time seems to me the shadow from the big bang theory. God could still transcend time as the totality transcends one particular trait, even if
He did not create time(just like He did not create himself, his love etc.) But of course the fact remains that time exists for a purpose. Whitman had a song about "Do I contradict myself? Well then, I contradict myself. I am large, and I contain multitudes". Space and components serve for diversity and colorful richness while opening room for contradictions,
tension and dynamics. Similarly, maybe time serves for rhythm, change, and the beauty of redemption and transcendence as it opens room for unrealized reality and thus for faith.

With all that said, I remember the time I actually pronounced the question "What is "time"? -- a factual question when I encountered the phrase "for a time, times, and half a time" in Daniel. And of course the answer was one brief line yet utterly lucid: "It's a year" :)

Well, these are mere fancies of mine and I hardly think they could be of much "help" since such a question needs much context to be meaningfully answered or discussed... I am actually writing with my own questions on the historical study of Biblical
languages in phonology, grammar, lexis, etc. Given the antiquity of the Bible, this area, embedded in the cultural and social history and ramifications of the scriptures, is of great interest to me. I am a newly baptised member in the SDA Church, Spartanburg, SC; and my pastor James Rochester recommended your website to me. My inquiry is utterly layman and I have had little exposure to western culture since I was brought up in China and came to this country only 6 years ago.
-- If you happen to have some insights or could point me to the resources for my level, I would greatly appreciate that!!

Thank you so very much for your awsome site, your time
and help :)

Ye

Posted September 7, 2001

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I've thought about this myself now and then, and I've concluded that time as we think of it doesn't actually exist. It's mostly a man-madeconcept. Think about it....

For illustrative purposes, let's get a little far-fetched and assume that the earth has two suns, one for each side of the earth (and for some reason we don't burn up from the constant heat). Now assume that man has never invented the clock or any other way of telling time. Without the division of day and night, and without clocks, how do we know when it's time to go to work (or school)? How do we know when it's time to go home from work/school? How do we know if we've slept 6 or 7 hours?

We don't know. The only clue as to the passage of "time" is that our bodies grow and mature, until we die. But that's not "time", that's aging. Animals have no awareness of past and present. Does "time" exist in their world? Do plants know how long they've existed?

In reality, though, we do have day and night. But again, what if we had never invented clocks? The only clue we'd have is when day turns to night and night turns to day. But how would we know what time to perform our daily activities? And how would we know when to stop each activity to start another one? Work until we get bored then do something else?
Stay awake until we get tired then go to sleep?

What time is it in Heaven? The Bible hints that a thousand years to us is but a day to God. If there were clocks in Heaven - or rather, if "time" was a tangible concept, then both us AND God would feel like a thousand years was a thousand years!

But since "time" isn't real, then existing for eternity is easy, because there is no reference point to judge how long you've been around. The big difference between us and the Heavenly realm is that we grow old and die, they don't.

In Heaven there's no day/night, since that was part of creation for humans (Genesis 1:3-5). And it's fairly accurate to say they don't need clocks in Heaven. So, if we here on Earth didn't have clocks, and one day/night ran into the next day/night, and if we didn't grow old and die, therefore having eternity to accomplish whatever we wanted to do.... how long would a
million years feel?

Hopefully the reader can understand what I'm saying here. Basically, time is mostly man-made, and for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist as we think it does.

Posted September 7, 2001

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Time is the starting point and ending point of any event which has happened, or is happening,or is going to happen. Time is only relative to the mortal mind and life of humans,and to the procreation of animals.Time is only applicable to earthly realms.Time is the opposite of eternity,since eternity has no beginning and no end time does not exist in that realm. M. Young

Posted September 7, 2001

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A period of existence that occurs under heaven. ecclesiastes 3:1 ( to everything under heaven there is a season.) I hope this helps. N.J. Reeves

Posted September 7, 2001

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Asking a finite human being, "What is time?" is a bit like asking your cat, "What does the newspaper say today?" When are we going to accept that our finite earthly minds are not sophisticated enough to understand all things? One day, on the way home from work, I started pondering what we might be doing in Heaven for eternity. If we read all the books ever written, learn all the languages ever created, and chat with everyone there, there is still more eternity. I don't know about you, but I get bored very easily. The thought popped into my head, "What do you care? You'll be with Me." I immediately prayed and asked the Lord to forgive my arrogance and desire to try to figure everything out in my own terms. So we live here on earth for a little while then be with our Lord Jesus Christ forever, and with our loved ones who have gone on before us. Thats good enough for me. C. Smith

Posted 9-28-2001

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Time is the period from one event to another. Man measures time by a device. But even then it is still from one event to another. Looking at Ecclesiastes 3:1 is not valid to this question. However, Ecclesiastes 3:2 - 8 can be said to confirm the first sentence.

posted 3-28-2002

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