Saturday, March 19, 2016

Helicopter God.


  I once heard Hal Lindsey, the author of The Late Great Planet, describe the difference between how we view our lives and how God views them.  Hal used the analogy of the Rose Bowl Parade. We sit on the street corner in Pasadena watching one float go by after another. These are the days of our lives. We wait as the days of our lives pass by in a chronological sequential order just as we wait the next flower covered display to motor by.
hal1This makes sense to us because we are trapped on a flowing timeline. It is as if our feet are glued to a long, constantly moving conveyor belt. We can’t get off, nor can we stop it or slow it down.  We see it crawling along toward an uncertain, just out of sight, horizon. Our great mistake is that we think God is sitting on the corner with us or that he is just up ahead or behind us on the conveyor belt.  As Hal pointed out, God is like a helicopter pilot flying over the parade. From His perspective He sees the entire parade of our lives, cradle to grave, simultaneously.

When God looks at us , although he has the option of focusing on a particular point in time, when it comes to our relationship with him, he looks at our life inhal2 total. In fact He viewed your entire existence before He created the material universe. God is not sitting in heaven wringing His hands waiting for us to decide to choose to believe in Him. This concept is laughable. God knows who His children are and from the Reformed view of soteriology, God is actively involved in the construction of the route as well as supervising the entire parade.  

The idea of a being existing simultaneously in eternity past, the present, and eternity future is foreign to our minds. We have no frame of reference for understanding this.  How would it be to live in a realm where action would not be affected by time? One would embark on a trip, perform a task, return and find that the clock had not moved. Actually clocks would be an oxymoron in the presence of God. 

hal5Einstein scratched the surface of with regard to the nature of time with his formula for time dilation. At the speed of light time stops relative to the rest of the created universe.

hal3There are 598 reference in the bible to God associated with the word light. God created light and under the universal law of cause and effect. He must be greater than that which He has created.  For a man to claim God could not have created the universe in 6 days is the height of arrogance and stupidity.                                                                           From God's perspective creation is instantaneous. As God speaks, reality happens. There is no time involved. God slowed things down for our benefit, so we might be able to try to get our primitive little minds around the grandeur of what He did, as well as providing a pattern for our week. The year is based on the circuit of the earth around the sun, the month is based on the circuit of the moon around the earth, the day is based on the rotation of the earth, but what is the week based on. The week is based on a proclamation imposed upon us based on the creation event. 

Exodus 20:8-11  “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,  10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

So how is any of this relevant? We have a society which is quickly sliding toward complete delusion.  Mankind is choosing to bow down and worship at the altar of secularism. We want to do what we want to do with no accountability for our actions. As a result God backs away and actually enhances the delusion.

2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, 12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness..

God uses everything for ultimate good. When 1/3 of the angels rebelled against God, they were casts from His presence with a final destination being the Lake of Fire. There have been no further rebellions in heaven..

2 Peter 2:4-94 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;.The spiritual forces that surround us watch to see how we interact with God and He with us.

hal7Hebrews 12:1-2 (ESV) Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
We will be their supervisors.
1 Corinthians 6:3 (ESV) Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!
hal9 As the unrighteous push the Creator from their sight they build a reservoir of judgment and condemnation against themselves such that God may demonstrate to all creation His perfect and righteous justice. Currently we have this picture of a forgiving grandfatherly God who is willing to wink at our sins but will punish the Hitlers and Manson’s of history. In reality God is an avenging God who will exact payment for every transgression.

Hebrews 10:31 (NLT) It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

We live in a period of grace, but that time is quickly coming to an end. The next dispensation of time will involve judgment and all bets will be called in.

Revelation 14:19-20 (NKJV) So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20 And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs.
We have bhal11een given the gift of time. Time is something the rebellious angels did not have. Time is our opportunity to repent , (metanoya, change of mind).
The clock is ticking.
 
Napkin Theology?

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