Even more, for the first time we will understand God’s own radical power over the time dimension. When His mastery over time is fully displayed, we will wonder what could have been had we not so foolishly limited Him during our short stay on Earth.
It’s About Time—
The distinction between past, present, and future is
only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.10
ALBERT EINSTEIN
When God created time, he made plenty of it.11
IRISH PROVERB
Eternity is very long, especially near the end.12
WOODY ALLEN
Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain what it is to him who asks me, I do not know.13
SAINT AUGUSTINE
When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.
JOHN NEWTON
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.14
LAURA INGALLS WILDER
Since God’s time domain is more real than ours, it is more correct to say Christians shall all arrive in heaven at the same moment.15
LAMBERT DOLPHIN, JR.
High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to the rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by.16
HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON
The shortest possible time is a New York minute. It is the time that elapses between a stoplight turning green and the cabby behind you honking his horn. That time is 0.00000000000000000000
000000000000000000000005 seconds. Physicists call this the Planck time.17
BERNARD J. LEIKIND
Life can only be understood backwards: but it must be lived forwards.
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
The English are not a very spiritual people. So they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.18
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
2 PETER 3:8
SPACE
Just as time was newly redefined by Einstein’s relativity, so also was space. Space and time are inextricably linked. We can’t have one without the other, and both are different than first thought.
It is easy to feel comfortable within the smallness of our three dimensional spatial understanding. The Newtonian view has scientific laws that work, and we have centuries of human experience to rely upon. But our comfort is an artificial one, for the topic of space is not nearly as simplistic as first perceived. We are therefore obligated to take a second look and attempt to understand what God’s deeper reality is like.
Space and the void— When God created the universe, He called into being all that is, including all space, time, energy, and matter. When He spoke, the universe appeared. But exactly where in the void did it show up? Nowhere. And it continues to reside nowhere. He spoke the universe into being and suspended it in the void. If we attempted to send a letter to the universe, we would discover that it has no address.
Beyond the walls of our finite universe exists nothing. If we try to extend our understanding into this nothing, what is it like? Perhaps we envision it dark and cold like outer space. But nothing is not dark and cold, because dark and cold are something whereas the void is nothing. Dark and cold are properties of our own created universe. Such properties, however, end at the walls of our universe. Even the laws of physics exist only within the confines of our universe and do not extend into the void.
Nothing has no temperature, no luminosity, no energy, no matter, no time. And it has no spatial dimensions. This is not a big nothing, stretching for trillions of light-years. Neither is it a small nothing. It simply is a void. We could not take a spaceship to the far wall of our universe and then pass through the wall to continue our journey into the void. There is nothing to enter.
Even as we think about this, it is an overwhelming temptation to picture the void as having dimension. We picture our universe as a bubble suspended in a massive dark blackness. But this is inaccurate. The void is not massive, because that implies dimension—and the void has no dimension. The void is not dark, because it cannot possess the quality of darkness. Perhaps it is best to simply warn ourselves that we cannot imagine a picture of such a void because it has no reference in human experience. It is, by definition, the absence of everything. As we try to picture a void, we will inevitably fail because our picture will never be empty enough.
In the midst of this void—this nothing—God called out His creation. Our universe has temperature and luminosity. It has matter and energy. It has time and space. Specifically, it has dimensions—length, width, depth, and time. But length, width, depth, and time were all created, not preexistent.
In similar fashion, God called us out of the void as well. We exist only because He wills us to exist. “The Biblical teaching is that no creature has a principle of ongoing existence in itself apart from God’s perpetual preservation,” says pastor John Piper. “If God should ever cease to address your body and soul with the command ‘Be!’ you would cease to be. The only barrier between you and nothingness is the Word of God. … Apart from Him we fly into nothingness.”19
Space and dimensionality— Our visible, temporal existence contains three spatial dimensions and one time dimension. In reality, these dimensions are not separate but integrated. Whenever we travel in space, we travel in time as well. We exist in space-time.
But are these four the only possible dimensions? Clearly not. God just happened to choose four functioning dimensions for us and not more—we don’t know why. (In the same way, we do not know why God chose four forces. He seems to like the number four.) The powerful yet still theoretical superstring theory suggests there might actually be nine spatial dimensions, but God has hidden the extra dimensions from visibility by tightly coiling them into incredibly tiny vibrating strings. Other string theories incorporate more than twenty dimensions. This hints that the four dimensions so familiar to us are not the final verdict of eternity but rather an arbitrary condition God chose to use in the creation of this present universe.
God and dimensions— How many dimensions does God inhabit? The simple answer: as many as He wants. God is Spirit. As such He is non-physical and extra-dimensional. He has many options available to Him, among them:
He can be dimensionless.
He can inhabit a large number of dimensions, up to infinity.
He can inhabit a smaller number of dimensions, as He wishes.
God can therefore be anywhere He wishes whenever He wishes. He can inhabit a human heart or an entire universe. He can be next to me suggesting thoughts, while at the same time helping a rice farmer in Vietnam and listening to a child’s prayer in Argentina. Just because this might be difficult for us to imagine does not obligate God to conform to our limited paradigm. To better understand God, it is necessary to fully realize how He is differentiated from His space-time creation. If we can’t first reach beyond our space-time preconceptions, stretching our thoughts up to the greatness of God will be impossible.
Space and miracles— When we understand how radically free God is from dimensionality, it is easy to believe in miracles, or even to expect miracles. For example, Jesus disappearing after visiting with the men on the road to Emmaus;20 angels appearing and disappearing; Philip being transported away after baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch;21 and Jesus walking on water.22 These miracles are easy to explain once we introduce the possibility of operating in and manipulating multiple dimensions. Following His resurrection, for example, on two occasions separated by
a week’s time, Jesus appeared through locked doors to visit with the disciples.23 “Jesus would have no problem passing through the walls of that locked room with His physical body,” explains Hugh Ross, “if He were simply to rotate His body into extra dimensions of space.”24 Such thinking might sound like magic and fantasy, but it is instead consistent with sound mathematics and physics. (Which is not to suggest, of course, that God is bound by the laws of mathematics and physics.)
Space and the afterlife— The current creation, as wonderful and miraculous as it is, will one day end. When that happens, God will supply us with something far better. It is hard to know what kind of dimensionality this might entail, but it will include much more freedom of movement than we now enjoy. This might mean additional spatial dimensions and additional time dimensions as well. The result will be so spectacularly different from anything we currently know or experience that the comparison will make our present limited movement in three spatial dimensions and one time dimension (forward only) seem like shackles.
Space and relative size— When God created, He made some things much larger than our human experience and other things much smaller. In the midst of this range there is an apparent symmetry, as if we were the center point of His creation—which, of course, we are. While this is both interesting and satisfying, it is also instructive to point out that because we are locked into our own size experience, we are blind to much of the rest of creation. Things that are orders of magnitude different from our own frame of reference simply don’t show up on the radar screen of our awareness. “We miss a great deal because we perceive only things on our own scale,”25 explains Los Angeles Times science writer K. C. Cole. “Many times people argue about right and wrong when really what they’re contesting is different reference frames. … Simply blowing up or shrinking down your reference frame can have enormous consequences.”26
In his outrageously zany The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams introduces us to a weird consequence of dimensional scale difference. As the story goes, millennia ago two fiercely opposing leaders were sitting down at peace negotiations to avoid frightful interstellar battle. Meanwhile, far away in both time and space, earthling Arthur Dent uttered the phrase: “I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style.” As he did, a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum, carrying his phrase back to the precise moment and location of the negotiations on the other side of the universe.
The vile warlords sat staring at each other in challenge, with “a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death.” At that precise inopportune moment, “the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately, in the Vl’Hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.”
After most of their galaxy had been annihilated, the warring factions discovered that the battle was a big mistake, and they pinpointed Earth as the source of the offending remark. The remaining forces now joined together in alliance to destroy Dent, Earth, and the entire Milky Way.
“For thousands more years, the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across—which happened to be the Earth—where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.”27
Along with his typical lunacy, Adams presents us with an important illustration. The specific dimensional measurements of our human existence have no cosmic, transcendent, or eternal significance. To be provocative about it, our entire universe might actually be but a tiny subatomic system within a molecule of God’s throne. Remember—as we approach the speed of light, dimension goes to zero. How God will employ this fact in eternity is unclear, but the way He structures our afterlife will surely surprise and please us.
LIGHT
Light is the third entry in our time-space-light trilogy. What is there about light that caused God to show it such favoritism? He decided to single it out for special treatment and gave it properties unequaled in the universe. Even more startling: God equated Himself to light.
Nothing in the created order is equal to the remarkable essence God assigns to light.
It establishes the speed limit for the entire universe.
Its speed is the only constant in the universe.
It is outside of time.
It never ages.
It anchors the laws of relativity.
It is both a wave and particle.
It allows us to see.
It comforts us with its presence and depresses us by its absence.
It conveys the energy and warmth that allow us to live.
It consumes darkness but itself is never consumed by darkness.
It is mentioned as the first thing God created after the heavens and the earth.
It, apparently, has a divine aspect to its nature.
Light is such an ever-present aspect of life that, like all ubiquitous things, we take it for granted. Yet, if the truth be known, when in the presence of light we are bathed by a metaphysical uniqueness that is quite extraordinary.
A few centuries ago we thought of light as bright and warm, but there was no need to go much further than that. In the 1800s, however, light kept popping up center stage in theories and experiments by such luminaries as Faraday, Michelson, and Maxwell. Light was shown to be related to the electromagnetic force and to have a constant speed = c.
Einstein, therefore, had a historical background that contributed to his remarkable work, and other scientists deserve appropriate credit for their insights into the nature of light. Yet it fell to Einstein to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, which he so memorably did in 1905. His publications that year dealt extensively with the nature, properties, and characteristics of light. His paper on the photoelectric effect—establishing that light flows in discrete packets of energy called photons—later earned him the Nobel Prize.
The speed of light had already been established by Maxwell’s equations as c = 186,000 miles per second. Einstein’s work on relativity went further by saying that this speed always remained the same regardless of the frame of reference. Even if one star was moving toward us at 99.999 percent the speed of light while another star was moving away from us at 99.999 percent the speed of light, in both cases the light coming from the two stars would arrive at Earth traveling precisely the same speed—186,000 miles per second.
Furthermore, Einstein’s work proved that nothing can exceed the speed of light. His equations revealed that as an object accelerates, its mass increases. As its speed finally reaches the speed of light, the mass of the object reaches infinity. Obviously, the object cannot go faster because it would not be able to exceed infinite mass. Out of the same equations came the equally startling result that time slows as speed increases. Finally, at the speed of light, time stops.
Light photons— The packets of light called photons are extraordinarily small. The familiar effect of visible light consists of large numbers of these tiny photons streaming out of energy sources. To better visualize what this might be like at the subatomic level, imagine viruses wielding machine guns that shoot staccato laser bullets nonstop. Even this image is hopelessly unrealistic, but it is perhaps a start in the right direction.
To give some idea of the number of photons contained in visible light, consider that:
A flashlight with fresh batteries emits about a million trillion (1018) photons each second.28
A 100-watt light bulb emits about 200 million trillion (2 x 1020) photons each second.29
Light as energy packets— In a remarkable engineering design, God decided to use photons as energy packets. For example, humans need an energy source in order to live, especially for food and warmth. God solved this problem by giving us the sun. In one long-term, slow-burn, nuclear-fusing, stable orb, we now had a source of luminescence, warmth
, and enough energy to produce food.
But there was still one problem. Yes, we had a great source of energy—but it was ninety-three million miles away. How could God manage to get all that energy being produced within the sun across the solar system to His precious creation of planet Earth? The solution was typically ingenious—He would wrap each energy unit in one very tiny packet called a photon and then shoot these packets at high speeds in all directions. Earth would intercept a tiny fraction of the photons emitted from the sun (only one-billionth), yet this would turn out to be precisely the right amount to match our needs. To again demonstrate how small these packets are, every second about a trillion photons of light from the sun fall on every pinhead-sized area of Earth.30
Light and vision— Equally awe-inspiring is the design of the human eye. On the retina are over 100 million rods and cones. These rods and cones are photoreceptor cells that are light sensitive, converting images into electrical signals that can in turn be interpreted by the brain. The sensitivity of the retina’s photoelectric cells is exceptional—as little as one to two photons of light can trigger a visual signal in each rod.
Ageless light— Because time stops at the speed of light, photons do not age. A photon that shot out from the sun and escaped into space a thousand years ago is still not even one second old. “Thus light does not get old,” explains quantum physicist Brian Greene. “There is no passage of time at light speed.”31
“At the speed of light (the highest speed attainable in our universe), time ceases to flow altogether. The time of all events becomes compressed into the present, an unending now. The laws of relativity have changed timeless existence from a theological claim to a physical reality,”32 observes physicist and rabbinical scholar Gerald Schroeder. “Light, you see, is outside of time, a fact of nature proven in thousands of experiments at hundreds of universities. I don’t pretend to understand how tomorrow and next year can exist simultaneously with today and yesterday. But at the speed of light they actually and rigorously do. Time does not pass. The biblical claim that the Creator, existing outside of time, knows the ending at its beginning is not because the future has already physically occurred within our realm of time, space, and matter. Einstein showed us, in the flow of light, the corollary of the Eternal Now: I was, I am, I will be.”33
More Than Meets the Eye Page 17