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We have covered two of God’s attributes, that He is invisible and that He is a Spirit. Now we shall take up the fact that God is eternal. Once again we may note that these attributes or characteristics of God are connected in meaning to each other. Certainly the fact that God is an invisible Spirit also means that He is eternal, because all spirit beings such as angels, demons, and men are indestructible by nature and are therefore incapable of becoming non-existent. Of course man’s body is destructible, but his inward being consisting of his invisible soul or spirit (the two are synonymous for most purposes) is eternal. All invisible spirit beings are eternal in a sense in that once they have come into existence by creation or by conception and birth, they can never go out of existence. But God is Eternal in a unique sense in that not only shall He never have an ending, He never had a beginning either.

One of the many names of God found in the Old Testament is, in the Hebrew, El Olam, "the Everlasting or Eternal God." "El" is the "generic" word for God found in all Semitic languages. Its plural, "Elohim" is used of the God of Israel over 2300 times. The word olam in Hebrew signifies both limited and unlimited duration, and especially in connection with God, means "eternal." God is called "El Olam" in the following verses:

Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the Lord, the Eternal God. (Genesis 21:33, all Scripture quotations are from the New International Version [NIV] unless otherwise indicated)

"There is no one like the God of Jeshurun [Israel], who rides on the heavens to help you and on the clouds in his majesty. The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. He will drive out the enemy before you, saying, ‘Destroy him!’" (Deuteronomy 33:26,27)

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth." (Isaiah 40:28)

What does it mean to say God is eternal? Well, the most essential thing, as we have said, is that God has always and always will exist, that He has neither beginning nor end. This makes Him absolutely unique, for everything and everyone else has had a beginning and therefore has not always existed. Moreover, He is the Cause, the Creator, of everything else that exists, so that everything that exists owes its existence to Him. It is because of this fact that everything, including men, owes God homage, reverence, thanks, praise, and worship.

God says of Himself,

"See now that I myself am He! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand. I lift my hand to heaven and declare: As surely as I live forever, when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me." (Deuteronomy 32:39-41)

Several verses specifically refer to the fact that God has always existed in the past:

Thy throne is established from of old; Thou art from everlasting. (Psalms 93:2, New American Standard Version)

O Lord, are you not from everlasting?...(Habakkuk 1:12)

Other verses specifically refer to the fact that God will always exist in the future:

My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass. But you, O Lord, sit enthroned forever; your renown endures through all generations. (Psalms 102:11,12)

So I said: "Do not take me away, O my God, in the midst of my days; your years go on through all generations. In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end. The children of your servants will live in your presence; their descendants will be established before you." (Psalms 102:24-28)

We can see here from Psalms 102 that God’s eternity is sharply contrasted with the temporality of man (regarding his earthly existence) and the whole created universe as well. God’s uniqueness is thus emphasized by the adjective "eternal." We see also that His eternal nature is linked with another attribute—His unchangeableness, or more properly, His immutability. All temporal things change, but because God is uniquely eternal, He is also immutable. Because God is the eternal God, He can be depended upon generation after generation without fail or change.

Several verses bring the facts that God has always existed and always will exist together into a single statement using the phrase "from everlasting to everlasting":

And the Levites—Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hidiah, Shebaniah and Pethahiah—said: "Stand up and praise the Lord your God, who is from everlasting to everlasting." (Nehemiah 9:5)

Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn men back to dust, saying, "Return to dust, O sons of men." For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning—though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered. (Psalms 90:1-6)

Once again we see in Psalms 90 the eternity of God contrasted with the fleeting existence of mortal man on earth. "From everlasting," that is, eternity past, "to everlasting," that is, eternity future—God is eternal in the unique sense that He both has as well as always will exist.

As we noted with the fact that God is invisible, often mockers will scoff, as if they were possessed by some superior wisdom or intelligence, "Who made God?" or "Where did God come from?" With many it seems that atheism reflects intelligence while belief in God is regarded as stupidity. But I agree with the Bible—it is "the fool" not the intelligent man who "hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalms 14:1; 53:1, KJV). Again, we should not be embarrassed by these questions in the least, because the obvious response is that God is eternal, He has always existed—this is one of His attributes. And it is not merely a "cop-out." That God be eternal, uncreated, and self-existent is a reasonable and philosophical necessity. As we have already discussed in an earlier article concerning "proofs" of God’s existence, it is impossible for something to come from nothing or for something to cause or create itself. The fact that the universe exists means that it did not come from nothing nor did it create itself. And that the universe has not always existed is now acknowledged by all astrophysicists. Since the universe had a beginning, its cause must be something greater than and outside of itself, and that cause must of necessity be eternal. God is that eternal Cause and Creator.

Besides the fact that it means He has always existed as well as always will exist, what else does the fact that God is eternal mean? It has been traditionally argued by theologians of the past that God being eternal means that He dwells in timelessness, that there is no past or future to Him but only one continuous present. Since He is eternal and had no beginning, He cannot be thought of in terms of time. And, His dwelling in eternity helps explain, it is argued, His knowledge of all future events. He doesn’t see them as future since with Him there is no time; rather, He sees them as though they were present. All of this stems, however, from philosophical considerations, not Scripture. It involves such questions as "What is time?" and "What is eternity?"

Eternity has always been difficult for us to grasp. We are accustomed by nature to think in terms of a beginning and an ending to everything. It is difficult to think of someone or something having no beginning and no end. We can conceive of such a thing as eternity, but to fully grasp it seems beyond the limits of our comprehension. A similar and related difficulty has always been whether eternity should be thought of as an endless duration of time or as the absence of time—timelessness.

Most of us have mused upon eternity at some time or another and noted the difficulty of fully grasping it. But something we may have missed is that time itself is equally difficult to fully understand. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge says,

St. Augustine once confessed that he knew what time was until someone asked him what it was; then he did not know....All efforts to deal with it conceptually run into difficulties. (Vol.15, p.1115)

The World Book Encyclopedia opens its article on the subject with, "Time is one of the deepest mysteries known to man. No one can say exactly what it is." (Vol.19, p.226, 1973 edition). And Collier’s Encyclopedia opens its article, "The concept of time itself is seemingly incapable of definition" (Vol.18, p.372, 1961 edition). If defining and understanding time itself is so difficult, it is no wonder we have a hard time grasping what infinite time or eternity is! Most attempt to define time as "duration" or "the period between succeeding events." From antiquity man has used the motions of the heavenly bodies to measure and compare time, just as God said in Genesis 1:14,

"Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years."

A complete rotation of the earth makes a day, which has been divided up into 24 equal periods called hours which have in turn been divided into minutes and seconds. The earliest clocks were sundials and hour glasses, which gave way to spring-wound clocks and now quartz and battery operated ones. The standard day, due to slight variations in the speed of the earth’s rotation due to friction caused by the atmosphere and other things, is now an "average" or "mean solar day," but even this must be "corrected" from time to time with an extra second. The most exact measurement of time is based on the vibrations of the Cesium atom. By these and similar means we measure the duration between one event and another and call it time. To complicate matters a little further, Albert Einstein in his theory of relativity set forth the idea that time is not constant but variable, depending upon the speed of motion, that time slows down considerably when one approaches the speed of light. One popular charismatic teacher in a fit of "revelation" declared that this explains how God dwells in eternity (meaning timelessness) because "the Word says ‘God is light.’" But of course this is utter nonsense. That "God is light" does not mean actual light at all; otherwise, God would be natural visible electromagnetic energy, including that which streams from automobile headlights or the electric light bulb you turn on and off with a switch!

Time is inextricably bound up with matter, motion, and space, which leads us to the question of whether there was time before the creation of the universe. And of course we must answer that there was not, at least as we know it. Further, since God and heaven are not part of this creation, is there time there? Again, not as we know it. A timeless world would be a world in which there were no motion—everything would be perpetually frozen in place. But since there is obviously motion as well as succession of events in heaven, must there not also be some kind of time there even though that realm is not of this creation? Scene after scene in heaven is depicted and described by John in the book of Revelation in which there is clearly a succession of events—this, "then" that, "then" something else. In chapter six we find this scene:

When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?" Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed. (Revelation 6:9-11)

Clearly the passage of time is depicted in these events, as is evident from the words and phrases I have emphasized in bold italic type.

The contrast and separation of time, on the one hand, and eternity, on the other, conceived of as timelessness rather than the endless duration of time, is an outgrowth of philosophy, particularly Greek philosophy, not Scripture. Nevertheless certain texts have been used to support this and the related idea that God neither dwells in or observes time as past or future but everything as one eternal "now:"

Isaiah 57:15 in the King James Version is often cited:

For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

The contrast is often made between our inhabiting time as opposed to God inhabiting eternity, as though eternity and time were entirely separate realms having no correspondence. But as the modern versions have it, a better rendering than "that inhabiteth eternity" would be "who lives forever" (NIV, NASV).

Another text is a verse we noted previously, Psalms 90:4. After saying, "From everlasting to everlasting you are God," the writer goes on to say,

For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.

This is repeated in 2 Peter 3:8:

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

Peter offers this in response to the scoffers he predicts will come in the last days who will say essentially that Christ is never going to return seeing it has been so long ago since He promised it. Certainly these verses do show that time with God and time with men are two different things, which is quite understandable seeing that He has always existed. But to go further as some do and say this shows that God takes no notice of time and views everything as a continuous present is unwarranted.

Another popular but mistranslated and misinterpreted verse is Revelation 10:6, which, along with verse 5 in the King James Version reads:

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer.

But here the context indicates not that time in general would pass away and cease, but that there would be no more delay in the unfolding and fulfillment of these last things. The NIV reads, "There will be no more delay," and the NASV has "there shall be delay no longer." The next verse follows, "The mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets."

Another text is Exodus 3:13-15 where God appeared to Moses in the burning bush and commissioned him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt:

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you....this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. (KJV)

What is behind God’s identifying His name as "I am that I am" and "I am" is that the sacred name of God, YHWH, is related to the Hebrew verb HAYAH, "to be." However, this may only mean that God is declaring Himself to be eternal and self-existent, not necessarily that He perpetually dwells in present time. Some scholars even insist that a better rendering is "I will be what I will be." It is not good to make too much to depend upon the tense of the verb here.

All this notwithstanding, as I have said, the popular conception of theologians of days past has been that eternity is timelessness and that God does not see time as past and future like we do but lives in one eternal "now." For example, Charles Hodge, in his Systematic Theology, writes concerning the eternity of God:

With [God] there is no distinction between the present, past, and future; but all things are equally and always present to Him. With Him duration is an eternal now. This is the popular and the Scriptural view of God’s eternity....[He then cites most of the texts we have already cited.] What is taught in these and similar passages, is, first, that God is without beginning of years or end of days. He is, and always has been, and always will be; and secondly, that to Him there is neither past nor future; that the past and the future are always and equally present to Him. (Eerdmans:Grand Rapids,MI; 1952, Vol.1, pp.385-386)

Two hundred years earlier, in his classic work on the attributes of God (though incomplete due to his untimely death), Stephen Charnock wrote:

There is no succession in the knowledge of God....all things are present to him from eternity in regard of his knowledge, though they are not actually present in the world, in regard of their existence. He doth not know one thing now, and another anon; he sees all things at once....His eternity is evident, by the name God gives himself (Exod. iii. 14): "...‘I am that I am’....‘I Am hath sent me unto you.’"...This description being in the present tense, shows that his essence knows no past, nor future. (Baker Book House:Grand Rapids,MI; 1979 reprint, Vol.1, pp.284,285,287)

In rebuttal of this view Clark Pinnock writes in his article "time" in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE):

That God is called eternal (Rom. 16:26) does not imply that He is somehow timeless, as though time is real only to humans and not to Him. God is the Lord in the past, present, and future (Rev. 1:4), but this does not mean He exists in all three at once!...God displays His redemptive grace toward lost humanity through the medium of history. His sovereignty over history (Eph. 1:11) is seen in the historical acts of redemption (Isa. 46:8-10)....Divine ingression into history took place most dramatically in the Incarnation. In this event the hour had come, the time was fulfilled (Gal. 4:4; Mk. 1:15)....The religious leaders had failed to interpret correctly the "present time" (Lk. 12:56). Jesus’ coming, and more particularly the hour of His crucifixion (cf. Jn. 12:27), was fixed by the Father, who alone has this authority (Mk. 13:32; cf. Acts 1:7)....When Christ’s work was accomplished, He sat down at the right hand of God to wait until His enemies are made a stool for His feet (10:12f.). Only after Jesus had been glorified was the Holy Spirit poured out (cf. Jn. 7:39). These facts reveal the strict chronological order within which God acts. Nowhere do the Scriptures give the impression that time is an illusion, an idea in the mind of God, for He respects its movement and does not violate it. Much evidence demonstrates that God foreknows and predetermines events in history, but none of it suggests that He sees them happening all at one time. One must conclude that time is real to both humanity and God....God is the Lord over time and history, but not in a philosophical sense which would mean that He negates time. He is Lord because He created the succession of days (Gen. 1) and supervises their flow. His existence is limitless, and thus a thousand years in His sight are as yesterday (Ps. 90:4). Time, in the sense of days and nights determined by the astral bodies, will pass away with sun and moon (Isa. 60:19). Thus the mode of experiencing time will change (no more night, Rev. 21:25), but time is expected to continue (Eph. 2:7). God’s sovereignty over time does not lie in a metaphysical timelessness but in His ability to influence and bring the whole process to His own saving ends. (General Editor, Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Eerdmans:Grand Rapids,MI; 1988, Vol.4, pp.852-853)

Calvin R. Schoonhoven concurs with this in his article under "eternity" in the same work:

[T]hough not bound by time as finite creatures, God nevertheless reveals Himself through His redemptive acts, which occur on the same spatio-temporal stage as the one on which we play out our own lives. God, who is thus the Lord of time, is able to act in time....Basic to philosophical conceptions of eternity is the belief that the eternal belongs to another order of reality, that of timeless reality. Eternity is not to be defined in terms of time at all. God...experiences a mode of timeless self-existence as the Absolute Ground of the universe....[But] When viewed from the vantage point of the Bible, eternity is a term that includes temporal relations. Eternity is time stretching endlessly forward and backward, with the result that time itself must be regarded as a segment of eternity....Eschatology [the study of future things] is thus concerned not with the state of affairs subsequent to time but with the affairs and events connected with the termination of this age and the inauguration of the age to come. (Ibid., Vol.2, pp. 162-163)

The Biblical, as opposed to the merely speculative or philosophical, concepts of time and eternity are bound up in the meaning and use of the Hebrew and Greek words for them. And here there is no idea of eternity as timelessness, but instead one of endless duration of time. There are a number of Hebrew words used in the Old Testament to express either long or endless duration of time—ten to be exact. The one used the most is olam, to which we have already referred (Girdlestone’s Synonyms of the Old Testament, pp. 312-316). In the New Testament, the Greek words aion, aionios, and aidios are used to express long or unlimited duration of time, eternity. Pinnock in his article writes:

The OT has a wealth of words for time units (hour, day, night, week, month, year) but no abstract term for "time" like Gk. chronos. Hebrew, however, can express the same idea with its own grammatical syntax and terms. Heb. ‘et, a frequent term in the OT (296 times), expresses a point in time, whether of distant or longer duration (Ex. 9:18; 2 Sam. 11:1). It corresponds quite closely with Gk. kairos in the NT, which can also denote a point in time or a short duration ....Heb. yom "day,"...in the singular denotes a general time ("on the day when...") and in the plural an extended period. "All the days" really means "always" or "forever"; Heb. olam is used in the same sense. Thus biblical Hebrew possesses numerous terms to indicate linear, chronological time. Neither the OT nor the NT contrasts temporality with timelessness; instead Scripture depicts God as the Lord of time who acts in time. In the NT Gk. chronos denotes a measurable time interval, either long or short (Mt. 25:19; Rev. 20:3). Gk. kairos is most often paired and contrasted with chronos....Gk. aion consistently indicates time duration, referring to segments of time in the world’s history ("age," Matt. 28:20; "world," 2 Cor. 4:4). Aion also refers to the age that Christians await, i.e., the messianic age (Eph. 1:21; 2:7), as well as eternity, an unlimited duration of time (e.g., "for ever," Jn. 6:51; Rom. 1:25; 11:36; etc.). (ISBE, Vol. 4, p. 852)

And Schoonhoven adds in his article:

 

In the understanding of the writers of the OT and NT, eternity is not timelessness but endless time. The OT has no special term for "eternity" that can be contrasted with a term denoting "temporality." The Hebrew word most often used to express "eternity" is olam. It is the same word that expresses duration of time, and it designates eternity only in such statements as "from olam" and "until olam" (Ps. 90:2)....In the LXX [Septuagint] the Gk. aion translates the Heb. olam....The temporal idea is prominent. It refers to a period of time of either limited or unlimited duration. When unlimited duration is meant it should be translated "eternity."...The use of identical terms for both everlastingly continuing time and limited time emphasizes the notion of eternity as an endless succession of ages. (ISBE, Vol. 2, pp. 162-163)

The article on "time" in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology agrees with these articles that the Biblical view of eternity is endless time, not timelessness:

aion, aeon, age, life-span, epoch, long time, eternity;...aionios, without beginning or end, eternal, for ever;...aidios, eternal....The Gk. language has a wealth of various terms with which to express the experience of time. The most extensive one is aion which is primarily a designation for a long period of time. When such an age refers to the past, it denotes remote antiquity, the dim and distant past; when it is directed to the on-going future aion can take on the meaning of eternity. Eternity is thus not necessarily a timeless concept, but the most comprehensive temporal one which the experience of time has produced....aion became (over 450 times...) the LXX equivalent for Heb. olam, a long time or duration, which is also used as an adverb meaning for ever, for all time....[I]n the OT the terms olam and aion always retain the relatedness of time to life. The idea that the time in which one lives is not eternity, and that eternity is the time in which God lives, does not correspond with the OT conception....In the NT the noun aion occurs over 100 times...; the adjective aionios, eternal, 70 times; aidios, eternal, only twice....The noun is found with the following meanings: (a) A long time, duration of time, where both a specifically limited period of time as well as an unlimited period can be meant; chiefly linked with a preposition. The meaning "eternity" is only appropriate with certain qualifications, in that the OT idea of time, which predominantly conditions the NT, does not regard eternity as the opposite of temporality....Surveying the usage of the word aion, aeon, and the connected eschatology, one can establish that, with all the varied accentuations, the NT speaks of eternity in the categories of time. Any dualism between the two world-systems is thus foreign to it. (Colin Brown, ed.; Zondervan:Grand Rapids,MI; 1971, Vol. 3, pp. 826-829,832-833)

Several times in the New Testament God is called the eternal God:

 

Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him—to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Romans 16:25-27)

Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen. (I Timothy 1:17)

Because God is by nature eternal or everlasting, all else that He is and does is imbued with this quality. Thus we find expressed in Scripture that His love is an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3), His mercy is everlasting (Psalms 100:5; 118:1-4,29; 136:all; I Chronicles 16:34,41; 2 Chronicles 5:13; 7:36), His righteous- ness is everlasting (Psalms 119:142), His faithfulness is everlasting (Psalms 146:6), His throne, kingdom, and reign are everlasting (Psalms 45:6; 145:13; 146:10; Daniel 4:3,34; Exodus 15:18; 2 Peter 1:11), and His word is everlasting (Psalms 119:89,160; I Peter 1:23,25). His dealings with man are everlasting—His judgment is eternal (Hebrews 6:2), He will punish the wicked with eternal punishment (Matthew 25:46) in eternal fire (Jude 1:7; Matthew 18:8) with everlasting contempt (Daniel 12:2). The righteous will receive from Him eternal salvation (Hebrews 5:9), eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12), eternal life (Luke 18:30), eternal glory (2 Corinthians 4:17; 2 Timothy 2:10; I Peter 5:10), an eternal inheritance (Hebrews 9:15), with eternal encouragement (2 Thessalonians 2:16) and everlasting joy (Isaiah 51:11) in eternal dwellings (Luke 16:9). Because He is eternal, everything else He is and does is eternal. We also see, once again, something of what we meant when at the beginning of our series we said that it is because of the way God is that everything else is the way it is and that we have to be or do what we have to be or do. The nature or attributes of God is the foundation of everything else.

Alfred Edersheim relates this story from the Talmud (recorded ancient Jewish oral commentary) about a certain Rabbi facing death:

We are told that, when that great Rabbinic authority of the first century, Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai—‘the light of Israel, the right hand pillar, the mighty hammer’—lay a dying and wept, he accounted for his tears by fear as to his fate in judgment, illustrating the danger by the contrast of punishment by an earthly king ‘whose bonds are not eternal bonds nor his death eternal death,’ while as regarded God and His judgment: ‘if He is angry with me, His Wrath is an Eternal Wrath, if He binds me in fetters, His fetters are Eternal fetters, and if He kills me, His death is an Eternal Death.’(The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah; Longmans, Green, and Co.:NY; 1912, Vol. 2, p. 793)

Numerous Scriptures speak of praising and glorifying God forever. It follows naturally that because He is the Eternal God, He is worthy of eternal praise:

...O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever. (Psalms 30:12)

...we will praise your name forever. (Psalms 44:8)

I will praise you forever for what you have done....(Psalms 52:9)

Praise be to his glorious name forever....(Psalms 72:19)

...I will glorify your name forever. (Psalms 86:12)

Praise be to the Lord forever!...(Psalms 89:52)

...To him belongs eternal praise. (Psalms 111:10)

...To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:36)

...to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (Galatians 1:5)

To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (Philippians 4:20)

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power for ever and ever!" (Revelation 5:13)

All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: "Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!" (Revelation 7:11,12)

To Israel, the fact that God is eternal put Him in stark contrast to everything else because they recognized in all of creation, including man and their own transient lives on earth, a mutability, a changeableness, corruption and decay. But God was eternal—He was transcendent and lived forever. That He is the eternal God also stood in stark contrast to the false gods of the heathen nations around them who were the mere inventions of men and therefore "Johnny-come-lately’s" in comparison to the true and living God whose years were past finding out, whose history stretched back into the eternal past, long before the universe or man ever existed.

As it is with the other attributes of God, that He is eternal is linked with several of His other attributes. It means He is the only uncreated Being or Substance in existence. It means He is absolutely independent of anything or anyone else for existence and life, which, again, makes Him unique. Everything and everyone else owes their existence to another, to Him, and is therefore dependent upon Him for existence and life. That He is eternal means He is self-existent. Because He is eternal, He is the source of all else that exists, the Creator. That He is eternal means He is immutable or unchangeable. There never was a time when He was not, and there never was, neither will there ever be, a time when He was not Who and What He is.

Now isn’t such a Being infinitely worthy of service, honor, glory, and praise on these grounds alone? What kind of stupidity and insanity is it that has a hold on man’s heart and mind that he should bring no real glory and offer no real worship to such a Being to whom he owes his existence? It is clear evidence of his sin and utter depravity that he does not.

There is no better place to end any Bible study than in the book of Revelation, and this is especially true of our present subject:

Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the four and twenty elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say: "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being." (Revelation 4:6-11)

I am glad I can say with Israel of old, "This God is our God for ever and ever...."

God bless you every one!

Leon Stump, Pastor of Victory Christian Center

Background from Greenfield Graphics.