As Though they Were

JEHOVAH inhabits eternity (Is 57:15), dwelling beyond space and time; He knows everything about everything (Ac 15:18), all possible outcomes of all possibile events. He acts on the future as if it’s past (Ro 4:17); there’s no searching of His understanding. (Is 40:28)

As God created space and time, framing the world with His hands (Ps 95:5), He created it with the appearance of age, as if it had already been here a long time. The first man and woman weren’t infants, Eden’s trees weren’t sprouts, and starlight illuminated the world on Day 4. (Ge 1:16)

We know this of the stars because God made them, along with the sun and moon, to light the earth (Ge 1:15,17-18), even though He made them very far away. Since fulfilling His purpose in creating stars requires God to create starlight between Heaven and Earth as though it had been traveling for millions of years, we can be sure He did.

Yet we observe supernova’s exploding millions of light years away, moving some to reason that if God created starlight between us and the cosmos only 6 thousand years ago then He’s playing tricks on us, since these observable events never actually occurred — only existing in photons streaming to Earth, the exploding stars themselves a fiction. They insist God doesn’t play tricks or write fiction: if we see light carrying information about an event, they insist the event must have physically occurred.

But this is like claiming mature trees in Eden, having rings on Day 6 … which isn’t unreasonable … require decades of actual weather patterns before Creation, or that smooth stones in a brook on Day 3 require years of water erosion. God creating a world in motion, with the appearance of age, as if it had already been in existence for a while, isn’t a trick or fiction: it’s genius. How else should He have created the universe? Why is this such a problem?

How is it inconsistent with God’s nature to create light containing information about things that would have been? God knows how the universe would have played itself out had He made it billions of years ago; He can create the cosmos as He pleases anywhere along any space-time continuum. If He gives us a glimpse into a past that exists only in His own mind, this is no lie, but a window into another dimension as God knows it to be. (Mt 11:21)

God speaks of what will be as if it’s already been, and reveals what would have been as if it was. If something exists in the mind of God, what presumption calls this fiction?

articles  ♦  blog