This is one of the more incomprehensible aspects to God’s persona: He is eternal. Consider Revelation 4.8:
And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (NIV Revelation 4.8)
The scene described is surreal. To those who don’t believe, it is nonsensical. The creature descriptions don’t align with anything we know on this earth. But what they say does. They tell us that God is holy, He is almighty, and He is eternal. It is this last phrase – “who was and is and is to come” which I’ll focus on in this post.
If you’ve ever wondered where Christians get the notion that God has always existed, then look no further than this phrase, “who was”. The Greek verb used is the “to be” verb, εἰμί. The tense of the verb is imperfect, meaning “the writer portrays an action in process or a state of being that is occurring in the past with no assessment of the action’s completion” (Logos Bible Software). To my way of thinking, this verb extends God’s existence into the eternal past, as we think of time on this earth.
God is in the present too: “and is”. The effect of using the “to be” verb is that he is fully present, right now.
And God is in the future: “is to come”. There, John used the word ἐρχόμενος, a present participle from ἔρχομαι, to come, arrive, to move toward, to approach. God is always coming, always active. This aligns with Ephesians 2.10, which tells us that the work we’re doing today was prepared by God “in advance”, so that we could be ready for the work and the work would be ready for us. God is active in the future. He is always coming and yet is always present.
When these three descriptors are put together in the same phrase – “who was, and is and is to come”, what stands out to me is the implicit meaning that God lives in an eternal now. He is not bound by time. Recall that time did not exist until the sun and the starts were created to “let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.” (ESV Genesis 1.14). Prior to that creation event, time as we know it, did not exist. (Note that the Hebrew word yom, “day”, can refer to both a 24-hour day as well as a season or undefined period of time. It makes sense to think of the Hebrew word yom in Genesis 1 as referring to periods of time rather than 24-hour literal days.) God created time. He is outside of it and has always existed. If a “day is as a thousand years” (Psalm 90.4) in heaven, then time, as we know it, doesn’t exist there.
God’s eternality exists into the eternal past as well as the eternal future. And He is fully present in the eternal now.
The next time you’re praying and praising God, take time to praise and worship Him for His eternality. Think about the One who is ever present with us in our world and who has always been and always will be. Meditate on this aspect of His persona. It should naturally evoke a humility in us and a sense of awe and wonder for Him.
Bill English, Publisher
Bible and Business
