AskMrR said:
PK, Please provide the scripture verse that clearly states: "One God who eternally exists in three different persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all of whom are fully God, all of whom are equal."
AMR- I assume you believe and affirm the doctrine of the trinity as do I.
So attempting to prove one doctrine is NOT true by this method falls painfully short.
Each subject deserves the utmost scrutiny of the Biblical text, wouldn't you agree?
As to the subject of the trinity, while it may not be explicitly stated in exactly those words, you can show ample evidence Scripturally that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all equally God and have existed for all eternity in perfect fellowship with one another. In fact, the evidence is overwhelming.
You cannot produce overwhelming or even clear evidence that time is a created thing. There is nowhere that it is even implied in any text in the Bible that I have come across. If so, please provide that text so that we can learn from it together. 
I think we both will concede that not all things are so clear from the scriptures and that is why you have asked, no?
I asked you this question not to attempt to draw you into a straw man debate, but rather to get you to think about this position you hold and also to consider how strong the Biblical evidence actually is for it.
Calvinists STRONGLY insist time is created and that God therefore operates outside of time. (What is popularly taught in many seminaries and churches is the "Helicopter View" which basically states that God is above all of time and thus sees all time at once. I was taught this as a young believer and blindly accepted it for years......UNTIL I began to study the Word of God for myself and learn that God does NOT in fact present Himself that way in His Word.
Thus, given that we must concede that some things must be exegeted from the scriptures, as they are not, as you ask, "clearly stated", we rely upon God's general and special revelations.
From the general revelation, God's created universe, we can and do understand certain things about this universe, such as matter, space, physical constants, etc. These have already been discussed by me and others, particularly Evoken, in this thread for your review.
In some ways I agree with you. But men have been getting things in science wrong for thousands of years. I will not rely solely on science to understand something God says or does. I approach things from the Scriptural and Biblical standpoint. What does the Bible have to say? How does God present Himself from His Word?
Do YOU believe that God has the freedom to change His mind about something?
From God's special revelation, the scriptures, we know from Genesis 1:1, there was a beginning to the created universe. The significance of the opening statement of the Scriptures lies in its teaching that the world had a beginning. Scripture speaks of this beginning also in other places, Matt. 19:4,8; Mark 10;6; John 1:1,2; Heb. 1:10. That the world had a beginning is also clearly implied in such passages as Ps. 90:2, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God."; and Ps. 102:25, "Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands."
I do not deny that God created everything and that He did it in 6 literal days as the Bible says. I agree completely that the world had a beginning, but again, where does it say that God created TIME? Or even that TIME is a created thing?
We also know that before anything was created, including time, a property of the space and matter of the universe God created and revealed to us in His general revelation, there was the I AM (Ex. 3:14; John 8:58; 1 Peter 1:20), the I AM WHO I AM, or the “I will be who I will be”. For both renderings, the implication is that God’s existence and character are determined by Himself alone and are not dependent on anyone or anything else.
I agree completely. This still does not speak anything towards the creation of time or that God is outside of time. That God is the I AM is showing us that He is self-existent and always has been. He was uncreated and has always been and will always be God. Open Viewers do not deny this.
Consequently, God's existence must be something very different than what we know as time, for time is inexorably linked to creation; time cannot be linked to something outside of creation, else what we know about God's general revelation is inconsistent with His special revelation and that will just not do.
This is where the Settled View begins to break down and grow even more incoherent. Your whole premise in the above statement rests on "MUST BE", and it shows the unsure nature of your position!
Now I will grant that some will appeal to the notion that what we understand about cosmology is not fully understood and agreed upon. Hence there will be some that will disclaim the connection of time to a created universe using some fringes of the research and thinking in this field. These same persons will go on to then craft a doctrine of the temporality of God. Well, that is not only bad science, but it is eisegesis. God's revelations cannot be held to be in conflict.
If you base your views on what the Bible says first and then everything else after, you don't need to do these mental guessing games. Having a Biblical worldview means everything written and taught by men must be in submission to the Scriptures.
The scriptures are clear that God inhabits something vastly qualitatively different from time, what we know as eternity: "For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: "I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite." (Isa 57:15). In other words, the difference between the creature and the Creator is an immensely vast difference, for God exists in a fundamentally different order of being. It is not just that we exist and God has always existed; it is also that God necessarily exists in an infinitely better, stronger, more excellent way. The difference between God’s being and ours is more than the difference between the sun and a candle, more than the difference between the ocean and a raindrop, more than the difference between the arctic ice cap and a snowflake, more than the difference between the universe and the room we are sitting in: God’s being is qualitatively different. No limitation or imperfection in creation should be projected onto our thoughts of God. He is the Creator; all else is creaturely. All else can pass away in an instant; God necessarily exists forever. See also 90:2; Ps. 90:4; Rev. 1:8; Rev. 4:8; Rev. 4:11; John 1:3; John 8:58; Ex. 3:14; Isa. 45:21; Isa. 46:9-10; Gal. 4:4-5; Acts 17:30-31; Rom. 11:35-36; 1 Cor. 8:6.[/FONT]We know the scriptures repeatedly speak of God being and creating “before the foundation of the world” (see John 17:24; Matthew 13:35; Matthew 25:34; Eph. 1:4; 1 Pe. 1:20; Rev. 13:8; Rev. 17:8). We also know that prior to all things God was there before the ages began (2 Tim. 1:9; also Heb. 1:2, where “framed the world” is literally “the ages”).
I agree with everything you state above for the most part. Where you are going wrong is in trying to say that any or all of those verses support or imply that time is something that was created by God. Again, your position here is not Biblical but is based on the teachings of men.
No, it is not biblical. The song is no doubt a take off of the KJV rendering of Rev. 10:6, “that there should be time no longer,” but delay is a better translation for the Greek term chronos in this context (as is rendered in the ESV, RSV, NASB, NIV, and NKJV). In fact, the next verse assumes the continuation of time, for it talks of events to be fulfilled “in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel” (Rev. 10:7).
We know that the heavenly city receives its light from the glory of God (Rev. 21:23) will and will never experience darkness or night (Rev. 21:25). But this does not mean that heaven will be a place where time is unknown, or where things cannot be done one after another. All the pictures of heavenly worship in the book of Revelation include words that are spoken one after another in coherent sentences, and actions (such as falling down before God’s throne and casting crowns before his throne) that involve a sequence of events. When we read that “the kings of the earth . . .shall bring into it the glory and honor of the nations” (Rev. 21:24–26), we see another activity that involves a sequence of events, one happening after another. Moreover, it is the clear implication of the fact that the tree of life has twelve kinds of fruit, “yielding its fruit each month” (Rev. 22:2).
Well said.
Time exists for all eternity, so is it such a large stretch to believe it always did exist?
Since we are finite creatures, we might also expect that we will always live in a succession of moments. Just as we will never attain to God’s omniscience or omnipresence, so we shall never attain to God’s eternity in the sense of seeing all time equally vividly and not living in a succession of moments or being limited by time. As finite creatures, we will rather live in a succession of moments that will never end.[/QUOTE]
I agree wholeheartedly that God is far greater and mightier and more significant than all of mankind and all of creation combined. I don't agree that He sees all time equally vividly. I definitely do not see this in the Scriptures either.
God bless!
