Eternality is timelessness. Only God is eternal. That means nothing caused Him to come into existence. He has no beginning and no end.
Eternity is time without end. It has a beginning but no end, continuing perpetually, forever, or everlasting. It will be initiated when “ a new heaven and a new earth” are created (Isa. 65:17; 66:22; Rev. 21:1). It always points to the future, never the past.
Temporality is time with a beginning and an end. It was initiated when God created the original “heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). It is the current time of all creation.
Since God is omnipresent, He is both transcendent (beyond time) and imminent (present in time). Since He is also omniscient, He knows the past (history), the present (actuality), and the future (potentiality).
Since God is eternal, so are His plans which will inevitably be fulfilled in temporal time. The fulfillment of God’s eternal plans is so certain that Christ is said to have been slain before the foundation of the world (pre-cosmic history) when actually Christ was slain after the foundation of the world.
The eternal God prepared “eternal fire” for Satan and his angels (Matt. 25:41), apparently after the Creation. Why? Jesus said, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning” (Luke 10:18). Lightning is part of the creation which exists in temporal time. The “eternal fire” comes from an eternal God whose eternal wrath
is always revealed in temporal time “against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18), and it also will be in eternity (Rev. 14:9-11; 20:10, 15).
Since their beginning, “the heavens and the earth” have existed only in temporal time. Eternity is future time. Eternality pertains only to God “who is, and who was, and who is to come” (Rev. 1:4).
Comments