15 Minutes
The sabbath is our greatest temple. No Rome, no America can burn it. Apostasy cannot change it. The main theme of our faith lies in the realm of time...prophecies and events. What was the first thing sanctified, made holy in the history of the world...the Sabbath. There is no reference in the record of creation to any object in space that would be endowed with the quality of holiness. God did not establish a holy mountain, He did not build a sanctuary, God sanctified the seventh day sabbath. Holiness in time, the Sabbath comes first. When history began, there was only one holiness in the world, holiness in time. When at Sinai the word of God was about to be voiced, a call for holiness in man was proclaimed: “Ye shall be unto Me a holy nation." It was only after the people had succumbed to the temptation of worshipping a thing, a golden calf, that the erection of a Tabernacle, of holiness in space, was commanded. The sanctity of time came first, the sanctity of man came second, and the sanctity of space last. Time was hallowed by God; space, the Tabernacle, was consecrated by Moses.
Are we beginning to understand “from one new moon to another”, and “from one sabbath to another”? Undeterminable space is called infinity...undeterminable time is called eternity. The Sabbath is entirely independent of the month and unrelated to the moon. Its date is not determined by any event in nature, such as the new moon, but by the act of creation. Thus, the essence of the Sabbath is completely detached from the world of space. On the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in measure, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. The Sabbath is last in creation, first in intention. It is "the end of the creation of heaven and earth." It is not the interlude, it is the climax of living. The seventh day, in its atmosphere, is a reminder of adjacency to eternity. The Sabbath is an expression of glory in the presence of eternity.
We speak a word for an emotion almost too deep to be expressed: the love of the Sabbath. This conception of love of the Sabbath, the love of a day, of spirit in the form of time. What is so luminous about this day? What is so precious to captivate the hearts? It is because the seventh day is a mine where spirit's precious metal can be found with which to construct the stronghold in time, a dimension in which the human is at home with the divine; a dimension in which man aspires to approach the likeness of the divine. For where shall the likeness of God be found? There is no quality that space has in common with the essence of God. There is not enough freedom on the top of the mountain; there is not enough glory in the silence of the sea. Yet the likeness of God can be found in time, which is eternity in disguise. God is the time of rest of the Sabbath. What a mysterious grandeur of the climax of creation. As God sanctified the seventh day, so shall we. The love of the Sabbath is the love of man for what he and God have in common. Our keeping the Sabbath day is a paraphrase of His sanctification of the seventh day. What would be a world without Sabbath? It would be a world that knew only itself; a world without the vision of a window in time that opens into eternity.
Law and love, discipline and delight are fused together in the Sabbath. Its observance is the reach of the exalted soul beyond the grasp of ordinary man. On the Sabbath we accept all excellence from the Spirit of God. The Sabbath is a reminder of the two worlds; this world and the world to come. For the Sabbath is joy, holiness, and rest; joy is part of this world; holiness and rest are something of the world to come.
So, how may it be that we come to worship before God at what seemingly are timed intervals? Divine temporality, a prioritization of tasks. Since eternity is the chronological passage of time, in relation to the past, the present and the future, God can provisionally cause its use to be concurrent, occurring simultaneously, or sequential, not happening at the same occasion. This can also be viewed as the maturing of eternity. In eternity there may be an other to “passage time”...”lived time”. Divine temporality is derived from a higher non-temporal state of eternity, which is co-extensive with the infinite and eternal now of God. The greatest phenomenon of time is the future. It is not yet revealed. However, God’s presence is always the “now”. So, it is as though with God the future comes toward Him and is always the “now”. So, with our being in God’s presence in heaven, in eternity, we are in His “now”. No time is taken, no space used. God is greater than eternity, so everything in eternity if God’s "having-been-ness". God can seize the past, the present, the future and hold on resolutely to make His “now”. Since God is outside of time altogether, time is inside God. The Sabbaths, the months are in God. And we can have a moon without night because the light reflected will be the Son of God.
Allow us to reason with the account of how God relates to events, things, people, and the universe and of how God is related to what we could call the structure of the universe. That is, how God is related to space and to time. God never began to exist, and God can never go out of existence. And God experiences all events yet knowing of their succession. And this reasons that God is “omnitemporal.” Whereas we possess one moment of life at a time,
God possesses all life at once. That implies duration. An eternal being must have life and this life is without duration. How such a God is related to temporal events is the wonder of omniscience. God has an eternal-temporal- simultaneity reference. The thoughts in God’s mind can be individuated by their respective lengths of duration or at least by their locations within the duration. So, there can be a sabbath, there can be a month, individuated temporally throughout eternity having no connecting interaction.
God is the essence of existence for even existence is in Him. God’s life is the event whereby all things are captured. In Him is timeless duration. He is always a “present” God, a “now” God. God can be present, though not temporally present to the world. He can have a life which is an event having duration, though not temporal duration. With God not all whens are times. However, eternity, in the sense of being a timeless space, can also be a when to God. “At eternity” is the answer to the question, “when does God act?” He is timelessly and independently 'prior' to creation of anything. God has within Himself and He knows the whole of everything that was, is, and can ever be. God lacks nothing. He does not have to believe, He knows. His foreknowledge of all things is what determined all things. God’s life is so eternally stretched out that the entirety of time is one indivisible present while each point can be made a temporal reality of an event...even an event occupying space. In the fullness of His Being, God will position the Sabbath in eternity to situate as a present event. He can do anything that it is possible to do. He is maximally merciful. In heaven we will not long for the past nor will we long for the future. For in God we will have the attribute of experience that captures simultaneous and perfect possession of boundless life. We will lose nothing in the passage of eternity. We will have the “property of rest” in God always. At creation of the heavens and earth, which He willed from eternity to appear temporally, time began, and God subjected Himself to time by being related to changing things. God causes eternity to pause...a pregnant pause if you will in that our God is determinative. He will cause “time” and “events” to have “space”.
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