07 January 2024
We cannot possibly comprehend Eternity. It is most certainly not "time without end" as is so popular in our culture. On the other hand, you also cannot say it is "without time". I rather suspect the best we can say is that time becomes a manageable variable, just as space is for us now. Even that doesn't cover it, but it does seem to fit better with how Scripture addresses the concept.
Other than that, I would avoid trying to say more. That's the approach I take on a lot of subjects. People often raise questions that I believe have no answer on this side of Eternity. I might speculate if something in my reading and experience touches on it, but there is too much that we simply don't really need to know in order to obey the Lord.
We are told about Election. We know that Election is not bound by time, but our awareness of God's first touch on our hearts is most certainly anchored to some time-bound event in our lives. For us, there is a distinct moment when we first experience the awareness of His Spirit in us. We can grasp just enough to refer to our eternal salvation, and we can talk about it in parabolic terms, but we cannot really grasp the nature of it. All we can know is just how thrilling it is that we have been chosen.
Can it be lost? The Bible seems loaded with ambiguities because of the use of symbolism. There is no clinical declaration, only promises that God will not let us go. In talking with wiser people, the net experience of believers is that you can lose your sense of protection, but no one has ever felt totally lost, as if they had to walk through the protocol of redemption from scratch. There is always a residual awareness of His divine Presence, even if there are barriers needing attention.
I've written here about my own experience of alienation from the Lord. I still felt the absolute certainty that I was His, but we weren't talking. It was clearly my fault, and my burden to repair things.
But I don't feel comfortable with the terminology of "once saved, always saved". Without bogging down in discussions of terminology and semantics, my point is that we are all referring to something beyond our ken. There is no way to use that terminology without the complacency of "fire insurance salvation" as a mental association, particularly in our culture. I want to suggest there are some boundaries there, but I don't pretend to understand it so clearly that I can make blanket statements. All I can say is that you must remain faithful in this life lest you lose your joy and peace. I believe the common theological dispute over "security of the believer" is a false dichotomy; it misses the point.
We are told almost nothing about those who aren't Elect. We know how they act and what to expect from them in this life, but almost nothing about what happens to them after this life. You could play the legalistic game over Bible references, but in broad general terms, the Bible says very little beyond symbolic terms of "outer darkness" and "gnashing of teeth".
Even then, we are told this indicates their end prior to the Final Day of Judgment. The language is even more imprecise about Eternity beyond That Day. Do the non-Elect even have spirits? Are they something closer to animals with no mention of eternal natures? We cannot know. Rather, we are told simply that there are some folks who are not Elect, and they are doomed, and we should expect them to make things difficult for us in this life. But then, even the Elect can be misled to create a hostile environment for the faithful. Thus, we are cautioned to make room for the Lord to bring anyone to their spiritual senses, and at the same time warned it cannot be everyone.
Throughout the Ancient Near East, and certainly within ancient Hebrew culture, the emphasis is always on the concreteness of this life and the ineffable nature of the spiritual realm. The two overlap in the realm of moral consideration, but any reference to the Unseen Realm is always going to be imprecise. We are warned that our human nature is a complex mix of both eternal and infernal elements. The natural world is one thing, but our existence here as mortal beings is another. This world is not precisely punishment, but a consequence of something wrong with us.
This is part of the image of this world as a lie. It's a lie in the sense that, the natural world is not fallen, but we are. We cannot easily commune with the natural world for this reason. Adam and Eve before the Fall had a great rapport with the natural world, but that is lost to us. It requires withdrawing somewhat from our fleshly natures just to get a tiny taste of communion with the natural world. That means it requires an exercise inside your soul that very specifically gives the focus of awareness to the heart and spirit, and less to the fleshly nature. We get a taste of the Garden experience, and it expands our awareness of moral truth.
Something in such an experience makes us keenly aware that some people around us just do not belong in the Garden. Even if they move their consciousness into their hearts as well, they will not hear God speaking there. They'll hear only the echoes of their own empty spirits. It's a vacant space in their souls, falsely occupied by various rebel spirits, as if squatters.
Jesus pointedly warned that chasing those rebel spirits out of someone spiritually unredeemed leaves an empty space that serves only to invite a reoccupation worse than before. That space must be filled with Christ. And even then, it's a battle to evict the squatters in His home in your soul.
We can understand some part of the non-elect existence here in this fallen world, but we cannot possibly comprehend what happens to such a construct with the flesh stripped away. All we really know is that they aren't our problem after this life. Thus, I would tend to avoid talking about that at all. It's not a factor in our considerations. It's not a question of ontology, but of what role they play in our lives here.
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