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Everlasting To Everlasting

             Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (Psalm 90:2)

 

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m struggling with my attitude, which is contentious. This time, I hope it will work toward your benefit. According to an article on the Internet, “The Universe might well be older than 14 billion years, and we should stop putting a limit on it every time something new is discovered…In theory, the star HD 140283, or the Methuselah star, seems to be older than our Universe, but that would be an impossibility. It is either an error of calculus or an error of our Univers’s (sic) estimated age.”[1]

Scientists also calculate that the universe will cease to exist in 22 billion to 225 trillion years. But while putting a number or a name to it, that doesn’t tell us much. We confidently throw these numbers around, proud that we can state the limits of time and thus “prove” something. But what is the effective difference in the human mind between a universe lasting 34 billion to 225.034 trillion years and “everlasting to everlasting”?  What, that is, beyond the ego-satisfaction of being able to give an answer, no matter how meaningless it is.

Let’s try to put these numbers into perspective. A million seconds is 11.5 days. A billion seconds is 32 years. A trillion seconds is 32,000 years. I’m sure that these scientists have done a lot of work and used up lots of computer time extrapolating all this, but when they make these claims, can we really have any more confidence in them than we can have in the child who says “I love you a thousand billion kajillion times more!”? The numbers, while seemingly definite, have no effective meaning.

This doesn’t mean that God exists from everlasting to everlasting. I believe He does, but that’s not what I’ve said in the paragraphs above. I’ve only argued that for scientists to throw around such numbers - even if they are true - is no different from saying “from everlasting to everlasting.” Neither fits into our very limited minds.

The same scientists who make these claims and those who believe them scoff at the notion of a spiritual being who exists outside of time (unaffected by time) who exists from “everlasting to everlasting.” I can’t avoid asking, “Really?”

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