Word of Encouragement (9/30/2021)
We are reflecting on the four creatures’ praise of God in Rev. 4:8: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” Yesterday, we reflected on the significance of the way the four creatures are addressing God—“the Lord God almighty.” Today, let’s think about another description of God—“who was and who is and who is to come.”
This obviously is a description of God’s eternity. Divine eternity transcends time. Eternity doesn’t mean that it exists all throughout time, from beginning to end; it means it has no beginning or end. Nothing that exists within the confines of time can be without beginning or end. That God has no beginning or ending means that He is outside of time. That’s what divine eternity means. This is hard to wrap our minds around, but Time is not eternal: when God created the heavens and the earth, God created Time as well.
Then, how does the description of God here—“who was and who is and who is to come”—describe God’s eternity? It seems to emphasize God’s omnipresence in time—“who was” (the past), “who is” (the present), and “who is to come” (the future), not His transcendence over time. God is indeed present in every second, every passage of time. There is no moment in history when God is not present, no place in the universe where God is absent. God is present in good times and bad times. God is present in all seasons, both in winter and summer, in spring and autumn. God is present in all stages of our life—from our conception and infancy to our adulthood and old age. But even though God is present in Time, He is not of Time. He is not subject to the sequence of Time even though He works in Time to accomplish His eternal purpose. He is the Lord of Time, not a servant of it.
If God’s eternity is described in terms of time—“who was and who is and who is to come”—it is because of the inadequacy of human conception and language to describe God’s transcendental being. How can the limited language of finite beings describe an infinite God? So, we have expressions like, “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet. 3:8) and “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done” (Isa. 46:9-10), to show God’s transcendence over time, however inadequately.
We must also read the expression in the context of the whole Bible. When God is described as “who was,” we are reminded of passages like, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2). The sense of these words is that, in the beginning, the eternal Word (and God) had already been in existence. This is another attempt of man’s limited language to express God’s eternity. God is sometimes called “the Ancient of Days” (Dan. 7:13, 22) to show that He existed from all eternity before Time came into existence.
When God is described as “who is,” we are reminded of His name, YHWH, which is derived from the expression, “I AM THAT I AM.” This expression hints at His mode of being—He is eternally in the present. In reference to time (from our temporal perspective), God may be “who was and who is and who is to come,” but in His eternal and transcendent being, there is no past and future: He is eternally in the present since He is not subject to time. All of history and all its events are all at once in the present before His eyes. So, when Jesus was debating with the Pharisees, He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58).
How about the description, “who is to come”? Interestingly, it doesn’t say, “who will be.” This reminds us of Christ’s promise to return to bring His redemption to its glorious consummation. But it also confronts us with God’s eternity in this way: God is described as “who is to come” because He already exists in the future! It is not that He will begin to exist sometime in the future. He, “who was and who is,” already exists in the future and He will come from that future to us to usher us into the eternal realm.
I hope you don’t find this reflection too abstract and impractical. How comforting it is to know that God is not only present with you at this moment but He was present with you all along in the past and He will be present with you all throughout your future unto all eternity! “Through many dangers, toils and snares / I have already come / T’was grace that brought me safe thus far / And grace will lead me home.” Let us praise the One, “who was and who is and who is to come”!