God is Not Bound by Our Timelines

I am starting to notice a repeating pattern in scripture that I plan to write more about. There is a mismatch in timelines that can be really confusing. There are several happenings in scripture which do not line up chronologically with happenings on earth. I believe that God wants us to understand reality and I will attempt to unravel this starting now. Lord willing I will write about this extensively in the future.

I believe that Satan takes advantage of this mismatch to confuse us. He also uses this mismatch as evidence to accuse God of lying when events don’t line up. He did this with Eve at the garden, ‘you won’t die’ he said, accusing God of lying and exaggerating.

Five Examples of Spiritual Timelines Not Matching Physical Timelines:

1. In Genesis, God said that when and if Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge they would die. They did eat yet they did not drop dead physically for many hundreds of years later. Their spiritual death occurred before their physical death.
2. There is much teaching that all of humanity died on the cross with Jesus Christ (as far as God is concerned). Yet here we are more than 2000 years later still living in the flesh. Humanity apart from God ended on the cross yet humanity continues for now in the flesh.
3. Salvation occurs when a person turns from his old life of sin, accepts death and resurrection in Christ, displayed  by baptism. He is born again yet living in the flesh and even dying before the final resurrection of the body.
4. The body of death that the Christian lives in, sometimes leads us to sin however God does not consider it. Sin is not held against us, as far as God is concerned that side of us was killed with Christ. He sees the life of Christ, begun at the resurrection of Christ when he looks at us. He is looking not at our sin in time but at Jesus’ blood poured out in eternity.
5. Jesus said that Lazarus’ sickness was not unto death. He waited until he was dead for more than four days then came. Beyond all hope by Lazarus’ timeline yet not by Gods.

Out of Phase Timelines

As far as God is concerned things happen in the spirit and when they happen physically is a separate issue.

There are many more examples of this that I plan to write about elsewhere. However it can be seen that spiritual timelines do not necessarily overlap physical timelines on the earth. When things happen in the spiritual realm they do not necessarily also happen in the physical realm. It can take many years of a delay.

There is a mismatch in phase of timelines. This mismatch can be really confusing if one does not pay attention to Jesus Christ.

Similar to this from Frank Viola.

More from my Reality Series of posts.

Similar content: Nine Paradoxes of the Christian life.

Do you Expect God to Meet your Deadlines?