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Featuring:Entering the Rest o God
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By Tanswell Davidse
The Mystery in the Seed
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By Francois Du Toit
Time and Eternity
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By Andre Rabe
How Much are You Worth
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By Mary-Anne Rabe
Value Beyond Inormation
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By Dawie Blake
Today, when you hear His voice, …
HearHim.net
Date: Timeless
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Dear Reader This is the first edition of this magazine, so a short introduction would be appropriate.The first and foremost motivation for this publication is the content itself. The success of what God achieved in Christ on our behalf, theunprecedented significance of that once-and-for-all event, is what compels us to make known, by every possible means, the character of God and His relation to man.We have so enjoyed the rich conversations on our website, hearhim.net, over a number of years. As we travelled through areas wherethe internet is not readily available, we have realised the need for a publication such as this in which we can extend this conversation. You will notice comments after some of the articles - these are only a small sample of the many coversations that have so enriched us.We pray that God would prepare you to receive insight and understanding that will transform you into that which He always knew was true of you. As you behold Him and see Him for who Hetruly is, your own identity and place in Him will become clear as well.In His grip Andre & Mary-Anne Rabe
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Time and Eternity
By Andre Rabe
Time is oten experienced as aninescapable vehicle that carries usrom birth to death; a relentless orcethat propels us rom the present to theuture. But what is ‘time’? We’ve becomeso amiliar with our measure o time -seconds, hours, days, years - that it iseasy to conuse our measures o timewith time itsel. Our experience o timeand our measures o time might be artoo narrow because they are limited byour specic point o view. There are many interesting philosophiesabout time and even more interestingspeculations about what the possibilitiesmight be, i such philosophies were true.I won’t explore all these philosophies indepth in this writing - only enough tohelp us appreciate what the Word hasto say about time. For that purpose I’lladopt one o the most basic and helpuldenitions o time, namely: a sequenceo events.How we relate to this sequence o events and how God relates to it is verydierent. Some o the statements inscripture seem at rst to contain somegrammatical errors: the tenses are allwrong! For instance: “Beore Abrahamwas, I am”. In other instances the Wordspeaks about uture events as i theyhad happened in the past. Hundreds o years beore the birth and death o Jesus,Isaiah speaks o His suering on the crossas a past event: “…but He was woundedor our transgressions, he was bruised orour iniquities: the chastisement o ourpeace was upon him, and by his stripeswe are healed.” Is 53:5I was bemused by an article I read about Tachyons. This is a scientic name ora theoretical particle that travels asteror at the speed o light. The nature o such a particle is truly astounding. Forinstance, let’s imagine one could build aax machine based on the laws coveringtachyons and we call it our tachyonsax machine. I one was to send a ax at3pm it would arrive at 2pm! The eectprecedes the cause. I immediatelythought o Mat 8:16, 17 in which Jesusheals the sick who were brought to him.Verse 17 states that this was in ulllmento what was prophesied by Isaiah. It’sagain the passage in Isaiah 53 that welooked at earlier. We know that thispassage reers to the suering & death o Christ, but here again the eect (healing)o what He accomplished on the cross isexperienced by people long beore thecause. Another example o this inversiono time is ound in Isaiah 65:24 “Beorethey call I answer”. These statements draw us into adimension beyond our normal experienceo time. A dimension in which time is aradically dierent entity rom our normalexperience o it. The use o the words:“beore Abraham was, I am” seems toindicate two dierent dimensions. Onein which there is a past, present anduture, and one in which there is simplya present. However, it might say moreabout the nature o God than about thenature o time.Let’s start by looking at the Hebrewunderstanding o time as ound in the Old Testament. We don’t nd philosophicalor abstract debates about the nature o time, as we do in the Greek philosophieso that period. Time is not described asa separate orce or an extra dimension,but in rather more concrete terms.Events occurred and these events stoodin relation to other events and this wasin eect, time. Time has no substanceapart rom these events. Whereas theGreeks saw time as a separate dimensionin which events happened, the Hebrewssimply saw events happening and these‘happenings’ were time. As such, eternityis never described as timeless, or therecould be no events, no experience, no liewithout time. To be timeless would belieless. The quality o events are given greatersignicance than the order in whichthey happened or the duration it took.In some instances events and personswere arranged according to the impacto their occurrence, rather than theirchronological sequence. The weightinessand signicance o people and eventswere regarded more important than theexact date o the occurrence. People didthings. God did things. Time is the storyo these events and has no existencebeyond these events.One o the reasons why eternity is otenthought o as timeless is because o ourunderstanding o time. Time is seen astemporal, subject to change whereaseternity is seen as changeless. However,it is the nature o change that is dierentin the eternal realm. There is ‘change’ thatdecays and there is ‘change’ that renews.2 Cor 4:16: Thereore we do not becomediscouraged. Though our outer man is[progressively] decaying and wasting
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