Just as God’s purposes change over time as reflected by ages, time also affects the different realms of reality in which we exist.

The Natural Realm

Time was created as part of the natural realm at creation. Time is earthbound, though there may well be other forms of what we call time in other aspects of the natural realm. (We’ve already looked at how time warps at high speeds.) So time in the natural only affects our natural aspect, or body, and gives the structure to our lives with which we are all so familiar. We often see ourselves as time-related, or age-defined beings. We are either adults or children, for instance. We all have the same amount of time: 24 hours a day, and we can only live it one day at a time, or to be more specific, one moment at a time. (The two greatest thieves in a believer’s life are represented by the thieves that were crucified next to Jesus: the past and the future.) Realizing this we can have confidence that God has given us exactly the right amount of time, and that everything that happens within time is under His control.

The Supernatural Realm

Interestingly, time does not influence the supernatural realm. For us, this means that when we feel controlled by time in our mind, will or emotions (our soul), we are believing lies. For instance, when we are feeling guilty or wounded by something that happened in the past, we are letting time control our soul. Or if we are feeling anxious about something that is going to happen in the future, such as expecting God’s judgment or speaking in public, again we are letting time control our soul. Because we behave according to what we believe, time CAN influence our soul if we believe it can. But as our soul and body begin to line up with our spirit, and we begin to experience present truth in our lives, we will learn how to recognize when we are giving time control over our present eternal existence. We will then be able to enter His rest more easily and live on that eternal plane.

The Spiritual Realm

In the spiritual realm, the only time reference is that there is no time. The relative quality we refer to in the spiritual realm is “eternity” or “eternal.” But this is neither a qualitative (better time) nor a quantitative (more time) term. Eternity is something entirely different in nature than time; but because we can’t comprehend it with our finite minds we often expand our description of what we do know about time to describe eternity. But eternity has no beginning nor end, just as God has neither. Eternity didn’t start, and it will not change into something else, or end. It can only be entered. When we received salvation, we entered into eternal life. He didn’t just put His life into us, but He put us into His life — a different kind of existence all together. So in our spirit beings, there is no aging, maturing, or growing up into. As God describes Himself, so do we: I Am…I Exist.

During the Age of Knowledge, God spoke to man through the written law. His boundaries defined relationships between people, between man and his environment, and between man and his God. But because the fullness of time has now come, God today speaks to all creation by and through His Son. We claim Christianity as different from all other religions in that each person can have a personal relationship with a Personal God.

This is a significant differentiation between these two ages:

Under law, man could relate to a Holy God only through measuring up to His standards and keeping His commandments, by performing certain behaviors. So to maintain this surface relationship you always had to be on your best behavior.

Not so in the Age of Grace. Because God created us now to be His sons, we are members of His family. Often times we are in relationship with God IN SPITE OF our behavior. He has given us a new heart, a new nature, and a new identity. In the age to come, He will continue to speak through His Son; it will simply be a corporate or multi-membered mature son.

There are enough speculations regarding what the next age will look like; Bible versions, entire denominations, fictionalized book series and movies have attempted to render fully what God has only revealed to the minutest degree. Much of what we believe today about the nature of hell, heaven, angels and devils was derived from literature written in previous centuries, especially Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, Paradise, and Purgatory, written in the early 1300s. But we can conclude to at least some degree that the life God has made available to us today will be tested in one way or another here on this earth. We must be overcoming the Reign of Evil in our own lives before we can overcome it in the Earth. Otherwise God would simply save us — give us His life, make us His sons — and take us to be with Him.

excerpted from “Practical Christianity”