Is One Thousand Years a Long Time or a Short Time?

© 2018 by Tom Boynton (editing by Kathy Boynton)

“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (2 Peter 3:8)

Christ’s apostle, Peter, presented this statement to refute scoffers.  Scoffers mock the idea of God the Son’s sacrificial, redemptive death at Calvary to save His people from their sins.  They also mock the idea of Christ’s return for His redeemed and the final judgment of unsaved people.  They argue that His failure to return, so far, indicates His inability to return at all.

Peter proceeds to shred such arguments.  Prior to the quote above, he had showed that scoffers are willingly ignorant of God’s mighty past acts and judgments.  He then explains that God’s delay is not a display of inability but, rather, a show of patience for those who are yet scoffers.  If Christ returns before a scoffer repents, that scoffer shall be eternally without hope.  Peter then points out that God’s perspective on time is totally different from ours.

As a child, I had a box camera with a shutter speed of one sixtieth of a second.  Many action pictures I tried to capture were blurred.  I longed for a camera with a one millisecond shutter speed.  My dear wife gave me one as a wedding present.  I still have a honeymoon picture in which she was splashing me with lake water.  Each individual droplet was stopped in midair and sharply focused.  Nothing could be faster than that, could it?

Years later, I worked for a medical devices company.  I tracked down an intermittent sixteen nano-second electrical pulse disrupting the product’s performance.  It occurred, only infrequently, when many conditions occurred simultaneously.  That pulse could have been repeated over sixty-two thousand times during the one millisecond exposure of my dear wife’s picture.  In this context, one millisecond seems incredibly long.

God has always existed.  To Him one thousand years is a short time.  But to people, one thousand years seems long compared to an approximate seventy year lifespan.

Though our spirits had a beginning, they will have no end.  Trillions of years after we have entered eternity, our mortal lifespan will seem but a flicker of time.

Do you take God’s offered salvation seriously, or are you a scoffer?

.

You may leave comments for Tom & Kathy (website administrators) below.