What did you think of that step through study of Romans? I hope there were at least one or two nuggets of information you learned from it. I know there were more than that for me! This week, we’re going to consider a concept that some consider “our most precious commodity.” Time is one of those things that, while immaterial, seems to work its way into people’s lives as a controlling force, and for some, even an obsession.
Why did time become such an overwhelming focus in the life of man? After all, while YHWH created the sun, moon and stars by which we define time, the tracking of time down to even smaller segments than a nanosecond was a creation of man himself. At the same time, there seems to be an inability for man to actually perceive time accurately without the use of the technological devices we have invented to track it.
We have multiple sayings about our inability to accurately perceive time, like, “a watched pot never boils,” or “time flies when you’re having fun.” When we’re having fun, or enjoying something, it feels as though time is passing faster, but if we’re longing or waiting for something, it seems like time slows down. We know, based on the way we measure time, which is just subdividing sun and earth cycles, that it doesn’t actually speed up or slow down during these events that we experience. It keeps chugging along.
When you really dig into it though, for as much as we claim to have a very detailed knowledge of time and are confident in our accuracy in measuring it, it’s really just a construct man has created in order to better understand the creation we live in. We based our understanding on how we perceived the movement of the sun, moon and stars, and then from there we transitioned to using other methods, like oscillating crystals and the movement of atoms, to define how we track the thing that we constructed. It became useful as a means of marking when things occurred or even being on the same page with others in planning things, but why are we not able to perceive time properly without external devices?
If we go back to the account of creation, we are reminded that while YHWH created different things on different days (Genesis 1), that was really the only specification of time given until after Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden. The amount of time from the seventh day to the day the serpent tempted Eve is not recorded, and neither is the amount of time until they were expelled from the garden. We don’t start getting an idea of how long things took until the descendants of Adam are recorded (Genesis 5).
When you think about it, mankind wasn’t actually created with a reason to keep track of time, was he? Have you thought about what it will be like to live eternally? We are promised that (John 3:16), and it’s talked about all over the New Testament (Matthew 19:16, 25:46, Mark 10:17, 10:20, etc.), so I’m sure it’s come across your mind at some point. When you have unlimited time, why do you need to track it?
Adam and Eve were created to live in a place that provided food enabling them to live forever (Genesis 3:22). We will see the trees of life in the new heaven and new earth (Revelation 22:2), but you also hear about a tree of life today, which we’ll get into a little later. Once they no longer had access to the tree of life, Adam and Eve’s lives on earth became finite. At this point, how we spent our time became more and more important.
Today, we can see that evil has used the finiteness of our existence in this life as a method of control. We’re taught that we shouldn’t waste the time we have, and we should fill it with everything that we can: experiences, entertainment, events, etc. They even came up with the phrase “YOLO” for it (You Only Live Once). This phrase is a justification of evil disguised as a promotion of freedom, when in actuality it leads to the opportunity to be controlled by The Adversary and his principalities and powers.
What Christians forget is that this world is only a shadow of what YHWH meant for us to have; of what He originally created. This world has been corrupted by sin, so whatever it’s trying to sell you is not what He intended you to get. The goal is your destruction, and these days that goal is more and more obvious. We’re not talking about physical destruction, although that is an aspect of it. We’re talking about spiritual destruction, permanent destruction, which will occur if you spend the little time you have in this body doing the things the world is trying to convince you to do.
Yeshua didn’t call His path the narrow one because everyone in the world was on it, He called it that because only a few will not only find it, but have the strength and confidence to walk it (Matthew 7:13-14). And yet, you see many Christians taking the wide path as they get deceived by the world into walking it. The teachings they get from religious leaders imply that YHWH allows them to do almost anything due to Yeshua’s sacrifice by using verses like ones from Paul saying, “To the pure all things are pure…” (Titus 1:15) So, they live the same “YOLO” life that the world does.
The message they get is that the battle against evil was won by Yeshua, giving them a sense that they can let their guard down. They get told they have to follow certain commandments, you know, the “important” ones, while others they’re not even told about. Demons are just a story, probably just what we would call “mental illness” today, and all we have to do is be nice to people and everything will work out in the end.
The truth is, Yeshua won the war, but there are battles we have to win each and every day. Now, we are much more equipped to fight these battles today than people were before Yeshua’s sacrifice, but unless we know all the battles we could face, we will not be prepared for what we encounter. Unless we know what YHWH fully expects of us, we will be blind to all the wiles of Satan and his minions.
These things Satan tries to fill your time up with are not just idle things, they have actual spiritual consequences. Sometimes, he hides them with things that have scriptural connections, like the tree of life. Sometimes, he hides them with seemingly benign things like yoga exercises or telling people they can manifest what they desire just by focusing and thinking on it. And sometimes, he puts it in clearly evil things like astrology, hypnosis or psychics, but convinces people that these are just “fun,” meaningless things to do.
There is a reason YHWH commanded against sorcery and divination (Deuteronomy 18:10-12), which includes psychics, astrology, hypnosis, etc. It’s because they are real things that actually work, but they come from evil sources. A girl followed Paul and other apostles that clearly had the ability to know things she wouldn’t have known on her own (Acts 16:16-18). After Paul cast this spirit of divination out, the girl was unable to do what she did before. Yoga, on the other hand, is a combination of body positions worshipping certain pagan deities along with meditating to align with spirits. Manifestation is presenting yourself as a god that can bring into existence anything you wish. You’ll sure get what you want, at first, but where is it really coming from?
These are just a few things you see in the world that Satan has convinced people, even Christians, to spend their time on, but in the end it all comes down to this: at some point, a believer has to decide whether or not scripture is 100% true. It’s not, “oh, this part is true, but they just used the terminology and what they knew at the time to write it down.” It’s an acknowledgement that every single word of scripture is true down to its foundation. The staffs of Moses, Aaron and Pharaoh’s sorcerers turned into actual snakes (Exodus 4:3, 7:10-12), which means there has to be some way for that to happen in this world. An iron axe head actually floated when Elisha threw a stick in the water (2 Kings 6:6). Can science explain these things today? No, but nevertheless, they happened!
Essentially, man has fallen for the same thing that Eve fell for in the garden: “did YHWH really say?” (Genesis 3:1) The question today being, “does YHWH’s word really say?” So, after acknowledging that everything in scripture is true, the question we must then ask ourselves is, “how should we be spending our time?” Well, for all the limited time we have in our lives, granted some having more than others, Yeshua knew He was only going to be around for a short time and how did He spend His time?
Yeshua came to do the will of YHWH (John 6:38-40), and in order for us to know His will, we have to study His word. Consequently, His word also tells us what we’re fighting against. The whole story, not just a whitewashed version that looks through the lens of what science tells us is possible today. It also tells us His desire is that every person is saved (1 Timothy 2:3-4), and if we’re His children, shouldn’t that be our desire as well? And shouldn’t we be spending our time trying to fulfill that desire? In the grand scheme of things, we aren’t in this body for long, so we should make sure we’re filling our time with Him and not what the world, and Satan, says we should.
Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you !
-Rob and Sara Gene
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