Eternity, Part I - The Eternal Creator

I thought I’d take a few posts to look at the gospel itself, first of all for the sake of anyone who may stumble across this blog and isn’t already familiar with the Good News, and secondly because I think it’s good for a person to write out the basics of their own beliefs to help them to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you,” as I Peter 3:15 commands.  So here we go....

“Eternity” is a word we rarely hear used, at least in the literal sense, in our day.  It seems most people in our culture are so busy trying to keep up or succeed in this life that they spend very little time considering what comes after this life is over.  This seems like poor planning when you realize that eternity, by definition, is unending; our earthly lives, by comparison, rarely last 100 years.

Why don’t people spend more time thinking about life after death?  Perhaps because they hear so many say there’s no way to know for certain what comes next (if anything); others claim there’s no possibility of any kind of afterlife.

Directly related is the question of God, who is, by definition, eternal (in the truest sense of the term, in that there is no beginning or ending point in His existence).  People’s beliefs about God are all over the map, and they can’t all be right.  So why waste time speculating?  Is there anything we can know for sure regarding eternity?

Yes.  We can be absolutely certain that there is an eternal Creator God.  The incredible complexity of all life on our planet screams of being designed.  The vastness and structure of the known universe plainly tells of the Designer’s infinite wisdom and power. The claims of otherwise academically intelligent people that first the universe and then life itself came into existence and continually improved itself through chance “natural processes” is foolishness, an attempt to “free” mankind from belief in the existence of Almighty God.

People’s efforts to convince themselves and others that there is no all-powerful Creator are nothing new.  In the first century AD the Apostle Paul, writing to Christian believers in Rome as recorded in the Bible, says: “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them.  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:19-22).

Why are some people so desperate to deny the existence of God?  Well, if there is a God who created our universe and everything in it, He owns it all – including us.  David, king of ancient Israel, states in Psalm 24:1:  “The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.”  This means we are under His authority, and are accountable to Him if we should rebel against that authority.  The idea of being under someone’s total control, authority, and ownership is offensive to us.  We tend to think in terms of “It’s my life/money/body/etc.,” and we don’t like the thought of being answerable to anyone for how we use what we think is ours.

In Part II we’ll look at what our accountability to God means for us in the (eternally) long run.