However, as a general rule, it appears that most in the scientific community accept the "Big Bang" as the best model for the origin of our universe, and any discussions regarding what happened prior to the Big Bang are more based on speculation and guesswork than actual science.
So of course, I will also deviate slightly from the realm of science and speculate on the concept of time as it relates to the God of the Bible.
I mentioned in my previous post that I believe God is infinite, but I'm starting to understand that "infinite" may not be the correct word. We exist within a universe that is completely subject to time. We are born at a certain time, live our lives according to a 24-hour clock, and die at a certain time. Our awareness of time permeates all that we do.
On the other hand, the Bible says that a day is like a thousand years to God [Psalm 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8]. These passages seem to imply that God is beyond our human awareness of time, but in what way? Early Christian scholars took this idea literally and applied it to their interpretation of Genesis. They reasoned that the seven-day creation week in Genesis was actually 7,000 years, which allowed them to estimate dates for the beginning and end of the world. But were these passages intended to be taken literally, or were the authors of the Bible simply trying to state that God does not share our human concept of time?
I have recently been reading a bit about cosmology, which has helped me to come at this topic from a different angle.
Let us assume that God used the Big Bang during the creation of the universe. But more than that, let us also assume that God created time, space, matter, energy and all of the physical laws that govern them as part of the Big Bang. This means that we cannot consider what occurred "prior to" the Big Bang because there was no time, matter, energy, physics, or anything. There was only God and the spiritual realm in which He exists.
If these assumptions are correct, then time is simply a property of the universe that God created along with matter, energy, space, etc. A day is as a thousand years to God because He is not bound by time. As the creator, God is transcendent to the creation and the laws that govern it. I think that Exodus 3:14 describes this idea best when God refers to Himself as simply "I Am".
The idea that God exists outside of time and the laws of our universe leads me to another interesting idea. The Bible says that God set humans apart from the rest of creation, and He created them in "His own image" . Perhaps it is our awareness of this unobservable spiritual realm that sets us apart. Perhaps it is also this same awareness that causes each human, regardless of background or upbringing, to ask themselves the question I posed in my previous post: "Does God exist?"
But I digress...
