ON THE BEGINNING AND END OF TIME

The Book of Genesis speaks of the six days of the creation of the world. But what can we know of God's days? One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2 Peter, 3:8). What are all those thousands, and millions, and billions, and sextillions of years for the Pre-eternal One, all the calculations of periods and epochs, all this earthly arithmetic? Even for a person time can pass quite differently: it either “flies” or “drags on,” without any correspondence to the ticking of a mechanical clock. In a moment of mortal danger or agony, a person can relive his entire life in the smallest details: just several seconds pass, but before him images of decades rush by. In the opinion of the Holy Fathers, expressed way back in antiquity, the week of the six days of creation is simply the period of time in which the Almighty deigned to show to the first man Adam, and afterwards to the God-seer Moses, specifically how the world had been created. Time does not exist for God: His dwelling is eternity. But the concept of eternity belongs to those concepts, which do not fit into the limited earthly intellect. Eternity is by no means the period of time that extends on both sides, as it seems to flat logic, – no, this is a totally different form of existence. Mathematicians are beginning to guess about something like this when they talk about multidimensionality instead of the customary three spatial and the fourth, temporal, dimensions. The bliss of the Heavenly Kingdom is, therefore, unimaginable to us, because the mysteries of eternity are indescribable in the human language.

The Holy Writ begins and ends with indications pertaining to time: in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Gen. 1:1) – there shall no longer be time (Rev. 10:6). The Biblical in the beginning indicates that time is a creation of God. It is a fundamental property of the created world. God has enclosed His creation in time. Time is a measure of earthly duration. It has a beginning and an end. The Creator has assigned certain rhythms, to which the entire world created by Him is subordinated: the movement of the heavenly bodies and its related alternation of day and night, the cycle of the seasons, the succession of human generations. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die (Eccl. 3:1-2). In regard to the temporal being of the world, God remains transcendental. Man lives within time, while God lives in eternity: My days are like a shadow that declineth... But Thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever (Psalm 102:11-12). Time is inescapably running towards its end. There is cosmic time and historical time. The first is cyclical, the second is forward-moving. There is no progress, no social evolution, but only the eschatological future determined by Divine Providence. History is not subject to a cyclical law, as the ancient Greeks supposed. It is advancing towards final events. This goal defines the meaning of history. The time of the history of the sinful world will end with the final Judgment: When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations (Matt. 25:31-32). When the Judgment is complete, then time will cease. Then mankind will enter God's eternity.

Metropolitan Vladimir of Omsk (Zakharovich)