TIME FLIES

Time Flies

What comes to mind when you consider the words “Time Flies”? The comedic clock with wings perhaps? Or something more sci-fi, say, flies aboard the ‘Time Lord’ Doctor Who’s T.A.R.D.I.S.? Or the mundane, “Time flies when you’re having fun”? There’s a 1944 movie called “Time Flies” that united the comedic with the sci-fi. It’s about a minor music hall star who uses a time machine to travel back to Elizabethan England.

Stuart & Neil, Police Box, Glasgow

If it were possible to travel back to the beginning of time, we would see the heavens and the earth just starting to appear. ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ Genesis 1:1. Therefore, time was created at the beginning, but flies, incidentally, had to wait until the fifth day for God to create them. Therefore, because He is their creator, God sovereignly controls both time and flies. E.g., the fourth of the ‘Ten Plagues’ was the plague of flies. Notice the detail in the final sentence of the following, ‘And the LORD did according to the word of Moses; He removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people. Not one remained’ Exodus 8:31. The Egyptians worshipped a god they called Uatchit, the god of flies.

We are more familiar with Baal-Zebub. (1 Kings 1:1-8). Baal-Zebub translates as ‘baal of the fly’, or, the more familiar ‘Lord of the Flies’. Therefore, the fictitious Doctor Who may be a ‘Time Lord’, and the fictitious Baal-Zebub and Uatchit may be the ‘Lord of the Flies’, but it is the living and true God who is the true Lord both of time and of flies!

Time may fly when you’re having fun, but time stood still for Joshua. ‘Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites … and he said in the sight of Israel, “Sun, stand still over Gibeon: and Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the people had revenge on their enemies’ Joshua 10:12-13. (Apparently, time is on record of having stood still around this time in different parts of the world, such as in Greek, Maori, and Mexican cultural legends.)

Dorothy, Glasgow

By the way, do you see a pattern forming here? The Israelites were fighting the Amorites, who were sun and moon worshippers. Therefore, God is the true Lord of time, flies, the Sun, and the Moon. We just call Him ‘Creator’ for short. ‘For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them’ Exodus 20:11a.

It is because we are having fun that time seems to fly. But not so when you’re in pain. Time drags then. Consider the six long hours, (one hour for each day of creation?) that Jesus hung on the cross before He died, i.e., from 9:AM till 3:PM. Who tempted Adam through Eve to sin, and then also Jesus? The Devil, the Father of Lies, Beelzebub (or Beelzebul) is the god of this present age (Matt. 4:1; 10:25; 2 Cor. 4:4).

By Satan’s evil influence, we ‘exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator’ Romans 1:25. By the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God showed us that He is the Lord of creation and everything in it, even death. For Jesus came ‘that he might destroy the works of the devil’ 1 John 3:8b.

Yes, time flies when you’re having fun, but in Heaven we’ll have eternity.