EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

Everywhere All at Once

If you are already a Christian and have attempted to tell a non-Christian person about Jesus, you will already have noticed that they behave like a flea on a hotplate! They won’t stay still. They jump around with all their “whataboutisms”. You know, “Well, if there is a god, then why is there so much evil in the world?” “Why doesn’t He show Himself?” “It was just a bunch of goatherders that wrote the Bible!” “The Bible is a bunch of Chinese whispers passed down through the ages and is used by the church to dupe stupid people!”

Image from Net

Apologies if I seem to have been jumping around like a flea there as I listed some of the excuses people use to not listen to you telling them about Jesus. You can add your own complaints to this list if you like. However, I’m going to take the Apostle Paul approach as I try to get you to listen to what I have to say about Jesus. Notice what he said when he was talking to some people in Athens. He wants them to know that he is not ignorant of their culture. How does he do this? He engages them by quoting from a couple of their own poets. However, notice that he has a purpose in mind. He wants to tell them about his grandkids? No, he wants to tell them about Jesus. But first he starts by telling them about God and who He is and our relationship as human beings to Him.

“For ‘In Him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed His offspring.’” Acts 17:28. 

The first of the two quotes is probably from Epimenides, a poet from Crete. And the other is from a poem Phainomena by a guy called Aratus. We take it that the ears of these men Paul was talking to would’ve pricked up when they heard him quote from their fellow Greeks. Paul was really good at this sort of thing. For the rest of us it can be a bit like the roller shutters coming down at tucker shop closing time when we try to talk about the things of God to some people! We see a glazed look begin to appear in their eyes. They may begin to look at their watch or phone and give other social cues that they are done with you.

We press on! In order for humanity to live and move and have our being in God, He would need to be everywhere all at once. And this is exactly what God reveals about Himself in the Bible. He encapsulates everything everywhere all at once. This, of course, is not to say that everything is God. It simply means that God is the creator of everything everywhere. There is nothing outside of His creation except Him. However, if you or I built a house, we could move into that house. But we could only be in one room at a time. God is not like us. He is in every room of every house and in every nook and cranny of His universe because all of Him is everywhere all at once. This everywhere-at-once-ness of God is called Omnipresence.

Next, God knows all things. He knows the beginning, middle and end of all things. And He knows everything all at once. God’s knowing-everything-all-at-once-ness is called Omniscience. And there is one more attribute of God that we need to know about, and that is His Almightiness. He is Almighty God, Omnipotent. Let’s list those three attributes that belong only to God, and then we’ll move on: Omnipresence, Omniscience and Omnipotence. Put simply, God is the Creator and we, along with the rest of His creation, are simply creatures dwelling in His creation in which He is present and can see all things and can do all things. So, when Paul says, “For we are indeed His offspring” he means that we have been created by God.

The One and the Many

Because God is three Persons in one God, He is the original One and Many. And because He is Creator, we should expect to see many reflections of His Oneness and Many-ness in all of His handiwork, and we should expect to see little clusters of “trinities” in everything everywhere.

The Creator created space, time and matter. When did He create time? “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” So, time first began when God created it, and as He created time, He was creating space into which He placed the matter He was creating. “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Exodus 20:11a. God distinguished one day in the cycle of every seven as a special day, a holy day.

So, time can be measured by days, cycles of seven. And as we live and move and have our being in Him, He has given us six days to work with Him and one day a week to rest with Him. And notice why God created the sun, the moon and the stars: “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.” Genesis 1:14-16.

So, time is measured by the sun, the moon and the stars on their courses and cycles, days, months and years. Tides and female human menstrual cycles even fit into God’s sovereign plan. And the eternal God, who knows the end from the beginning, is reflected in the trinity of past, present and future.

And what about space? God was nowhere before He created space because there wasn’t anywhere to be. But now that He has created space, He is everywhere all at once. He is in the longest lengths, the deepest depths and the highest heights. For He, the triune God, made the three dimensions of length, breadth and height. He is at the outermost reaches of His universe, and He is in the minutest atoms. All of Him is everywhere all at once! “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” Colossians 1:16.

So, whether through a telescope or a microscope or with the naked eye, everything we can see and even the things that we cannot see, were created by God for God. Even the trinity in matter of solid, liquid, gas/vapour, yes, ice, water, steam.

“A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.” Ecclesiastes 1:4-7.

Yes, God has a plan and, because He knows the end from the beginning, through circuits and cycles, He carries out His plan, working in space, in time and in matter. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” Romans 8:28.