Exodus 3:14-15 (NIV)
I AM WHO I AM
14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
15 God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.
Exodus 3:14-15 (KJV)
I AM THAT I AM
14 And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.
15 And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.
One Day is Like One Thousand Years to the LORD
8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
Mark 12:24-27
Our God is Alive and the Living God
24 Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 26 Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”
Psalm 139:16
God Knew Us Before We Were Born
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
Job 14:5
God Determines our Days on Earth
5 A person's days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.
Revelation 1:8
God is Our Beginning and Our End -The One Who Is, Who Was, and Who Is to Come
8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."
Revelation 13:8
Jesus Was Slain Before the Earth Was Created
8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast--all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
Hebrews 13:8
Jesus is Always the Same
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
God's Thoughts Are Not Like Our Thoughts
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
When I first read the Exodus and God saying His name is I AM WHO I AM, it made me think, why is this His name...I read the footnotes and the other names that He calls Himself, including I AM THAT I AM, and I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE...These made me think back into my early school years and think of time and present tense verbs...Present tense means happening right now, and living and doing right now...Present and present tense are about time...God created us and He created time and somehow He is beyond our space and time thinking...Our Creator does not have to be like man, who He created...His ways and His thoughts are different than those He created...God can and does live outside of time, and we cannot...My thoughts about His name of I AM WHO I AM are He is a God of the Present...God somehow to me, very much relates to time, as well as the very present moment -that we try to live and stay in...He is very much the Eternal God, but He is also the Living God, Jesus speaks of...
We, as man, can only live in the present moment...And even that is not easy for us...Our minds are driven by constant thoughts, many thoughts, and thought after thought each and every day of our lives...Our thinking much of the time takes us away and out of this present moment...Our mind and our thinking takes us away from this exact moment we live in...And when we get out of the present moment, we live in our past thoughts and past thinking, or our future thoughts and what are we going to do in the future...When one really thinks about this, we live a lot of our lives either in our past thoughts and thinking or our future thoughts and our future thinking...It is not easy for us to live always in the present moment of each and every thought, although many of us think we do...While difficult for us to live in the present moment, God is always living in the present moment...The past, present, and future all happen maybe at the same time for Him...It is probably possible for Him to change our past, while we go about our daily and current lives...This is because He is unbound by time...He has this Great Ability (many of them) to always live in the present moment in His thoughts and not confined by time...It may very well be His past, His present, and His future are one and the same...
C. S. Lewis writes: “Our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment disappears before the next comes along: and there is room for very little in each...That is what Time is like...And of course you and I tend to take it for granted that this Time series—this arrangement of past, present, and future—is not simply the way life comes to us but the way all things really exist...We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do.”...Lewis adds: “God, I believe, does not live in a Time-series at all...His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours: with Him it is still 1920 and already 1960."...Lewis adds some thoughts on God always living in the present moment when he writes “This human life in God is from our point of view a particular period in the history of our world (from the year A.D. one till the Crucifixion)...We therefore imagine it is also a period in the history of God's own existence...But God has no history...He is too completely and utterly real to have one...For, of course, to have a history means losing part of your reality (because it had already slipped away into the past) and not yet having another part (because it is still in the future): in fact having nothing but the tiny little present, which has gone before you can speak about it...God forbid we should think God was like that.”...
I think Lewis maybe right, since He is the beginning and end, and He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow...He is unchanging and the past does seem to take away some of our things, and the future would seem to add another part or dimension to man...God is the One Who Is, and Who Was, and Who Is To Come...He is the Almighty...
If these things overwhelm us, they very well should...God is Almighty after all...And sometimes I think we take this for granted...To describe God as huge, large, or awesome does not give Him credit...Other men have been described with our vocabulary and these type words...God is a Creator out of nothing, and can resurrect people from the dead...He is eternal...He has a Perfect Son...These are words and things I like to reflect on...
God knows us before we are born...His eyes can see us before our own conception...And then after we are born He determines the number of days, months, and years we will spend on this earth...This tells us He is outside of how we see time...Now to believe these things, one has to believe that God is Almighty, and that this simple fact of human time is a constraint to Him...If one cannot believe God is outside of time, then their belief in Him, is not an Almighty God...In the Book of Revelation, we are told God knew His Son would die on the cross and be slain before His Father created the heavens and earth...It has always been His intention to save His children from their own sins...And in His LOVE and His Grace He knew He would have to give us His Son's life for His Plan to happen...And He saw all these things before they have even happened...
God sent His Son into our time...So God can live in time or outside of what we define as time...This doesn't and did not matter to Him...He remains the same...And it must be hard to surprise God...These things help me answer why I can have free choice (and believe) in free will and still believe that I am forever in my Father's fate...And as many have said in the past, and will probably say again in the future, and I say here now in the present -God is our Living God...God Is The Eternal Now...He is always in Eternity...