Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Reading)
The Biblical Case for the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact
(Book Installment 57)
Part Three – The Nature of the Second Coming
Chapter 9 – How the Apostles Explained the Prophets
The Nature of God’s Transitions
When God changes the night into day He goes about it very gradually. There is a world of difference between the way things look at midnight and the way things look at noon. But it was a gradual process at work for twelve hours that got things to that point. And the moment just after sunrise was not that much brighter than the moment just before it. God performs the transition from night to day very gradually.
We see this same gradualness of transition when the seasons change. The difference between winter and summer is very great, but spring is the gradual transition. And even spring itself, though its beginning can technically be pinned down to a given day, begins very gradually. It seems God has everything in a perpetual state of motion (aren’t the particles of an atom always moving?). The transition from high tide to low tide works the same way. The ultimate difference between high and low tides is very dramatic, but there is not much different at all between the last wave before high tide and the first wave after.
Everyone knows that grass grows, but no one stops to watch it because there’s no movement in the moment to be noticed. Same with drying paint. Seeds become plants, but only time-lapse photography makes the process interesting enough for our continued attention. The earth spins and revolves, but those movements are so imperceptible to us that it creates the optical illusion that we’re walking around on a level surface.
Even the experience of human life itself shows how God works His transitions in gradualness. There is a world of difference between an adult and a child, but how easy is it to identify the exact moment when a person ceased being a child and began being an adult?
Note that we are not saying that there is not a specific identifiable moment of transition. There certainly can be. There is a precise moment when the sun breaks the horizon, when the tide begins to recede, when the vernal equinox can be said to have occurred. It’s just that, from a human perspective, such precise moments occur within a great gradualness. And it’s easier for
us to perceive the gradualness than to perceive the exact moment.
(This section of the chapter will be continued tomorrow.)
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