When 1 = 1000

But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2Pe.3:8).

I have never been good at math. Don’t ask me how I managed to have a reasonably successful accounting career that spanned four decades. It must be the grace and mercy of God. Truly! Many are the days I sat in boardrooms completely lost as I listened to sharper minds discuss technical accounting problems and solutions. And even more are the days when I was forced to bow my head at my computer and offer a silent prayer for divine assistance.

But in spite of my antipathy for mathematics I still remember how to prove mathematically that 1 equals 2. It was lunchtime in high school and this friend wanted to show us something phenomenal. Beginning with x=y, he eventually arrived at 2x=x. There is something evidently flawed in the formulation but I would be the last to know what it is.

In any event, I have since learned that heaven’s math is even more impressive than my friend’s proof of 1 equals 2. The apostle Peter, borrowing from Moses (Ps.90:4), tells us that one day with God is like a thousand earth years. At the very least this revelation informs of a massive disparity in sequencing of events between temporal and eternal realms. For example, the apostle John was caught up in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day and in that time he saw and narrated events that would span a period of more than 3,000 years, from AD 85 to the arrival of the new heavens and earth. In less than a day with the Lord he covered the history of earth for thousands of years to come.       

Likewise, the prophet Daniel would be in the company of friends when a vision from God concerning the rise and fall of empires down to the end of days will burst upon him so vividly that he would later record these events in detail, yet, when the revelation was complete and the prophet would ‘snap’ out of it he would discover that time had hardly passed on earth and that the men who were with him did not even realize he had been transported to another dimension (Dan.10).

On a more practical level, what this disparity between time and eternity suggests is that we can maximize time if we choose to live it in the spiritual as opposed to the natural realm. And we all have both the capacity and potential to do so. There is a natural man and a spiritual man within every individual. The natural man lives in this natural world and cannot cross over to the spiritual realm because he is spiritually discerned (1Co.2:14). But the spiritual man, empowered by the Spirit of God, is able to access the realm where God lives and accelerate his growth in grace and wisdom and knowledge at such an amazing rate that he or she could cover ground that would otherwise take a very, very long time to learn in the classrooms of time and space.

So if you want to extend time then live in the Spirit. If you want to expedite learning in the ways and will of God then walk in the fullness of the Spirit. Condense years into days by moving out from the natural and living in the spiritual. 

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