ETERNITY

“He has made everything beautiful in His time; also He has set eternity in their heart, even if no man can find out the work that God makes from the beginning to the end”, Ecll.3:11 

The way and the formula we may come to use to reason and think about everything we do and why we do is mostly a mystery itself. Many times it is an endless and quarrelsome labyrinth.

Man lives upon the earth as if he will not die himself, thinking and beholding death from afar off and from a distant point of view. It just shows how eternity is engraved in his heart from creation on. Man has been created after the image of God, who is eternal, powerful, holy, kind and just (among many other attributes we can tell about Him). This is man, whose constitution is eternal and never lives as if he will die – only others will, he thinks and believes firmly by walking accordingly. Man knows he will die, yet lives as if he won’t – at least not at that precise time he is thinking about it, for eternity includes that moment as well.

There is a pressure inside him which drives man to think and believe as he was made. Man always thinks himself to be blameless and without fault, clever and wise enough to guide his own destiny, owning and using his own hands and works falsely in and through the form and shape of his mind. Man was born like that, he was made like that and he was not proud about any of it then. Pride comes in now to show man by lying to him, that he is now as he can’t be anymore – to fill him with illusion day in and day out. Pride is the strength of lies. Even about suffering and pain, man never thinks or believes it might hit him because he was made an eternal being. If man thinks that any such mischief will hit him somehow in the worldliness he craves after, he will become fearful, over-protective and selfish through panic and lostness of heart. This is why people in the world feel the need to live and stick by “positive thinking”. Man is eternal and sin caught up with him in that eternal frame of mind and heart, gaining and ruling his constitution as he is. But God closed the Tree of life to him and man went into sin and the world with a constitution and frame which does not fit the world he got into. Man was made to be love and he can't be, and therefore loves himself; man was made to be righteous and just and being away from God he points all weapons of justice towards himself; man was made to sing praises to God and for that reason he boasts easily about himself; man was made to live and that's why he avenges himself and kills. Man does as he loves, to whom he thinks he loves: himself. He was made to to things with and through such things which will live in his heart. God, being absent from there, leaves man at random and lost. Man became a fugitive and a vagabond, driven from the face of God, the only place where he could live out what he is and as he is. This is why humility always starts off by being yourself. Man can say, like Cain, “Behold! You have driven me out from the face of the earth today, and I shall be hidden from Your face. And I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth and it shall be that anyone who finds me shall kill me (he knew it and  feared, therefore)”, Gen.4:14. Cain perceived what hit him because there was a fresher sense and knowledge about that (lost) communion with God then, for it flowed and lived in the air still.

Now, sin came and took possession of a frame, of criteria, credit, mechanisms, eyes and everything else man is and has. All of those were not made to be ruled by and through sin and selfishness at all. Freedom within is what will it possible to make the full use of it, even unawares. Man in the world without God is something he can never satisfy or fulfil because he just doesn't work as he should. God’s fullness can fill man again and that’s why we often read in the Bible the words “Come back to Me, My people”. By getting back to God, man gets whatever he lost and becomes whole again, able to live as he was made to live, through those means he can live by alone and forever. By getting back to God, he becomes born once more, is made alive and by instinct lives out what he thinks he has never lost and believes was his portion all along and forever. Man, by getting back to God, only finds back what he was created for to live out from and by – and we know it is not by bread alone he lives. There is in God, then, that sense of peace man always searched after, craved after and worked for by strange means of religion, through strange fire and worldliness of many a kind – yet, never satisfying the thirst that was there, increasing through those. Man is never satisfied because he lives where and from what he can’t live by.

Man roaming on earth far from God, also, gained a way and a kind of wisdom which settled itself in him according to the pattern and environment he may find himself in. We find a greater struggle of the Spirit of God striving against the way man gained, above striving against man itself. Man will give up on himself, even sacrifice his own life for sin and murder, yet, he will not give up on his methods and ways that easily. We find it interesting that, in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus talks about the way things are done in heaven above the things of heaven. He uses the term “As they are done in heaven”. Not only the will is to be done, but and above all, it is to be done as it is done in heaven. It is a new way man is to find in and at the Lord, along with the New Life itself. Doing away with the ways of man is what we may call sanctification. Jesus became the Way as well as the Life itself. “He was made peace for us, He was made righteousness, wisdom, sanctification unto us…”, 1Cor.1:30,31. We may add to that list all we need and all God is become for us and for our sakes in and through us, to live in us all as if it were us – we in Him, and He is us. When it happens one never knows where does God begin, nor where does man end, for they are made to be one and whole again. The half coins have found their other half and are made whole again.

The word eternal means, plainly, without end. Yet, that meaning makes it short of its reality and truthfulness all along. Eternity is not time-linked alone, but it is composed of some constant character itself. It means it has a personality, a way besides it being endless and because of its way, it is endless. The word eternal means without end, yes, but also constant, permanent, without ups and downs, secure, unmoveable, strong, peaceful and untouched in all of its essence. Sin would have become like that had it eaten from the Tree of Life. “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become as one of Us... And now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live eternally, therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden”, Gen.3:22-23. Because God has done that, sin will remain unstable and roaming around until it eventually dies away by perishing.

By getting away from God, man has an eternal constitution and frame of spirit and mind which he cannot live out anymore, nor find the means of righteousness to which he belongs as creation and to live by and through. Blessed are those who thirst after this kind of righteousness and know what they are looking for in their senses and aspirations for life - even if they are told they are at random. Many thirst after it to use it towards this earthly life which is perishing by the very commandment of God Himself. Men may want to do it as sin would have wished to grab the fruit of the Tree of Life as well. Because man can’t get to it his way, this is where man blames God for the bitterness of his heart, his lack, his lack of joy and happiness in what he does and his consequent desire to revenge and to kill Abel who is faithful. “And the Lord said to Cain, Why have you angrily glowed? And why did your face fall? If you do well, shall you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin crouches at the door; and its desire is for you, and you shall rule over it”, Gen.4:6-7. Man away from God will not rule over eternal issues and through eternal ways and means – he will rule over sin alone. To have a breed out as he is, God has to accept him first, even if we are preached we are the ones who need accept Christ. Man became as a leave, a dry leave on the ground which is tossed around by the wind. If the wind goes left, so will man and if right, there he will go.

There are many ways in man, many different ways he keeps trying, while God is and has the only way in and with Him (we read, “My reward is with Me) – He holds the keys of life and of death in His Holy hand and land. Man feels he is lacking something, yet he mistakes and confuses it for money, sex, abuse, abundance or whatever grants him a false security and he finds available in this world as a substitute for that security he is has lost and is chasing after, which is missing from him due to sin. Man feels he has lost, yet keeps hammering on himself and his mind he knows best and knows what will fulfil him – till he dies away with his ideas forever, whether those ideas are his own or such as he may have assumed for himself. Christianity, as it is today, is one of those own ideas.

This is why men and women even get as far as “changing their own nature”, or at least believing they are as they can’t be or can’t become, to live accordingly. As we read: “Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man... Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves. For they changed the truth of God into a lie… For this cause, God gave them up to dishonourable affections. For even their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another; males with males working out shamefulness, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was fitting for their error. And even as they did not think fit to have God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do the things not right”, Rom.1:22-28. “For, the earnest expectation of the creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creation was not willingly subjected to vanity, but because of Him who subjected it on hope that the creation itself, also, shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. And we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now”, Rom.8:19-22. It will happen always till “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God” again, Rom 8:16. Any dissatisfied person can’t assume he is a Child of God, for it might be a lie. And if he is, it is because he has touched or is touching the unclean.

Human beings have, therefore, been made, formed, shaped according to an image they can’t find themselves able to use or get away from, and to stick by for long because sin’s means are not as man is made nor for what he has been created for. And because it is not, man keeps trying and gains a way towards and by stubborness which is that precise opposite of God's way. "And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the service of righteousness shall be quietness and hope forever", Is.32:17. "To whom He said, This is the rest; cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing. Yet they were not willing to hear", Is.28:9-12.

These creatures have been thrown out of the blessed, ruling and blessing Presence of God, and unless they can state truthfully again with Elijah, “God in whose Presence I stand”, they won’t be able to work out and move around as they are made to be. Man is thirsty for crystal clear water and he uses absinth and poisoned stuff to try to quench it with and through. Man’s ability and free capacity which works through and by a free spirit alone, is lost till he comes back to the Lord Who has the keys of his life in His own holy hand to rule and not to be ruled. Man is thirsty and drinks not water of Life, since he refuses to do so because he trusts his own way better and far above God’s, because man is linked by sentimentality to all he thinks he has, as well as through stubbornness and fear. This is why we find Christ stating He is the water of Life. “Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give Me to drink, you would have asked of Him, and He would have given you living water. The woman said to Him, Sir, from where then do you have that living water? Jesus answered and said to her, Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life”, 4:10,13,14.

 “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come! And let everyone hearing say, Come! And let anyone who is thirsty come. And he is willing, let him take of the Water of Life freely”, Rev.22:17.

José Mateus