oceans that allows this terraqueous planet to be held together and spun
around; and so on. If those active forces—light, sound, taste, and ether—
were taken away, the receptors made of substance and matter would soon
collapse and fall apart. In fact, if God were not present in the human mind
everywhere and always, the mind would dissolve like a bubble popping in
the air, and both brains, on whose primary structures the mind depends,
would turn to froth. Everything that is human would become the dust of
the earth or a smell floating in the atmosphere.
[ 3 ] Because God is present in all time independently of time, his Word
speaks of past and future in the present tense. For example, in Isaiah: “A
Child is born to us, a Son is given to us, whose name is Hero, Prince of
Peace” (Isaiah 9 : 6 ). In David as well, “I will announce this decision: Jehovah
said to me, ‘You are my Son. Today I fathered you’” (Psalms 2 : 7 ). These
statements refer to the Lord who was to come. In the same source it also
says, “In your eyes, a thousand years are like yesterday” (Psalms 90 : 4 ).
From many other passages in the Word about seeing and being vigi-
lant we can see that God is present everywhere in the entire world, and
yet there is nothing belonging to the world in him, that is, nothing lim-
ited in space and time. For example, this passage in Jeremiah:
Am I not a God near you, rather than a God far away? Can a man be
covered over in hiding places so that I would not see him? I fill the
whole heaven and the whole earth. (Jeremiah 23 : 23 – 24 )31 4. God’s infinity in relation to space is called immensity; in relation to
time it is called eternity. Yet although these are related, there is nonetheless no
space in God’s immensity, and no time in his eternity.God’s infinity in rela-
tion to space is called immensity because “immense” is associated with
“large” and “huge,” and also with extension and spaciousness within
extension. God’s infinity in relation to time, however, is called eternity
because the phrase “to eternity” means “in an endless succession of stages
measurable in units of time.” To clarify: we describe the earth itself and
its surface in spatial terms and the earth’s rotation and orbit in temporal
terms. The earth’s motions anchor our measurements of time, and the
earth itself anchors our measurements of space. In consequence of our
senses, space and time are also present in a similar way in the perception
of our minds as we reflect. In God, however, there is no space and time,
as I have shown just above, yet space and time originate from God.
Therefore “immensity” means his infinity in relation to space, and “eter-
nity” means his infinity in relation to time.