Does forever really exist? Time, never-ending, marching one second at a time into infinity? For many of us, the thought that time meanders into the future… forever, is unsettling. We prefer events to have a beginning, and at some point, a conclusion. An end. Naturally, we don’t want our end to come too soon, but we need closure. We’re conditioned this way. Projects have a start and end date, although I admit that some of my projects seemed to never end. They just got rolled into other projects. Anyway, trips, vacations, sporting events, all end.
Many world religions (Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity) promise life after death. Words like eternity, forever, never-ending, are difficult to fully comprehend. I can’t get my head around them. How could our existence be endless and continue for eternity, even after we die and our bodies put into a grave or urn? In early World War 2, following the British victory in Egypt, Winston Churchill gave the British people hope and said the battle marked “the end of the beginning (of the war).” What if death, yours and mine, is the end of the beginning? What if there’s more to come after we die?
Maybe “time” is an “event” on the “eternal” timeline. It has a start date, “In the beginning, God created…,” and an end date, which happens after the 1,000-year millennium, called “the day of the Lord,” when “The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.”
Once we reach the end of time, God creates a new heaven and a new earth, and eternity begins in earnest. A “forever” spent in heaven for “believers,” and one in hell for “unbelievers.” Eternity seems like such a long time. Where will you spend it?
The Chronicles of Egydyus Flombosi 