Time

[updated below]

In this post the last one makes me look like a universalist perhaps, so, well here it is:

>
>
> 25) Here lies an atheist
> All dressed up
> And no place to go.
>
> EPITAPH
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Most likely, like most atheists, he expected to be reincarnated. It's only his dead flesh body there though. His soul and satanic spirit are elsewhere. Until the return of the King he will have his time to be regenerated by the Word and the Spirit if that is what God has in store for him.

I am basically referring to God's ability to act in time unconstrained with how human beings are constrained to perceive time.

God can act in a person's time at any point of that time. He acts from eternity. He can regenerate how and when he pleases. Birth-to-death linear time makes a human being's time seem 'dead' once the person has physically died. To God that is not the case. Deal with it, theologians. The Bible doesn't discuss time 'much' because it tends to explode the narrative when higher aspects of time are discussed. You just have to kind of see it. Figure it out. There's a reason we don't run screaming through the streets evangelizing people when *we know* hell exists. "That person's going to hell unless someone gives them the good news!!" We don't feel this is necessary because this is not how it works. We do need to evangelize though. And not be ashamed of the name Christ.

There is also truth that we just *know* regarding the fact that an unbeliever at death is not necessarily a reprobate at death.

Not to mention not even Reformed theologians (the gold standard I say without sarcasm) can come to a clear conclusion on the 'intermediate state' with regards to unbelievers especially.

There is this thing called the 'fullness of time.' People come into faith, if they do, when they do, by the grace of God, in the fullness of their time. History develops in the fullness of time. God's plan of redemption comes to consummation in the fullness of time. *Fullness of time* suggests a higher aspect of time than our constrained linear perception of time.

It just does. Not an excuse to think you have more time to screw around. (Or that 'second chance' exists. That is a facile accusation in the context of the difficult subject of time and eternity and how God acts and is able to act in the life of an individual.) The more you know the more is demanded of you. So once regenerated your time *is counted*, pilgrim.
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[update] Whenever one writes about the subject of time vis-a-vis biblical doctrine it is inevitable that the accusations of ignorance of orthodox teaching or accusations of heresy come at you as a matter of course. Theologians avoid the subject, for the most part, so it just sounds 'whacky' as the commenter below typically states.

But there are things that we sense, as Christians. As Christians who even know on-the-mark apostolic biblical doctrine.

One is that people who die as rather obvious unbelievers don't necessarily seem to be obvious reprobates. This is a fact we all see in our lives. We know God takes care of all his creation, and he does it as he sees fit, but that doesn't automatically mean X's unbelieving mother or father died a reprobate. Maybe they very well did and it will be revealed at the final judgment. At the end of the Age. But their death isn't the end of the Age.

Believers (born again Bible-believing Christians who have faith in Jesus Christ) go to be with God when they die. Theologians don't know where unbelievers go when they die (eternal hellfire is where you are judged to at the final judgment; it is not a waiting room prior to that) because the Bible is not clear on that (and when the Bible is not clear on something it is *intentionally* not clear, pilgrims). This is because time plays a role that we can't perceive. God is acting on people from eternity. There is *nothing* in the Bible that suggests God limits himself in how he can act regarding things like regeneration. The Westminster Confession of Faith acknowledges this fact (10.3).

III. Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how He pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.