From Time into Eternity

Scripture Reference:

Ecclesiastes 3:11 He hath made every [thing] beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world
in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the
end.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 Amplified Bible (AMP)

God Set Eternity in the Heart of Man
11 He has made everything beautiful and appropriate in its time. He has also planted eternity

[a sense of divine purpose] in the human heart [a mysterious longing which nothing under the
sun can satisfy, except God]—yet man cannot find out (comprehend, grasp) what God has
done (His overall plan) from the beginning to the end.

II CORINTHIANS 4:16
16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward [man]
is renewed day by day.
17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding
[and] eternal weight of glory;
18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for
the things which are seen [are] temporal; but the things which are not seen [are] eternal.

ISAIAH 57:15 For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name [is]
Holy; I dwell in the high and holy [place], with him also [that is] of a contrite and humble spirit,
to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

We are not human being having supernatural experience, but a supernatural being having
human experience for us to appreciate heaven and eternity.

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344-848 Now, there you are. That's the way we are here. We come from a higher being.
In the beginning we were in the image of God. The veil and the darkness keeps us from
knowing it now. But Jesus told His disciples He was with them before the foundation of the
world. See? We were. You can't know it now, but you was in the beginning.

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Now, if you are a son and daughter of God, then you were in God at the beginning. You're
His attribute. If you wasn't there then, then you never was or never will be.
'Cause, I cannot bear, from my loins, the son of this man here or that man there, I can only
bear my own sons, and they would bear my likeness. Hallelujah. You see it?

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234 Sons and daughters was in God at the beginning. Now, look. You've got Eternal Life,
you say. We believe it, that we got Eternal Life. Well, there's only one form of Eternal Life,
and that's God. That's the only thing that is eternal, is God. Then if you've got Eternal Life,
that Life that's in you always was, and you were in the loins of God before there even was a
world. And when the Word Itself... Jesus Himself is called the Word, and in St. John 1, said,
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And
the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us." Then you were in the loins of Jesus, and
went to Calvary with Him. You died with Him, and you raised with Him. And today we're
setting in heavenly places in Him, filled with His Spirit, sons and daughters of God. Die with
Him, raised with Him. Sure.

Now the Word most definitely sets forth that from BEFORE the foundation of the earth the
purpose of God was to share His Eternal Life with man.

Ephesians 1:4-11,
"According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before Him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of
children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,."

But that Life could not, and would not, be shared in any other way than through the way of
"God manifest in the flesh." This was a part of His eternal and predestinated purpose. This
plan was to be to the praise of the glory of His grace. It was the plan of Redemption. It was
the plan of Salvation. Now listen closely. "God being a Saviour, it was necessary that He
predestinate a man who would require salvation in order to give Himself reason and purpose
of being." That is one hundred percent correct and multitudes of Scripture bear it out as does
the very pointed verse of Romans 11:36,
"For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are ALL THINGS: to Whom be GLORY for ever.
Amen."
Man could not directly come and partake of that Tree of Life in the midst of the garden. That
Eternal Life of the Tree had to become flesh first. But before God could raise and save a
sinner, He had to have a sinner to raise and save. Man had to fall. The fall which would be
caused by Satan, had to have flesh to make fall. Satan had to come through flesh also. But
Satan could not come through human flesh to make the fall as would Christ come in human
flesh to restore the fallen.
But there was an animal, the serpent, so close to man that Satan could get to that beast and
through that beast he could get to human flesh and cause the fall, and inject himself thereby
into the human race, even as Jesus would one day come and inject Himself into the human
race, into human bodies, even to the extent of a resurrection wherein we would have bodies
like unto His glorified one.

Thus what God worked out here in the garden was His predestinated plan. And when Satan
had brought about that which was necessary to the purpose of God, then man could not get
to the Tree Of Life in the garden. Certainly not. It wasn't time. But an animal (animal had
caused the fall had it not? let animal life be shed) was taken and his blood shed and then
God had communion with man again.
Then there was to come a day when God would appear in flesh, and by means of His
humiliation He would restore fallen man and make him a partaker of that Life Eternal. Once
you see this, you can understand the serpent seed and know that it was no apple Eve ate.
No, it was the degradation of humanity by intermingling the seed.

The Bible actually opens with the statement "In the beginning God..." without making any
reference to date and time. In both Hebrew and Greek, the idea of "the beginning" means the
"indefinite distant past." This is not to suggest that man's early history fades into obscure
mists of mythology as we go backwards in time, but that God has not revealed all that we
would like to know about the exact "time" of the creation of all things.
Like Genesis, the Gospel of John opens with the words, "In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." It is declared in Scripture that God
always was, always will be, and is unchanging---"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today
and forever." (Hebrews 13:8) The "beginning" referred to in John's gospel is actually an
earlier point in time than the "beginning" of Genesis One. John says "the Word was with
God" prior to the creation of the universe, and in fact all things were brought into being
through the Word.

God is endless like eternity. You can never find the corner of a perfect circle. You could run
and run through ages and eternity, and there'd never, never, never be an end to it, and that's
the way God is. And when He... Be first was God which always was; He was infinite, perfect
to begin with. And He will always be the same. He never can change. He's perfectly the
same.

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E-11 Now, this great chain of perfection was broken by time space. Time came because
of sin. Let's draw a picture of time. Let's see, a perfect circle, forever, forever, and then all of
a once, sin dropped in and put a--a little, as my wife calls it, a little hickey or a little drop in the
chain so it comes down now. Eternity continues on, but it's not in its perfect condition.
There's a little gap comes down, breaks over this way, goes out this a way. God had to do
that because Satan caused it. And it dropped down to a space of time for the trying, and the
perfecting, and for the purging of the lost, that God by His sovereign grace might someday lift
that little hickey or gap back into the perfect circle. Then she rolls on just the same. You see
it?

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E-12 Time... Now, time is this little loop that loops down. Jesus was from eternity to
eternity, but He stepped into the time spaces, made flesh, and came through here in order to
sanctify or put a streak of Blood all across this place to redeem it and connect it back with
God again for all eternity. You see it?
That's all time is. Then God when it started here to end of little kink in the perfect circle but
made it a little kink in it; when God started there, He was perfect. Everything He said was
perfect. Everything He did--does is perfect. So then the Bible said that Christ Jesus was the
Lamb slain from the beginning of the little kink, the beginning of the world. Christ was slain at
the beginning.

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E-13 Now, He really wasn't slain until four thousand years later. But the reason He was
slain then because, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God." Do you see it, Brother Egan, what I mean? See? He was God in the
beginning and when...
Now, Satan could... Did not--did not create this little loop, this little hickey. He didn't create
that. Satan cannot create. Satan can only pervert what God has created.

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E-14 Look. I say this so that you'll understand. This is the adult class, and we're mostly all
married people, probably ninety percent. And I hope the young women and men
understands, or boys what I... To understand me just to explain something. If a man takes to
himself a wife, a woman, and she becomes his wife, and they live together as husband and
wife for hun--for fifty years, they're just as clean and pure and unadulterated if they'd never
knew one another. That's--that's God's program.
But for that man or woman to go and live with another man or a woman, that perverts, makes
illegitimate children born. But if they live together in that perfect harmony, that's God's way.
But Satan comes around and puts lust in the man or the woman, and they live contrary to
those marriage vows, and that's perverting. It's the very same sexual affair, but it's perverted.
So that's what Satan does with God's correct thing. He perverts it. That's what Satan is doing
today with the real genuine (listen), to the real message of God. He perverts it, makes
something else, makes it appear to be something that it's not.

You came from where? You go to where? You came out of eternity. You stepped into a little
space called time. You go out of time into eternity. And what you are in your soul as you go
out, the same you'll be. Oh, my. All right.

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E-7 He has risen from the dead, living in His Church, and He said, "The things that I do,
shall you also. Greater than this shall you do because I go to My Father."
Now, the people couldn't understand how Him being a man, would go to the Father and yet
be back in. But He said, "I came from God, and I go to God." He came out of Spirit out of
eternity into time, for the taking away of sin, passed through time, went back into eternity. So,
it's--was God.
And He's with us, raised from the dead. And the things that He did in the days of His flesh,
He is doing tonight, and has been doing since He rose from the dead.

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God has prepared something incomprehensibly beautiful for those who love Him and trust
Him--something that lies beyond time, something so beautiful and vast and breathtaking that
only Eternity is big enough to contain it. The Apostle Paul tells us about the wonders of
Eternity in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18--and his description of eternity gives us grounds for
confidence and courage as we face the trials and pressures of the present time:
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are
being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an
eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what
is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Paul states plainly that what we are going through now is only preparing us for something yet
to come--something so glorious and so different from what we have known that it is "beyond
all comparison."
This is the Christian hope. It is more than merely looking on to life beyond the grave. It
declares that everything which happens to us in this life is directly related to what is coming--
in fact, is getting us ready for it. Nothing, then, is purposeless or futile in our present
experience. It is all necessary to the ultimate end.
The increasing beauty within
The apostle suggests three aspects of our present experience as believers which indicate
that something much greater is coming. First, there is the daily inner renewal which we
experience as Christians. "Though outwardly we are wasting away," Paul says in 2
Corinthians 4:16, "yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day." The sharp contrast he
draws is between the effects of aging upon the body--particularly our lessening physical
power and approaching death--and the increase of wisdom and the mellowing of love which
mark the spirit of one who walks with God. There is a beauty about godly old age which
youth knows nothing of. The spirit broadens and grows serene though the body trembles and
feels increasing pain.
What is happening? The outer man is losing the battle; the strength of youth falters and
fades, the night is coming on. But the inner man is reaching out to light, growing in strength
and beauty; the day is at hand. This inner renewal is another way of describing the new
covenant in action. "Everything coming from God, nothing from me." The law of sin and death
is destroying the body; the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is renewing the spirit and
also the soul "from one degree of glory to another." To see this happening in oneself or in
another is to be convinced that something wonderful lies ahead.
The authentic Christian view of trials
Furthermore, the apostle stoutly declares that it is our very trials and hardships which actually
produce the glory to come! "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an
eternal glory that far outweighs them all" (2 Corinthians 4:17). Surely there is a twinkle in
Paul's eye when he writes, "our light and momentary troubles," in view of what he at a later
time describes.
Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was
beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night
and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger
from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger
from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in
danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without
sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been
cold and naked. (2 Corinthians 11:24-27).
That is what Paul calls "our light and momentary troubles." But he was not complaining. He
made light of it simply because he was aware of something we often forget. He knew that
these painful trials were actually preparing the "weight of glory" which was coming! Notice he
does not say that these trials were preparing him for the glory. While that was true, it wasn't
what he said here. The trials were creating the glory!
This truly astonishing quality of eternity is the reason Jesus could promise his disciples with
absolute certainty, "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to
be with me that you also may be where I am" (John 14:3). That promise not only applied to
that generation of Christians, but would apply to all, directly and personally, through all the
intervening centuries. This also explains the strange promise at the close of Hebrews 11.
Speaking of Abraham, Moses, David, Jacob, Joseph, and others the writer says, "These
were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God
had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made
perfect" (Hebrews 11:39-40).

To be "made perfect" is to be resurrected, so this passage specifically states that the saints
of old will not be resurrected without us. Either they are disembodied spirits waiting for the
resurrection (which we have already seen is not likely) or there is some way by which we can
leave time one by one and yet participate together in one glorious experience of resurrection.
The proper understanding of eternity supplies the answer.
Eternity invades time
There are other references in Scripture that present this same phenomenon of the apparent
eclipse of time. For instance, in Revelation 13:8, Jesus is referred to as "the Lamb that was
slain from the creation of the world." Now the cross occurred at a precise moment of history.
We know when the Lamb of God was slain. But the Bible says it occurred before the
foundation of the world. How can an historical event, which occurred at a certain spot on
earth, in the biblical reckoning be said to have occurred before the earth was even made?
The passage does not say that the Lamb was foreordained to be slain before the foundation
of the world, but it says He was actually slain then. Surely it means that the cross was an
eternal event, taking place both in time and eternity. In time, it is long past; in eternity, it
forever occurs.
The same is true of the resurrection and even the second coming of Christ. When any
Christian dies, he passes from the realm of time and space into timelessness, into the NOW
of God, when the full effect of these timeless events is experienced by him to whatever
degree his spiritual state requires. But the Lord's return is an event yet to take place in
historical time when the Church is complete and the end of the age has come. Perhaps this
is the meaning of the Lord's words: "I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come
when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live" (John
5:25).

There's nothing present, nothing future, nothing, starvations, or perils or anything can ever
separate us from that love of God that's in Christ. When a man is borned of the Spirit of God,
he's a creature no longer of time, but he's a creature of eternity. Amen. He's passed from
death unto Life. He's passed from the... He's passed from the time element into the eternity.
He can never perish. And God swore that He'd raise him up in the last days

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114 But if you're born again, you're alive with Christ, and your affections is on things
above and not on things of the world. But if you are born again of the Spirit of God, you
become a part of God and are eternal with Him. Then, death cannot touch you when you're
born again. You are eternal. You have changed from a creature of time to a creature of
eternity. You have changed from death unto Life. I'm talking about eternal. From eternal
death to Eternal Life... If you're of the world, you die here with it. If you love... The Bible said
in John "If you love the world or the things of the world, it's because the love of God's not
even in you." You can't love the world. And Jesus said, "You can't love God and mammon."
"Mammon" is the "world." You can't love the world and God at the same time. "And he that
says he loves Me, and keeps not My sayings," that's the Bible, "he's a liar, and the Truth's
not even in him." There you are.

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98 He was God of the Old Testament. He was God of the New Testament. He's the same
God today: yesterday, today, and forever.
And you know then, down in your heart, that a supernatural work has been done by a
supernatural Being. When you once drank, and smoked, and lied; and you women loved the
world so much, you kept wearing your makeup, and your long--or short hair, and doing other
things you did; and you find out that something happens, and all the devils in hell couldn't
make you do it again. Something happened, a God... A miracle was performed. What did He
do? Changed your vile heart, changed your desires, changed your nature. A supernatural
Word, by a supernatural God, made a creature of time to a creature of eternity. Amen. Took
the world out of you, and put Christ in you, the hope of glory. And you're filled with His Spirit
and ready to meet Him.

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You say, "Brother Branham, does that mean anything when they raise their hands?" The
difference between death and life. That's what it means. God bless you, lady. I seen you,
setting right here. You say, "To raise up my hand?" Yes, sir.
When you raise your hand you break every law of gravitation. Why it shows there's
something supernatural in you. And that supernatural being is in you, has broke the laws of
gravitation, and defied science, and raised that hand to Almighty God, your Creator, that
you've made a decision that you'll serve Jesus Christ. Certainly it means the difference
between death and life, if you mean it. If you don't mean it, it doesn't mean nothing. But if you
mean it...

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49 Now, in Genesis the 1st chapter, "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters." We realize that the water... And--and the Bible said in the beginning back there, that
this--the world was without form and was void. There was nothing but just a darkness of
chaos. And--and what a horrible shape it must've been in, nothing but way into the darkness
yonder, without light or anything, and the churning of the water, that--that wandering star
twisted around and around the orbits out there somewhere. It must've been a--a terrific mass
of--of--of something lost, like it was, couldn't find its way.
And that's what we become when we become wandering stars, away from God, just without
hope, without God, without--just churning around out in darkness, not knowing when we--
where we're going.
And God took that great chaos of darkness and transformed it into a garden of Eden (See?)
by His Word. That's how we're transformed: by God's Word. When God said, "Let there be
light," and that mass of creation out there come over in around the sun, and begin to revolve
around the sun, and became a garden of Eden because it obeyed the Word of God. It done
the perfect will of God, for it was transformed from chaos into a garden of Eden by the Word
of God.

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8-4 And when sin struck the earth back in the beginning like a sheet of blackness falling
from the heaven, it literally paralyzed the earth. It throwed every creature on the earth, and all
of God's creation, in bondage. Man was under bondage of death, sickness, troubles,
sorrows. All nature fell with it. Sin was an anesthetic that actually paralyzed the earth. And
then we was set here hopeless, 'cause every creature on earth was subject to it, and
everyone born on earth was subject to it. So it had to come from someplace where there was
no sin. It could not come from the earth.
One of us could not redeem the other. It had to come from another. Therefore, when man
realized that he was separated from his God, he become a wanderer. They wept; they cried;
they toiled; they wandered about through the mountains and through the deserts seeking a
city whose Builder and Maker was God. For he knew that if he ever got back in the Presence
of God, he could talk it over with Him. But there was no way back. He become lost. He didn't
know which way to turn, so he just took out wandering, trying to find somewhere that he
could find a way back to that place. Something on the inside of him told him that he come
from a--a place that was perfect.