The Household of God
Volume 1
The early history of mankind
- Chapter 184 -
ABOUT THE NATURE OF TIME AND ETERNITY
After this so exceedingly loving assurance by Abedam, Ghemela's courage was restored and her mind completely at rest. She once more breathed freely and she asked the following from her heart, which was also one of her singular questions. And this second question was as follows:
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"Most beloved, my alone most beloved, holiest and almighty Jehovah! Since You have so unspeakably deeply and graciously condescended to us poor sinners and allowed me to ask questions, would You be willing to help my foolishness?
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"Look, I have heard the words 'eternal' and 'eternity' a hundred, a thousand times and uttered them so often myself, but I have never as yet really understood them.
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"O Jehovah, if it were Your holy will I would like to hear about this!"
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And Abedam answered her question, comprehensible to all, as follows:
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"Listen, My beloved Ghemela, what eternity actually is as far as I am concerned you could never comprehend and stay alive. Therefore, it would be impossible to let you behold eternity from My point of view. But you and all the others are able to grasp the fact that eternity is to the spirit what time is to the body with the sole difference that time consumes everything around it and makes it pass whereas eternity does not let even an atom pass away.
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"Time consists in, and goes forth from, the constant motion of all material created things, for if they did not move they would in time all collapse in a heap, - the suns, the earths and moons and all the living beings would end up pell-mell in an endless, chaotic mass which owing to the intense pressure would soon ignite, consume itself and finally destroy itself completely.
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"However, since for the sake of its preservation everything from the greatest to the smallest must move in precise and proper distances and even the different parts of a body must at least possess a constant impulse to move enabling them to begin to move upon removal of some obstacle, the constant motions, which under the same laws keep reverting, and the reciprocal regular concurrences bring about the lapses of time which can be recorded. And that, which causes the constancy in the motion, namely, the wearing away of the parts touching each other in their movement and the thereby either slower or faster passing away, is the all-consuming time. Because of that all temporal things are also transitory as they pass away and others take their place and therefore the vanishing and returning of things determine the measure of time.
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"However, with eternity the exact opposite is the case. There, every movement is only apparent and basically all things persist in their state of complete rest.
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"Where time is concerned things only seem to rest, yet even the hardest stone keeps moving in all its countless particles and there is nothing that is inert.
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"It is the opposite with eternity. There everything appears to keep moving, but nevertheless it is in a state of totally undisturbed rest out of Me.
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To help you understand this clearly, I will give you a convincing and clear example:
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"Behold, if you would like to go to that distant fire-mountain, you would have to set out soon and laboriously walk towards it step by step in order to get there in maybe two or three days.
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"But in eternity one can save oneself that way, can remain in one and the same spot and can solely with one's emotions and thoughts travel to unbelievable distances and fully aware behold everything in detail without moving by a hair's breadth from the spot and thus always remain in the state of sweet rest, - that is, from My point of view.
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"You may visualize it like this: You are asleep in a comfortable and soft bed and have the most pleasant dream in which you are running to and fro and jumping and dancing for joy and might also go on a long and fast pleasure trip.
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"You do understand that with all this movement in your dream there is not the slightest movement of your person away from its place.
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"Such is also the nature of eternity in the more perfected state still incomprehensible to you. For behold, as in and through movement time, destruction, transitoriness and, finally, the death of all things are brought about, thus rest brings about eternal preservation, permanence and the perpetual, everlasting, most perfect life, just like Mine, of all the beings that in their love and living spirit resemble Me closely.
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"And just as I do not have to travel in order to go from one infinity to another, My beloved who are with Me will not need to go everywhere personally to behold all the endless wonders. They will, as I do, enjoy the true everlasting life in eternal rest, although they will not be aware of this rest, but only of an everlasting, most blissful activity, which will be maintained as imperishable for all eternity through this actually spiritual-personal rest.
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This, My beloved Ghemela, is eternity and the difference between it and the destructive time.
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"Concerning the duration, it runs parallel to the duration of time. Therefore, there can be eternities as well as there are times, except that the duration of eternity is not experienced like that of time since time can never bring back what has passed whereas eternity permanently preserves even the to you quite unimaginable past presenting it as the clearest present and the future as already before you .... Do you understand this?"
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And Ghemela replied with a friendly smile: "O Jehovah, if You wish it and to the extent that You wish it I do understand it through Your grace; but it is not as yet quite clear to me how one can in the constant state of rest still move. Look, this I would still like very much to understand if it be Your holy will."
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And Abedam said to her: "Dear Ghemela, this you will here never be able to grasp completely while you still carry a body, - but one day perfectly.
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"Therefore, ask better about something else and I will answer all your questions out of My love for you. Amen."