Eyes 2 Jesus

Time, and our Perception of It

If the sun were to just blank out, we wouldn't notice its lack of light for eight minutes. The light shining on us from the sun is the light the sun put out, eight minutes ago. How crazy is that?

Light from certain stars take hundreds or even thousands of years to reach us. The stars we see in the sky is what they looked like in the past - many of them from many years in the past. It's not necessarily what they look like presently. A star could go supernova, but we may not see it in our night skies until 50 years later, depending on that star's distance from the planet Earth.

Since it takes time for the light from the stars to travel to us, in order for us to see them, does this mean that for the first years of man being on the newly created earth, mankind had a blank sky, other than the sun and moon? No. Take a look at the below scriptures:

"and God saith, `Let light be;' and light is." -Genesis 1:3

"And God calleth to the expanse `Heavens;' and there is an evening, and there is a morning -- day second." -Genesis 1:8

"And God saith, `Let luminaries be in the expanse of the heavens, to make a separation between the day and the night, then they have been for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years" -Genesis 1:14

Light was created before the stars were. In fact, light was even created before the sun (a star) and moon were. Therefore, we can deduce that the light from the distant stars were created before the stars that give that light were, and therefore Adam and Eve had a night sky full of stars, just like we do, today.

What of our perception of time, though? The speed of light isn't instantaneous, and the speed of sound is even slower, and then there's a lag time for our senses to pick up images and sounds, and our brains need to process the senses. This means none of us, perception-wise, are sensing the present - only what just happened.

When you see a dog across the street, it is not in the exact position, doing the exact thing, or making the exact barking sound by the time you see and hear it. It has moved on a bit. It took a moment for the light to travel to your retinas in order for you to see the dog, and it took a bit for the sound waves to travel to you, to hear its sounds. Then, once your senses picked these things up, they had to be processed and interpreted in your brain.

Here is an example where you can observe time travel in motion: If you've ever seen and heard a military jet overhead, then you've noticed that you can't look where you hear the sound, as the plane is already ahead of the sound. This is because light travels faster than sound, so we see the fighter jet in front of the sound it emits. Of course, by the time we hear it, and look ahead of the sound to see it, it is actually a bit further ahead than we see.

Everything we see and hear has already happened, and thus is not happening "right now."

Build Your Foundation on the Rock of Salvation