Will we experience time in heaven?

The heavenly saints have no temple, in direct contrast to this, and no need of sun and moon (time).

We must remember that all computation of time is Jewish, and not at all for the church; we belong to heaven, and we do not count time in heaven.

Revelation 20:11-15 gives us the last great session of judgment—the great white throne. Seeing the earth and the heaven will have fled away, there can be no more time, for these are marked by the two motions of the earth round the sun—its diurnal rotation on its axis giving the succession of night and day, and its orbit round the sun giving the seasonal successions and marking off year from year.

A few remarks on this chapter may be interesting and profitable. It is quite evident that Revelation 21:1-8 sets before us the eternal state. At the end of the preceding chapter and linking on with our Scripture we read of the earth and heaven fleeing away, and no place being found for them; of the second resurrection affecting the wicked dead; of the great white throne judgment and its effects, as seen in chapter 22:8. With the passing away of the earth and heaven we are ushered into eternity. Time is connected with the “two great lights” (Gen. 1:16), which are set in the heavens for “signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (v. 14). With the disappearance of these, time ceases, and eternity begins.

There is another passage, which still further confirms the above. We read, “Through faith we understand that the worlds [aiōn] were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb. 11:3). Here reference is clearly made to God’s initial act of creation. But why should the word, ages, be employed when creation has to do with material things? The expression, ages, is clearly a reference made to time. But how did time begin? How can we, how do we, measure time? The answer is, Only by the fact of the creation of the earth, the sun, the moon and their movements. The revolving of the earth gives us day and night; its orbit round the sun gives us our year. The movement of the moon round the earth gives us a lunar month. “God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also” (Gen. 1:16). Creation was necessary to carve out of eternity, the little span, we call time, regulated by the movements of the heavenly bodies and this earth. So we read, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night: and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Gen. 1:14). Time will not cease to be till heaven and earth cease to be. We can understand somewhat why the translators used the word, world, where it should have been the word, ages; this latter clearly giving a better understanding of this remarkable passage of Scripture.

Now, the interval during which Christ is hidden in the heavens, and the Holy Ghost is dwelling on earth, in contradistinction to His working in other ages, has no computation in scripture. “Times and seasons” belong to the Jew and the earth. The present interval is not “time,” properly speaking, at all. Time is counted when God has to do with earth and earthly things.

The dominating object of God throughout the succeeding cycles of time is expressed in the final verse: "unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end." Paul not only looks up to the exalted Christ in His present heavenly glory, but he looks onward and sees in the ages to come in the sphere of heavenly glory the church, not Israel nor the Gentiles, who will have their fitting and allotted place upon the earth. Throughout the ages, world without end, the church will be the vehicle of glory to God.

Thus far we have traced the Scriptures a little as to the Church of God and her coming glory; but we must add a thought or two more as to the eternal state, because the subject would be incomplete without it. The Church, the bride and body of Christ, has eternal qualities. is not only eternal in the sense that it has eternal salvation, but the believer, who now belongs to the Church of God, will always belong to the Church of God. In proof of this, I will only refer to two texts. In the second chapter of Ephesians, which is an epistle emphatically treating of the Church, we are told that God hath made us to "sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." Now mark the words "in the ages to come." The millennium is one age. What follows the millennium is the eternal state ages of ages; and therefore I apprehend this one text proves that the Church, as such, will occupy a special and unique position throughout eternity. But there is another text, if it be necessary, which is still more decided on the point. In the concluding verse of the third chapter it is said, "Unto him be glory in the Church, by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end." Here the Church is spoken of as existing as such "throughout all ages." Nothing can be clearer.

Looking on then to the new heavens and the new earth, we cast our eyes across all the changes this universe will witness, till the changeless state shall begin, that time of which God alone has spoken, when the restless activity of men shall cease, and the calming quiet of a settled and everlasting order of things shall commence. Blessed, unspeakably blessed, is this prospect for all who shall share in it, landed, as they will be then, from the troubled sea of shifting circumstances upon the terra firma of an immutable and holy condition. "As the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, so shall your seed and your name remain," is God's last promise by Isaiah to His people Israel. The assembling of all flesh from month to month, and week to week, to worship before Jehovah, is the prophet's last statement about men on earth, whilst the carcases of transgressors unburied, to be seen by those who are obedient to God's word, tells its tale of God's holiness and judgment upon sinners, of which the day of the Lord will bear witness. But the prophet stops not here, for lifting up just the corner, as it were, of the curtain, which hides the other world from our view, be tells us of the eternal condition in misery of those, whose carcases shall lie unburied upon earth; "for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched." (Isa. 66:24.)

The book of Revelation gives us the prophetic record of the closing up of the history of this world as the platform on which the ways of God in time have been worked out. It speaks of the accomplishment of the mystery of God (Rev. 10:7), the ushering of the time-state into eternity. It has been said of this time-state, that it is "a divine parenthesis in the midst of eternity." The eye of man naturally can only look at the condition of things in which as a creature he is set. Hence we read, in Ecc. 3:11, "He hath set the world in their hearts," that is, this time epoch (aion<span font-family: 'Graeca'">aijwvn</span>), "so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from beginning to end." God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end (Rev. 21:6), while man lives in a state of things by nature where there is a time for every purpose under heaven. God in His goodness uses the travail which belongs to such a state to exercise the sons of men in it; but there is a moment coming when the mystery of God, which from beginning to end He has been working out through this time-state, will be finished. "What God doeth it shall be for ever," and the words, "It is done" (Rev. 21:6), tell us that time is no more. It is God's for ever - eternity.