FOREWORD
In C. S. Lewis' well known Narnia series he describes how several quite ordinary English children, playing hide and seek, enter a quite ordinary English wardrobe and, pressing deeper into the familiar garments, suddenly find themselves in a strange and mysterious land. To read Journey out of Time is apt to give the reader a somewhat similar experience. It begins with familiar concepts of space and time which may even seem a bit dull and prosaic. But as one reads on, the walls silently move back, the commonplace begins to glow and soon one is aware of a new dimension of thought that startles and captivates the fancy.
I first became familiar with the writings of Arthur Custance through his self-published Doorway Papers. The help I gained through his meticulous research in themes from Genesis 1-10 led me from one exciting Doorway Paper to another. In the course of this, I came across his Paper on Time and Eternity which gave me the first satisfying answer I had found to the conundrums gathering around the biblical themes of the resurrection body and the return into time of Jesus Christ.
This in turn led to a memorable week in 1973, I believe, when Dr. Custance consented to visit us in California and share his devout scholarship with us in evening and daytime lectures.
This present volume, I believe, will prove an open door into fresh and startling new views of many familiar Bible passages.
Palo Alto, April, 1981
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Time: The Psychological Account
3. Time: The Philosophical Account
4. Time: The Scientific Account5. When Time Became an Eternity
7. Man: A Hyphenate Being of Spirit and Body: Background Review
8. Soul Re-Emerges in the Laboratory
9.The Interdependence of Spirit and Body: The Biblical and Theological View
PART III: THE NATURE OF THE INTERVAL
10 .The Inherent Immortality of the Soul
12. Survey of Thought Regarding the Intermediate State
We are great travelers these days. Every one is "going somewhere else" - to England, to Europe, to South America, to the Caribbean. So exciting to most people is the prospect of travel that the destination itself is scarcely important! The great thing is to be on the move and to be going "first class" if possible. Probably Americans are the most mobile people in the world - with the exception of nomads!
But there is one journey we are reluctant to think about - at least, we want to postpone it as long as possible. It is the journey out of time into eternity. Yet we know we shall all, or nearly all, have to make it in the end, and at a time not altogether of our choosing...
What can it mean to pass out of this world of space and time and find ourselves in a timeless, spaceless (?) world in which to move from one "place" to another will neither occupy time nor require passing through the intervening space between? How "long" will it take? How does one "go" there?
A propos of the matter of the "time" taken for this journey, I once presented a paper to a very small Toronto audience on Einstein's theory of the relativity of time.
This was in 1939. Present in the audience was a Christian man of mature years who also happened to be a lawyer of some consequence, the legal advisor to one of Toronto's largest newspapers.
After the lecture, he came up to me and said: "This is all nonsense! How can you say that where there is no Space there is no time either? Existence without time is inconceivable!" But then he added, "I'd still like to have a copy of your paper."
So I gave him one. But I hardly felt encouraged by his response to a truth I had only a little while before perceived as having a profound relevance to what happens when we pass out of this world and go to be for ever with the Lord.
Some weeks later, I had a phone call from him. "What did you mean," he asked, "by the statement... ." and he read to me a couple of sentences that were really the crux of the matter. And I could see that he had been mulling over the subject and was in fact on the verge of seeing the whole point. Indeed, about three months later he was explaining all to his wife and invited me to come over and help him along! He had gotten the point. And you may imagine how rewarded I felt.
Anyway, you may very well find yourself wondering, as he did. I only hope you will stay with it. I believe it provides an answer to a very profound problem that has been unresolved for centuries but is now within sight of resolution and the prospect is indeed an exciting one.
Someone said that it takes two to tell a truth, one to speak it and one to hear it spoken. There are truths that we only grasp after we have given them verbal expression for the benefit of someone else. We may think we understand a truth, but when we try to share it with another person we often discover that we only half understand it ourselves. Then the attempt to communicate it clarifies our thoughts and the would-be teacher becomes his own pupil and learns from himself by the effort of telling.
I believe that the reader will profit most from this study if he will try to share it with a friend with whom rapport has already been established, and will then discuss it so as to clarify its implications. These implications are profound and far reaching.
There is much to comfort those who have fears about the journey that is to be taken from time into eternity when we come to crossing over Jordan. Moreover, some centuries-old questions regarding the nature of the intermediate state between death and resurrection are answered in a new way.
Although it seemed necessary to begin with certain aspects of time upon which recent research has shed an entirely new light, the perceptive reader will soon begin to recognize the relevance of this research to a number of more puzzling passages of Scripture, the meaning of which has hitherto remained somewhat obscure.
New light may also be shed on the phenomenon of expectancy of the Lord's soon return, an expectancy that seems so clearly indicated in the New Testament and has always been dear to the Lord's people in spite of centuries of "delay." Indeed, so long has this delay continued that many believe such expectancy is both unreasonable and improper. This study, however, will help to show that such a negative conclusion is entirely unwarranted. The Second Coming of the Lord in glory can indeed be looked for, expectantly, by every believer.
If you find the going difficult here and there, don't give up. You will be amply rewarded in the end. Press on, and gradually the picture will become clearer until suddenly the light will shine and you will say, "Oh, I see!" and you will rejoice in the Lord.
This is a foray into territory that is not usually explored by the Christian reader, and it stretches the mind in new directions. It is an adventure in ideas that may at first seem to be foreign to the things that matter most to us the Lord's people. But eventually you will find that the Word of God has been marvelously illuminated in an entirely new way as the old Faith becomes doubly reassuring about one of the greatest mysteries of life, the journey out of time into eternity.
WHEN TIME BEGINS...AND ENDS
"If we assume that all matter were to disappear from the world...there would no longer be any space or time." Albert Einstein, (1879 - 1955)
"Here you must put time out of your mind and know that in that world there is neither time nor a measure of time, but everything is an eternal moment." Martin Luther, (1483 - 1546)
"Creation was with time, not in time." Augustine of Hippo, (354 - 420)
"Time shall be no more." (Rev.10:6), John the Apostle (0-100?)
"Time began with the world or after it." Philo Judaeus, (B.C. 20-40 A. D.)
Arthur C. Custance, Ph.D.
Originated November 30, 1996. Corrections April 25, 1997.
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