For our benefit. How can a finite man comprehend an infinite God? Even with the Holy Spirit it is difficult to see how God could set aside His glory and take a body like unto mortal man. But then God is God and we are not. How does God Who is eternal operate in time? How does God descend to our level? One way is to reveal no more about Himself than we can understand.
For the cause of Christ
Roger
Roger, I read your puzzlement about time. Here is something I read in a theology book that really seemed to make the picture a lot clearer.
"God is eternal. He is faithfully present throughout time. The experience of faith means we ought not to conceive of God's eternality as timeless impassibility, but omnipresent with regard to time. God is present in all time, and therefore, all time is present to God.
Our human experience of the temporal sequence provides insight into how we may understand God's relationship to time. Time is divided into three aspects - past, present and future. We have a limited sense of time - some sense of the past and present. The past is limited to memory and the future through anticipation or hope. We only know what lies in the present. Therefore we live in the present.
However, the present is a continually moving point, which appears to travel with us through the temporal sequence. This vanishing present forms a bridge between the past we remember and the future we anticipate.
One important difference sets God's knowing apart from ours. Our immediate knowledge is finite. It is limited by both the finite "present" and by our finite capability to draw even events transpiring in our present into our perception.
God's cognition or knowledge, in contrast, is infinite. He is immediately and simultaneously knowing or cognizant of all events as themselves -whether in the past, the present or the future. In this sense, God is eternal with respect to creaturely time.
As a result of this difference, we ought to view our cognition in the light of God's. Through our "present" we participate in a finite manner in what for God is perfect and complete knowledge of the whole of the temporal reality."
Hope that wasn't too long winded and makes sense. By the way, I learned about the "temporal reality" on Star Trek. LOL