When I shared the first paper in this series I was taken aback to be roundly attacked by a fellow Christian for in his view having got it terribly wrong. Evidently, he thought it was not enough to simply trust the King James Bible translation and implied that I should have studied the meaning of the Greek as presented by more modern scholarship.

What’s more he had done his homework, looking up the meaning of Greek words and asserting that the phrase “before the foundation of the world” should read “known from eternity”, thus meaning “before the conception of the cosmos (world) began” which, he insisted, meant God’s creation of the earth and heavens.

 He then took an axe to the King James rendering of Acts 15:18 which says “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world”. No, he insisted, it should be “known from eternity”. 2 Tim. 1:8-9, he asserted, should not say we were “saved” and “called” “according to his purpose and grace which was given to us before the world began” but “before time eternal”.

Which raises the question: Is there such a thing as “time eternal”? Not according to Revelation 10:5-7 in the King James Bible. That verse says:

And the angel which I saw stand upon the and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, And sware by Him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven and the things that therein are, and the earth and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer. But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

Is it a coincidence that modern Bible translations almost without exception alter the phrase “there should be time no longer” to “there should be no more delay”? No, it isn’t. Is there any good reason to turn “time” into “delay”?  Again, no, because “time” translates the Greek word chronos, which Vine’s defines as “a space of time” but the Revised Version, partly based on the corrupt and error-strewn Vaticanus and Sinaiaticus codexes, renders as “times eternal”

What an oxymoron (contradiction in terms) that phrase is? How can times be eternal when they are a measure of changes in time itself, and in eternity there is no time at all? There is a huge difference between time or times and the eternal which in the Greek is ainios, and is defined as meaning “for ever” (Philm.15) and speaks of “the things which are not seen (but) eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).

The author of the website Biblical Hermeneutics suggests that the best literal translation of Rev. 10:6 is, "that time shall not be". He goes on:

“Yes, χρόνος (eternal) can include various meanings about time. That's not the problem. The concern here is that because most modern translators cannot fit the idea of time being no more into their theology, they have decided that the Greek word for delay should have been used, despite that it was not chosen by the angel. But 'no more time' and 'no more delay' do not mean the same thing despite modern translators trying to say there's no material difference”.

Eternity is God's domain, it has always been and will always be. But God created time for this material universe (e.g. it takes time for light to travel) and we are bound by time, for now. The very idea that we may be so unbound, that find ourselves no longer in time but in eternity that lasts for ever is enough to cause many to alter what Revelation 10:6 actually says, I would suggest”.

Evidently they don’t like the thought of a timeless eternity nor of God sovereignly pronouncing that one day time will end. But why shouldn’t He end it? After all He sovereignly made time begin, setting the clock ticking by saying “Let there be light”, then separating light from dark and pronouncing the result, that “evening and the morning were the first day”.

John Dudley Aldworth

Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com

More Bible issues are addressed on the website Day of Christ Ministries