The Spiritual World: Talks for Children by George de Charms

6.  Time in Heaven

Among all the wonders that are related of the spiritual world in the Writings there are few things that seem more strange than the statement that in heaven there is no time. We are so accustomed to think about time - days, weeks, months, and years; and during each day, seconds, minutes and hours - that to exist without these things appears to us to be nearly impossible. And furthermore, there is the appearance - both in the Word and in the Writings themselves - that there is time in heaven. John the Evangelist - when he was taken into the spiritual world to see there those things which are written in the Book of Revelation - spoke as if there were time in that world. He says, for instance, that "when the angel had opened the seventh seal" of the little book "there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour." And in another place - describing how the wicked people had slain the two witnesses - it is said that their bodies lay in the streets of the city three days and a half. Swedenborg also speaks of seeing and conversing with people who had lived in the other world a thousand years - and even four thousand years. He says that some people who die and go to the other world stay in the world of spirits only a few days before they can be brought into heaven, while others must remain there a year, or perhaps ten, twenty or thirty years - until all the evils with them have been laid aside, because nothing of evil can enter into heaven.

All this would make it appear that there is time in heaven, when yet we are directly taught that one of the great differences between this world and the other world is that here we have time, and there they have no time. Indeed, it is said that the angels do not even know what is meant by a day, a year, a month, or an hour. And Swedenborg had to explain to one of them how the case is with us as regards time, and even then he could scarcely comprehend.

This at first seems strange to us, and yet, if we think about it, time with us is a very artificial thing. It has its origin in the fact that the sun rises and sets, and that the earth goes round the sun every year - sometimes being turned toward it, and sometimes being turned away from it. When it is turned toward the sun we feel the warmth and say that it is summer; and when it has turned away we feel the cold, and say that it is winter. These changes from light to dark, and again to light; from heat to cold and back to heat again, take place regularly, and it is the careful measurement of them - the dividing of them into parts, smaller and smaller - that gives rise to what we call time. We divide the time between one sunrise and another sunrise into twenty-four parts, and each part we call an hour. We divide the hour into sixty parts, and each part we call a minute. And again we divide each minute into sixty smaller parts, and each of these we call a second. But unless we had watches and clocks - always carefully set and regulated- we would never know what time it is. We do not feel the progressions of time. At least we do not feel them alike. Older children may have half an hour of arithmetic, or of grammar, while the younger grades are having half an hour of recess. To you, if you are one of those older children, that half hour may seem very long, while to children at recess it seems so short as to be scarcely a minute. If you are expecting to do something which you very much like to do, you look forward to it eagerly, and then all the time before seems to go very slowly - to drag along like a snail; and when you are actually enjoying your treat, time goes so rapidly that it is all over before you realize it. In order to hold us to a realization of time we have to be constantly reminded. We need bells to tell us when the hour is up. We need watches and clocks to tell us when it is time to get up in the morning, when it is time to eat, when it is time to study, when it is time to play, when it is time to work, and when it is time to go to bed. All exactness in time depends upon very careful regulation of our watches. So necessary is this that the government has to keep a Standard Time, according to which everyone must set their watch or clock. And the government gets this Standard Time by the sun, and by the stars.

Now just think how it is in the other world. The sun there does not rise and set. The earth does not turn around the sun at regular times to mark years, or months. The sun is the center of that world, and remains always before the sight of the angels. Clocks or watches cannot therefore be set all the same for everyone. They can tell what time it is only by the way they feel. It is the way each one turns toward the Lord or away from Him according to the love they feel for Him. This is what makes their days, and the divisions of it their hours and minutes, and the succession of days their weeks and months, and years.

There are all these things in the other world, but they are not fixed; they are not measurable; they are not determined by a single standard for all. The day of one may be much longer than the day of another because their state is different toward the Lord. And yet there is no confusion, because all those who are in nearly the same state - that is, for whom a day would be almost the same - are together in a single society. And those for whom such a day would be much longer or shorter are at a distance. Such a difference we also have in this world, for on other earths the days are not the same as ours. For instance, Swedenborg tells us that on one of the earths a day is only 9 hours long, and there are only 200 days in a year; whereas we count 24 hours to a day, and 365 days to the year. This is because that earth is smaller than ours, turns more quickly on its axis, and revolves more rapidly around its sun. So also - even on our own earth - times are different in different places. If you were to travel round the earth from East to West, you would have to change you watch one hour about every thousand miles - if you were to have the Standard Time for the country through which you were passing. If you were to go to the far North, or to the far South, you would find that the days were very much longer. Indeed, you would find that for several months of the year the sun does not go down at night, but merely gets lower in the heavens and then rises again, while for several months the nights would be very much longer, and part of that time the sun would not be seen at all, never coming above the horizon.

So you see that even with us time is a very hard thing to fix and to measure. In the other world it cannot be fixed or measured at all. But. there they care nothing about it, and so they do not need to measure it. All that is important for them is the way each one loves the Lord - whether a person turns toward Him or away from Him. The more a person turns toward Him the happier they are - the brighter shines the Sun, the more glorious is the day. The more anyone turns away from the Lord the more unhappy they are - the less light they can receive from the Sun, and more nearly they approach toward night, until if they are actually evil, or against the Lord, they come into the darkness of hell. The difference between day and night, between summer and winter - in that world - is the difference between heaven and hell.

Lesson: Revelation 6:1-5.

to next Chapter

• Back • Home • Up • Next •