Was Time Created as a Result of Sin?
William Branham taught that time came into existence because of sin.
What the Bible teaches
In Genesis 1, we read:
- In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth... And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. [1]
God created the universe out of nothing. The universe is not eternal. It had a beginning. Time began with the creation of the universe. "In the beginning" was when time came into existence. "And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day." - that was the beginning of time. There were no "days" prior to that.
There was no time before time. Since God is the author of all time, there was no time before he created the world. It was not creation in time but the creation of time that God executed in his initial acts. God was not doing (acting, creating) anything in the universe before he created the world. He was simply being God and he was God outside of time.
The world is temporal and changing, and from it, we can see that there must be an eternal and unchanging being. “Behold the heavens and the earth are; they proclaim that they were created; for they change and vary.” However, “whatsoever hath not been made, and yet is, hath nothing in it, which before it had not, and this it is, to change and vary. They proclaim also, that they made not themselves”.[2]
Quotes of William Branham
God, being infinite, Who cannot lie, cannot speak anything contrary, knows everything, just as perfect at the beginning as He is at the ending, and just as perfect at the end as He was the beginning. God is endless, like Eternity. You can never find the corner of a perfect circle. You could run and run through ages, and Eternity, and there’d never, never, never be an end to it. And that’s the way God is. And when He be first, was…God, which always was, He was infinite, perfect, to begin with, and He’ll always be the same. He never can change. He is perfectly the same.
Now this great chain of perfection was broken by time space. Time came, because of sin. Let’s draw a picture of time. Let’s see a perfect circle, forever, forever. And then, all of a once, sin dropped in, and put a—a little…As my wife calls it, a little “hickey,” or a little drop in the chain. So, it comes down now. Eternity continues on, but it’s not in its perfect condition. Here’s a little gap comes down, breaks over this way, goes out this a way. God had to do that because Satan caused it. And it dropped down to a space of time, for the trying, and the perfecting, and for the purging of the lost. That, God by His sovereign grace, might someday lift that little hickey, or gap, back into the perfect circle, then she rolls on just the same. You see it?[3]
And now we’re living in a day of great uncertainty. We all know that; the day of uncertainty, and the time of uncertainty. I don’t believe there ever was a time…Since time first began back in the garden of Eden, when sin come in and broke Eternity into time, I do not believe there’s ever been a space of time with so much uncertainty as today. Because, there’s not even one hope left in the natural world today.[4]
Footnotes
- ↑ The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Ge 1:1, 3–5.
- ↑ Norman L. Geisler, “Augustine,” Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 61.
- ↑ William Branham, 56-0610 - Perfection, para. 26-27
- ↑ William Branham, 60-1218 - The Uncertain Sound, para. 93