23. 21. Art thou not from old, Jehovah, my God, mine Holy One? let us not die. Jehovah, thou hast placed him for judgment, and, O Rock, thou hast established him for correction (Habakkuk 1:12). (The vision is yet for the appointed time; it shall not lie: wait for it, because in coming it will come, nor will it tarry (Habakkuk 2:3).

Jehovah, I have heard the report of Thee; I have revered Thy work; make that present in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make [known]. God shall come out of Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His honor covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise. His brightness will be as the light, rays coming forth from His hand, and there will be the hiding of His strength. Thou wentest forth for the salvation of Thy people. I will be glad in Jehovah, I will exult in the God of my salvation. Jehovah Lord is my strength, He will make me to walk upon mine high places (Habakkuk 3:2-4, 13, 18-19).

(Shout and be glad, O daughter of Zion; for, lo, I come that I may dwell in the midst of thee. Then many nations shall be joined to Jehovah in that day, they shall be to Me for a people, and I will dwell in thee (Zechariah 2:10-11).)

(Exult greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy King cometh unto thee: He is just and saved, lowly, riding upon an ass, and upon the foal of asses. He shall speak peace unto the nations: and His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the river even unto the ends of the earth.) Jehovah shall appear over them, and His weapon shall go forth as the lightning, and the Lord Jehovih shall sound with a trumpet, and shall go in the whirlwinds of the south. Jehovah their God shall save them in that day as the flock, His people (Zechariah 9:9-10, 14, 16).

(Behold, I send Mine angel, who shall prepare the way before Me; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple), and the messenger of the covenant whom ye seek. Behold, He cometh, saith Jehovah of Hosts. Who may abide His coming, and who may stand when He appeareth? (Malachi 3:1-2).

Behold, I send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of Jehovah come, that he may turn the heart of the fathers to the sons, and the heart of the sons to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse ([Malachi 4:5-6]).

Time is an aspect of the physical world, but it is not an aspect of the spiritual world. The same is true of space: There is no space in heaven. This is hard for us to grasp or even visualize, because we live in physical bodies with physical senses that are filled with physical elements existing in time and space. Our minds are schooled and patterned in terms of time and space, and have no reference point to imagine a reality without them. Consider how you think for a second. In your mind you can immediately be in your past or in some speculative future; in your mind you can circle the globe seeing other lands and faraway friends, or even zoom instantly to the most distant stars. Such imaginings are insubstantial, of course, but if we could make them real we would be getting close to what spiritual reality is like. Indeed, the mind is like a spiritual organ, which may be why physicians and philosophers have had such a hard time juxtaposing its functions to those of the brain. What this means in the Bible is that descriptions of time -- hours, days, weeks, months, years and even simply the word "time" itself -- represent spiritual states, and the passing of time represents the change of spiritual states. Again, we can see this a little bit within our minds. If we imagine talking to one friend then talking to another, it feels like going from one place to another, even though we're not moving. The same is true if we picture a moment from childhood and then imagine something in the future; it feels like a movement through time even though it's instantaneous. Changing our state of mind feels like a physical change in space and time. The Bible simply reverses that, with marking points in space and time representing particular states of mind.