Habakkuk (Rabel)

Habakkuk

Now, the next one is a very important one, from another little known prophet, Habakkuk, chapter 2, verse 3. He makes this beautiful statement,

"For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and shall not lie. Tho it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come. It will not be late."

On that particular statement I have composed a sermon, and I'm going to give the sermon, because I really do feel that it's extremely important, not only for us as individuals, but in our ministry work in the future. I'm going to give you sermons composed on these Bible ideas. Every sermon I give you here has been thoroughly tested in the field and has been listened to by experts, and approved of, otherwise, I dump it. If I feel that the reaction of my listeners, either a congregation, or a seminar, isn't entirely approving I throw it in the wastebasket. But I've kept those which I felt really succeeded in their purpose.

Do you know what the most mysterious thing in your life is? It is something that is completely unexplainable, yet something we talk about constantly. It is time. What is it? How strange this is, we all know what it is, and yet not a one of us would be able to define it or explain it - because any definition of explanation we might offer would need defined and explained. It would go on infinitum, so we will cut the whole business short by saying, we know what we mean when we say time.

Dr. Nicoll wrote a very long book called, Living Time, but after reading it, I became more baffled than ever as to what time really is in language, explainable definitions, or illustrations, so time is a fascinating mystery. People do peculiar things with mysteries at times, some persons almost worship time, and all persons that I know of do a great deal of worrying about it.

Two of the most common fears in human thinking are "I might run out of good" and "I might run out of time." Certainly two of the most dreaded words in the English language are too late, but an unnecessary worry, really. If we can realize the truth behind this concept, this mystery called time, we could free ourselves from a great deal of worry about having too much of it, or too little of it, or running out of it, and we could drop that fear of too late completely out of our thinking.

Just as there can be no such thing as running out of good, there can't be running out of time. For one thing, time is not real, it does not exist in and of itself. Do you follow me, folks? If there were no people, no human consciousnesses anywhere, there wouldn't be a self-existing something called time. God does not create time, God created eternity, which is not the same as time. Time is a concept, a product of man's consciousness.

[TruthUnity note: for more about this concept of time, see Ed Rabel's Lecture 4 of basic Self Knowledge, 12:52]

Time exists always as an individual exists, and the reality of your and my feelings is not a time factor, but an eternal truth. By this I mean that it is only your concept of existence which has what we call a beginning, a period of enduring, and then a seeming end. This is only the outer appearance.

The truth of you is eternal life, and it does not have beginnings or endings as we humanly think. Your true being is beyond time, greater than time, and the only word we have which refers to what it is is that word, eternity. Now all this is just introduction, leading up the Bible text. I'll read it once more, "For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and shall not lie. Tho it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, and it will not be late."

Habakkuk is telling us something which Jesus verifies much later, which is that there really is no reason for us to enslave ourself in worries over time because we live in God, and in God there simply cannot be such a thing as time; too late. We often say, time passes, meaning that it is going away, but this is not true, it is an illusion, for by our minds and we're being deceived. Now, I know that the hands of the clock do move, and the pages of the calendar are torn off, the appearance of the physical body is changed, flowers and trees grow, day follows night, these changing phenomena do occur. But that still doesn't mean that time passes.

The truth is that time is always arriving, not going, but arriving. And absorbed into the eternity of now. We are not denying the sequences of events, but we are affirming eternity. Eternity which is the reality. Wherever you are, God is, and whenever you are, now is. You live in omnipresence, you live in eternity, and it is impossible for you to ever run out of good, because you have your very being in the principle of good. It is impossible for you to ever run out of time, because you have your being in the principle of absolute time, which is eternity. People make the mistake when they say, "Time is passing me by." Instead of believing this, we should contemplate what Habakkuk was saying.

When Habakkuk mentions the vision, it is a symbol for your heart's desire, your true desire of your heart is your vision that Habakkuk is dealing with here, not just a whim, or a selfish fantasy, but some form of meaningful good, which will bless you and bless your life. Your true heart's desire is the vision.

Now, Habakkuk tells us that we already have an appointment with that vision. He starts out by saying "for the vision hath an appointed time." In other words you have an appointment with the fulfillment of your own heart's desire. It is a Divine appointment and that appointment will be kept on time, never too late, since all blessings come from God, and God does not make mistakes in timing.

Transcribed by Margaret Garvin on February 6, 2015.