There is an interesting video here duscussing quantum mechanics and time. It’s fascinating how mankind has always been consumed with the measurement of time, beginning with motion of the sun and stars, progressing to pendulum motion discovered by Galileo, followed by springs and gears in mechanical clocks and then quartz technology, and finally atomic clocks. Each advancement in the measurement of time results in ever-increasing accuracy.

But why this compulsion to measure time – something we don’t fully understand – with an almost fanatical obsession? That is a question that can only be answered by philosophical theology, not physics. Time is a fundamental structure of current reality.

Why is time so important and fundamental to our existence? Jack Liu argues that Einstein’s Theory of Relatively is inseparable from Newton’s concept of Absolute Time. I think he is right. I hope to explore this puzzling paradox in an upcoming book dealing with a theological understanding of time.

Why is time foundational in our relationship with God who exists outside time? The Italian Theoretical Physicist Carlo Rovelli writes,

“In the elementary equations of the world, the arrow of time appears only where there is heat. The link between time and heat is therefore fundamental: every time a difference is manifested between the past and the future, heat is involved. In every sequence of events that becomes absurd if projected backward, there is something that is heating up. If I watch a film that shows a ball rolling, I cannot tell if the film is being projected correctly or in reverse. But if the ball stops, I know that it is being run properly; run backward, it would show an implausible event: a ball starting to move by itself. The ball’s slowing down and coming to rest are due to friction, and friction produces heat. Only where there is heat is there a distinction between past and future. Thoughts, for instance, unfold from the past to the future, not vice versa—and, in fact, thinking produces heat in our heads. . . . Clausius introduces a quantity that measures this irreversible progress of heat in only one direction and, since he was a cultivated German, he gives it a name taken from ancient Greek—entropy.“

Time is instrumental in the book of Revelation. There is a warning that the time of fulfillment is near (1:3), time for repentance is granted (2:21), a time is coming for the dead to be judged (11:18), and Satan knows that his time is short (12:12). Time is front and center in the Great Tribulation and the apocalypse. Time is key for the Second Coming of Christ. Perhaps that is why time is such a central and important feature of present reality.