We all have read stories or watched movies about time travel. As an amateur Science Fiction writer, I have thought about it too, but never had a desire to write a time travel story. For me, there are too many inconsistencies for time travel stories. While pondering the concept of time travel, I got the following word picture:

Time is like a river flowing downhill toward a huge sea. God walks along the bank of the river following a huge flotilla of inflatable rafts flowing on the current. On the rafts we human beings sit experiencing the flow of the current by riding along with it. God, who is on the shore, watches time flow by and experiences the current by watching it flow by. If He wants to experience it the way we do, he simply has to start walking along the bank at the same rate as the current. If you wanted to go back in time, you could, but there would be nothing there in the past, because the flotilla goes along with the current and doesn’t exist in the past any more. You could also go forward in time, but again, there would be nothing there in the future, because the flotilla is going with the current and isn’t there yet.

As the humans live and begin to die, they notice their inflatable rafts losing air, and they begin to sink. When they sink to the bottom, they have a choice, they can either swim to the shore, or stay on the bottom of the river, but in either case, they are out of the current, and dead. The bottom of the river is hell. When the flotilla reaches the sea, it is the end of time.

In the word picture, there are 3 forms of God. The first form is Him walking along the shore. The shore represents heaven. The second form is God in a boat, going out to the flotilla from the shore. The boat with God in it represents the Holy Spirit. And the third form is God living in the flotilla, with his own inflatable raft. This represents Jesus. The message of God is to not live according to the inflatable raft, but live according to the person floating on the raft, because the raft loses air and sinks, but a person can go to the shore, and continue to live. Jesus is the person, who had a raft like everyone else, but bad persons poked a hole in his raft and he sunk. But he didn’t stay down, he went to the shore, and then returned later to tell us that we don’t have to die with the raft and can go to the shore and live forever. He also walked along the bottom of the river, and preached this message to those that were still on the bottom, sitting on their dead rafts.

Clinging to the raft and living according to the raft is sin. God, who is on the shore, forgives us of our sin and lets us come to the shore because of the sacrifice of Jesus, who lived on a raft too, but gave it up to teach us to go to the shore.

Forgive me for this rather crude word picture. The real Heavens, the real Earth and the real Hell is far more complex than this word picture. Jesus’ sacrifice was far better than the word picture indicates. Hopefully, you will not be able to read a time travel based science fiction story again without thinking of this word picture!

On edit, this analogy can be used to explain the trinity also:

God the father – Is God on the shore line, following the flotilla as it floats down the river of time.

The Holy Spirit – Is God in a boat on the river going in amongst the flotilla.

God the Son – Is God on a life raft with all the other people in the flotilla.