Question:

If the age of the Cosmos is regarded as 24 hours, Homo Sapiens did not
appear until the last second and Jesusdid not appear until almost the last
1/100th of a second. Is it impertinent to enquire what God was doing
for the rest of the 13,000,000,000 years ? Was he pondering the future
problems of evil, free will, predestination, sin and atonement ? Given
omnipotence (pace Keith Ward), omniscience and benevolence, am I alone in
thinking that with all that time on his hands, he should have done better ?

Answer:

Thank you for a new question. This is an excellent question.
And the answer is that you absolutely are not alone in asking this
question. I would say that all deeply thinking people ask this question
at one point or another. From a human perspective, it truly seems odd
that God would create such an unimaginably huge universe if all he wanted
was a single world on which to put sentient beings whom he could love and
who could love him. Similarly, it seems very odd that he created thirteen
billion years of time as well, if those to whom he would send a savior and
those he would have a relationship with him would only exist for a few
tens of thousand years.

My answer is that this may seem very puzzling from a human
perspective, but from God?s perspective this is not strange at all. If
you understand the big bang you understand that when this event occurred,
time and space were created. To ask what happened “before” the big bang
is to ask a nonsense question. To ask what happens “outside” the universe
is to make a similar mistake. Yet, it is obvious that God exists separate
from the universe he created. God exists outside the limitations of time
and space. This is difficult if not impossible for us human beings to
grasp. We literally cannot conceive of a being who is not affected by
past, present and future. Similarly, we cannot even imagine in our minds
what it means for a person to exist in no particular place. Nevertheless,
this is what God is if I understand him correctly. He is the uncaused
cause. He is the creator of time and space. To God the fact that we
occupy an insanely small part of the universe of an unimaginable small
portion of the time the universe has existed is of no consequence. I have
often pondered why God created a universe which took so long to evolve
into a state in which a place where sentient beings could live exists. I
have often been bewildered at the vastness of time and the seeming
meaningless of our lives in view of this time. In fact, this question has
even caused me to question God at times. Then I ponder the nature of God
and, despite my puny intellectual abilities?despite the limitations of how
my mind is wired?God IS the creator and God DOES love me. The evidence
behind these two conclusions is overwhelming. I cannot ignore the
evidence for creation or the evidence for the inspiration of the Bible.
Then I am thankful and I take rest in God.

By the way, humans have existed for about 2 cosmological seconds and Jesus
lived about 0.1 cosmological second ago, not .01 second ago.

John Oakes, PhD