God, since the world was created, is in space apart from space,
and in time apart from time.
That God, and the Divine which proceeds immediately from Him, is not in space, although He is omnipresent, and with every person in the world, with every angel in heaven, and with every spirit under heaven, cannot be comprehended by merely natural thought, but it may, in some degree, by spiritual thought. The reason is that space is associated with merely natural conceptions, as these are formed from objects in the world, in every one of which, as these are visible to the eye, there is space. Everything great and small there is spatial, likewise everything that has length, breadth and height; in a word, every measure, figure and form there is spatial. Nevertheless a person may, in some degree, comprehend this idea by his natural thought if he admits into it some spiritual light. However, something must first be said concerning spiritual thought. This derives nothing from space, but everything from state. State has relation to love, life, wisdom, affections, joys, and, in general, to good and truth. A truly spiritual idea concerning these has nothing in common with space: it is on a higher level, and looks down upon spatial ideas beneath it as heaven looks down upon the earth.
God is present in space apart from space, and in time apart from time because He is always the same from eternity to eternity, the same before the creation of the world as after it. There was neither space nor time in God and in His sight before creation, but after it, so that because He is the same, He is in space apart from space, and in time apart from time. Hence it follows that nature is separate from Him, while yet He is omnipresent in it, just as life is present in every substantial and material part of a person, yet does not mingle with them; or as light is in the eye, sound in the ear, and taste in the tongue, and also as ether is in land and water, by which the terraqueous globe is held together and made to revolve, and so on.
If those active factors were removed, the substantial and the material things would immediately collapse and be dispersed. Indeed, if God were not present in all its parts and at all times in the human mind, it would dissolve like a bubble in the air, and both divisions of the brain, in which it acts from first principles, would melt away like froth; thus all that is human would become as the dust of the earth, or as an odour wafted away on the breeze.
Since God is in all time yet apart from time, therefore in His Word He speaks of the past and of the future as of what is present...
A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday
Psalm 90:4
That God is everywhere present in the created universe, while yet there is nothing of the world in Him, that is, nothing of space and time, can be perceived by the observant and attentive reader in many other places in the Word, as in this passage from Jeremiah:
Am I a God at hand,... and not a God afar off?
Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall not see him?...
do not I fill heaven and earth?
Jeremiah 23:23-24
