"Jesus Christ the same yesterday and to day, and forever." (Hebrews 13:8)
Part time
Running out of time. Walking out of time. Jesus is above and beyond our concept of time. The fourth-dimensional framework in which we live our lives, day in and day out.
"I understand more than the ancients, because I keep Thy precepts." (Psalm 119:100)
But this doesn't mean that He's not just as relevant as tomorrow's headlines. And that His Word (i.e. the Bible) is not the single most incisive spotlight on human nature as was ever unveiled to humanity. Forget Machiavelli, forget Sun-Tzu. Anyone who claimed to have a corner on the foibles and follies of human nature can't hold a candle to the pithy practicality of the men whom God used to pen the sixty-six books which make up the Bible. I'm not as familiar with the Apocrypha but if you feel that they contain something which wasn't covered in the two testaments that make up the Protestant Bible (and assuming that there's no conflict in doctrine and understanding) then more power to you.
The illumination of the Holy Spirit on a believing heart is what it takes to see the fine points of God's word as applicable to the fine points of our lives. Our lives alone, with God and in interaction with other people.
Take for instance, Solomon's Proverbs. The book of Proverbs contains thirty-one dense, rich and insightful chapters (twenty-nine by Solomon) full of practical knowledge that, when mixed into our spiritual walk, enable us to stay afloat on the tides of time. To walk on water, even. Never mind the fact that it was written upwards of four-thousand years ago and that the people spoken of therein had no concept of any of the creature comforts that we take for granted, day in and day out. No mass-transit. No mass-communication. No social-networking. No electricity. Yes, things may have changed immeasurably in the realms of convenience and culture. But--and this is where the anachronisms (something not from this time-period) begin to tell--think about what we have that hasn't changed from those ancient times one bit: things like emotion and need. Caring and deceit and manipulation. Confidence and ambition and greed. And this is where Jesus steps in as interlocutor. And as Savior
"And there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." (Proverbs 18:24)
The world over
Jesus speaks to the deep places in us. His voice resonates across the strata of time, outstripping the voices of philosophers and pundits and opiners. Those writers of old who (like Machiavelli and Sun-Tzu) were only interested in deciphering the deep places of the psyche so as to exploit it for their own ends. "Go and do thou likewise..." Teaching someone the secrets of manipulation does not qualify as a course in "life-skills". When Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-36), citing the disinclination of the passersby to help the injured man from Jerusalem, He wasn't advocating a me-first mentality. He extolled the virtue of the Samaritan--an interracial people of Samaria, viewed with racial disdain by the Pharisees and many others of Hebrew culture--in helping the traveler.
Paul learned this too but came about it in a different way. As a young man, he stood by while Stephen (a young Christian Waiter, on fire for God) was stoned to death by "the people, and the elders, and the scribes" (Acts 6:12). The same type of people who would have testified at Jesus' trial. Who would have let the traveler die on the road from Jerusalem. Paul was one of them too and in the ninth chapter of Acts, when Jesus met him on the road to Damascus saying "Saul, Saul (before his name was changed), why persecutest thou me?" (verse 4), he saw Jesus as "one born out of due time." (1 Corinthians 15:8, emphasis mine). In the next verse, Paul says that he is "not meet to be called an apostle, because [he] persecuted the church of God." Even after he had been changed by the mercy and love of Jesus, he still was mindful of where God had brought him from, calling himself the chief of sinners in his first letter to Timothy (1:15)
"This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." (emphasis mine)
No matter how much time goes by. Eons and eras and generation upon generation. Jesus is there, willing to step in and be the person to pull you from the (quick)sands of time and set you with Him "in heavenly places" (Ephesians 2:6)
Call out to Him...
God's word holds lessons that are just as fresh and new and applicable to our lives today as when they were written.