You could look at the problem in two ways.

You could represent it in "gods" time - the universe is scaled to fit in a little orb that you can hold in your hand - and distance, and therefore time, are inconsequential.

In this model a super nova would be witnessed as it happened rather than when it was observerd (several thousand years depending on distance).

Or, you could model it relative to the observer's time - ie - the further away someting is, the more the lag between the observers moment and the event's moment.

Ideally, the "laws of relativity" should give the observer an image of the universe in "god's" (real?) time - ie, the observer could predict a super nova 4000 years before a telescope would witness it.