We’re observing the past

Example: if the sun were to cease to shine at this very moment, it would not affect things on earth at the present time because they would be in the elsewhere of the event when the sun went out. We would know about it only after 8 minutes, the times it takes light to reach us from the sun. Only then would events on earth lie in the future light cone of the event at which the sun went out. 

Similarly we do not know what is happening at the moment farther away in the universe: the light that we see from distant galaxies left them millions of years ago, and in the case of the most distant object that we have seen, the light left some eight thousand million years ago. Thus when we look at the universe, we are seeing it as it was in the past.