I think that is you problem. For example if I use php to do this for today’s date in that format $date = strtotime('21 20 15');
nothing is returned. So $today_time
is always >
Try this $date = strtotime(get_sub_field('date', false, false));
The second false tells ACF not to format the value so it will be returned as ‘YYYYMMDD’ and this is interpreted correctly by strtotime()