The Almighty—The Eternal

1. The Beginning of Time

I only am GOD; I existed before Time itself. (Isa.43:12‑13 Ferrar Fenton translation)

The eternity of God is beyond human comprehension. We are finite creatures; our minds can only conceive objects existing within space and events taking place within a span of time marked by a beginning and an ending. We can accept the idea of endless life by visualising the continuance of the present into future time without interruption or change for ever; it is not possible to project our minds back into past time and comprehend the idea of a no‑beginning. Somewhere back in the distant recesses, our finite thoughts tell us, there must have been a start. But although this is certainly true so far as created things visible and invisible are concerned, God tells us it is not true as respects himself. God has always existed, truly eternal. With him there is no beginning.

Until God began to create, there was no such thing as space and there was no such thing as time. Space is the medium in which objects exist and time that in which events take place. Space can be defined as the distance between any two objects; until God created objects there was no space. Similarly time can be defined as the duration between any two events; until God caused events to happen there was no such thing as time. The ancient Greeks evidently saw something of this, for Plato writes "Time and the heavens came into being at the same instant, in order that, if they were ever to dissolve, they might be dissolved together. Such was the mind and thought of God in the creation of time." The work of Einstein, and of others who have followed him, difficult of comprehension by ordinary people as it is, goes to show that Plato was thinking on right lines. Time and space had a beginning. God, who exists eternally before that beginning, is the Creator of Space and Time. That is exactly what He tells us himself. "I am God. Yea, before the day was I am he..." (Isa.43:12‑13) or as Fenton translates it "I only am GOD. I existed before time itself." In Isa.57:15 He declares himself "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity"; perhaps that expression is the only really satisfactory definition of the existence of God before creation. The writer of the 90th Psalm attempted to convey his own understanding in his own words "Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God" (Psa.90:2) but that is a relatively feeble restatement of the conception given to man through the agency of Moses; "say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." (Exodus 3:14) So many attempts have been made to express that word, I AM, into comprehensible English. The One being, the Ever‑living, Eternal, the Self‑existing; each conveys part of the meaning but none express it accurately. There is no word in the English language to describe a state of existence which is infinite in duration and scope, independent of all else, omnipresent and omnipotent. Isaiah has to come to our rescue in simple words of one or two syllables. "I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God." (Isa.44:6) "I am he; before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I...I...the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour." (Isa.43:10‑11) "I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me." (Isa.46:9) This expression "I am" or "I am he" recurs again and again to designate the one eternal God who is from infinity to infinity, from the time of no‑beginning to that of no‑ending, whose power is limitless and all‑embracing. The New Testament catches up the theme and repeats it to Christian believers in this present Age "I am Alpha and Omega" (the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, as though we were to say A and Z) "the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." (Rev.1:8) Present, past and future, God is always there.

So, before the beginning, God was alone. Before man trod the face of the earth, before this planet and all the starry Universe had come into existence. Before the angels were created or the world in which they move. Back in the emptiness and the darkness of infinity, there was God, planning for the future, devising the details of that creation which He purposed within himself to bring into being.

The beginning of all things is marked by the distinction between God manifest in his Word for the progress of creative activity and God the Eternal, the Omnipotent. "In the beginning was the Word" says John at the opening of his Gospel "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This same was in the beginning with God." (John 1:1‑2) The English term "Word" is used to translate the Greek "Logos" which has a two‑fold sense, that of speaking and that of thinking or reasoning. Hence it involves the conceptions of thinking, reasoning, meditating, calculating, planning—the mental faculties generally. That something more is involved than the operation of the Divine mind reaching out and pervading all things becomes obvious when later on John tells us that this same Word "was made (became) flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." (John 1:14) The Word has an objective existence in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, come to earth to manifest his Father in the sight of men in a manner heretofore thought impossible, for men knew that the Eternal is fundamentally uncomprehended by human senses, "dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen nor can see." (1 Tim.6:16) John explained the wonder. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared" (revealed or manifested) "him." (John 1:18) We can regard the "beginning" at which the Word was "with God" as that point of time, in very truth the beginning of all things, when God made provision for the manifesting and the revealing of himself to the creation which He was about to commence, when the Word became an active agent whereby the designs of the Eternal were to be put into effect. That active agent is the "only begotten Son."

There must be something very real in this relationship of Father and Son, even though we realise that we are dealing here with a Divine mystery of which the earthly figure is but a feeble illustration. We are told, in what is perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible, that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." (John 3:16) In a memorable passage St. Paul referred to God as "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all..." (Rom.8:32) These cannot be figures of speech. The matter dealt with is too serious to be defined in other than concrete terms. The Eternal really did give One who had been with him from the beginning of creation, yea, and since his ascension on high is with him still and eternally. The "Word of God" really did walk the earth among men, yielded his spirit into the hands of the Father when upon the Cross, rose again in the power of an endless life, and is with the Father, lord over all created things. We have to hold and believe all that is in harmony with what we know of the oneness and eternity of God.

The Book of Proverbs helps here. This is the book which enshrines a great deal of what is called the "Wisdom" literature of Israel. In Old Testament days, an equivalent term to the "Word of God" was the expression "the Wisdom of God." Divine Wisdom was held to be the agent of all God’s work in creation, and "Wisdom" was personified in the same manner as the "Word" in New Testament days and in John’s Gospel. Nine chapters of the Book of Proverbs are devoted to the words of the "Wisdom of God," transmitting his counsel to men upon earth. Embedded in these nine chapters there is what amounts almost to an autobiography of the Word of God, a personal explanation or definition of his relationship both to the Father and to the world in which we live. It is as if God knew how difficult it would be for men to understand how the Word, the Son, could be one with the Father yet distinct inasmuch as his relation to man is concerned. So Wisdom, the Word, speaks, saying (in Prov.8:22‑23 KJV/ASV) "the LORD possessed (acquired) me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up (anointed) from everlasting...before the earth was..." The word translated "possessed" is qanah which means to get, to buy, to purchase, to obtain, and it carries the definite meaning of becoming the possessor of something not previously possessed. Now this is said to have become true at the "beginning" of God’s "way"—a word meaning a road or trodden path leading to a definite goal—and this at once brings us into the realm of history, of events, occurring within time. God himself had no beginning; the "beginning of his way" must refer to the point at which He began to put into operation his creative power to cause events to happen in the sequence He had already ordained. The investment of his Wisdom, his Word, with attributes of personality, as implied in this chapter, was evidently prior to any work of creation, for "Wisdom" goes on to say "When there were no depths, I was brought forth...before the mountains…before the hills was I brought forth; while as yet he had not made the earth... When he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a compass upon the face of the depth...then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him." (Prov.8:24‑30) All this language should be understood as describing the investiture of the Word with personality without doing any violence to that Divine Oneness which Jesus always claimed continually subsisted between himself and his Father, a unity which was in Jesus’ mind when he said "I and my Father are one." (John 10:30)

Furthermore, this association of personality with the Word marks the dividing point between the eternity in which God dwelt without creation and the time span during which his creative power brings into existence the creation comprehended in time and space as we understand those terms. Proverbs 8 describes an exercise of the Divine Will resulting in the concentration of God’s mind and plan in respect to all creation in One who could thenceforth stand up and say with full authority "The Lord acquired me at the commencement of his developing purpose before any of his most ancient works; I was anointed to this from eternity." That is more of a paraphrase than a scholarly translation but it conveys the meaning of the passage in modern English idiom related to what is known of the nature of God. Theologians have wrestled with this basic truth of the Christian faith in the effort to make the mystery intelligible but this treatise is neither qualified to pronounce upon their arguments nor satisfied that they really succeed in what they set out to do. Nothing can match for clarity and simplicity the plain Biblical definition "the only begotten Son of God." And the clearest and most satisfactory manner in which we can view God in his manifestation toward us is to visualise One who became the embodiment of the Divine Word back there when God was about to commence creation, was thenceforth the Father’s companion and agent for the execution of his work, as a beloved Son, in the fulness of time was found in fashion as a man for the suffering of death, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father, Lord of all creation.

It is significant that the Son is said to be in the image of the Father. He "is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation" says St. Paul in Col.1:15 (RV). "The brightness (effulgence) of his glory, and the express image of his person" is the way Hebrews 1:3 puts it. It was only when the Word was invested with attributes of personality that he could be spoken of as the image of God. Not an image by creation as was Adam, who also was made in the image of God (Gen.1:26‑27) but an image by reason of sonship—the only begotten Son of God.

So the Father entered into communion with the Son as with a companion, but to guard against thinking of the Son in the manner we think of created beings, who also derive life from God, the Son claims for himself those prerogatives which elsewhere in the Scriptures are attributes of God. "Before Abraham was, I am" He said to the people (John 8:58) and they, remembering that God is declared to be the "I am" took up stones to stone him "because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God." (John 10:33) "If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins" he told them. (John 8:24) The claim to be the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and last, attributed to the Father both in Isaiah and Revelation, is also accredited to the Son in Rev.1:11; 2:8, and 22:13. There can be no doubt about this. "These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive" (Rev.2:8), God the Father does not die, cannot die; but the Son did die, and the mighty power of the Father was exercised to raise him out of death and set him at his own right hand. (Eph.1:19‑20) So that when we have explored all that can be explored and said all that can be said we can apprehend no more than is conveyed in the simple Scriptural statement that God the Eternal comprehended his Word, his Purpose, his Power in the only begotten Son, who henceforth became the Father’s right hand in all creative work, the manifestation and revelation of the Father to all created beings. The institution of that condition of things was the first event ever to happen and therefore the beginning of time.

AOH