Right on the first page of the Holy Scriptures, and in the very first verse of the first chapter (Genesis 1:1), comes a logical question that millions have asked for centuries. A philosophical question that not even philosophers have been able to solve. The theologians and professors of Scripture have made attempts to provide answers, yet they seem to hang in the balance as their various dissertations are filled with ambiguities.
However, the Holy Scripture itself provides an answer to this question. But till Jesus comes, the answer would remain beyond human comprehension because the human brain has been trained to only comprehend those things that are around us, and in short, those things that are observables. If our brain is built in such a way that it only understands that anything that exists must have a past, present, and future, it would be practically impossible for it to accept anything otherwise.
Every sane person is required to accept that no human could have put the sun in its place. No human could have placed the moon and the stars in their places. No man could have ordered the laws of nature the way they are. In fact, the orderliness in creation makes us realize the more that there was a Higher Intelligent and Self- Conscious Being who made all these things and is so powerful that they are knit together by his love.
In the beginning, says the Bible, this Self-Conscious and Intelligent being called “God” created the Heaven and the Earth. Where could he have been before that? And John 17:5 attests that He was “somewhere” before the world was created.
John 17:5 (KJV) “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”
The answer ”to the equation” would be that GOD as mighty as He is, was with and IN HIMSELF. The key to understanding where God was before creation is understanding what the “beginning” was all about. When you understand what the beginning is, we can then have clarity on the question.
John 1:1-2 (KJV) “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.”
The first phrase “In the beginning was the Word” talks about the endless existence of the Word prior to the creation of the world. Prior to the creation of the material world and even all things, nothing was in existence except the BEGINNING and things created afterwards were made to exist IN THE Beginning.
The second phrase “The Word was WITH God” indicates the fact that the Word is capable of being an independent entity apart from GOD. The third phrase “And the Word was GOD” indicates that the same Word capable of being an independent entity is GOD. That means GOD is mono-plural. That means GOD can travel while in a place. By mono-plural, I mean if Babafemi is in Akure, he could be in Lagos while still in Akure.
So where was God before creation? The answer is that, He was WITH and IN HIMSELF. “In the Beginning” was not a reference to time; it is a reference to the person of GOD.
GOD himself says that He is the Beginning and the ending. He was not talking about time, he was talking about Himself.
Revelation 1:8 (KJV) “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”
The word “Ending” when it refers to time is grammatically inaccurate. That word in its denotative form is incorrect in English. End means final. There is no way the “end” of something would be in the progressive form. The Ending here refers to a person. Ending (Progressive) could mean endless.
No wonder Moses said FROM EVERLASTING to EVERLASTING, God remains God. It was obvious Moses wrote Genesis and both chapters 1 and 2 could have been a summary of the full narrations from his one-on-one conversation with GOD and stories being told from Adam. Man’s inquisitiveness could have prompted them to ask the whereabouts of God before creation and perhaps, God told them that He had been from everlasting to everlasting. Besides, having no beginning and ending is spiritually possible (Melchizedek had no beginning, nor end of life — Hebrews 7:3), although such a concept is hard to understand in a material based on the way the human brain is programmed.
Where was God before creation, He was WITH and IN HIMSELF.
