Who is before god

God requires nothing; He exists from all eternity. Eternality goes in the other direction as well. There will never be a time in the future when God will cease to be. His being remains self-existent for all eternity. If anything exists, then something has always existed. If there ever was absolutely nothing, then nothing could possibly be now, because you cannot get something out of nothing. Conversely, if there is something now, then that in itself demonstrates that there always was something.

And that which always is exists in and of itself. That is the One who has the power of being within Himself, the living God. So His eternality is another attribute that should incite our souls to adoration and praise: we are made by One who has the very power of being in Himself eternally.

Imagine the greatness of a being like that. His eternality, perhaps more than anything else, sets God apart from us. His holiness refers not only to His purity but also to His otherness or transcendence—the sense in which He is different from us. One thing we human beings have in common is that we are creatures, who by nature are temporal.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, entered human history to give his life as a ransom for many Matt ; Mark In his grace, God buys us back in the most unimaginable way possible: God in Christ became a man, walked among humanity, and died for his people. In this merciful act, Christ reconciles us to himself and re-opens access to the Father so that those who were once exiled from his presence might again draw near to God Heb ; The presence of God has massive implications for the way we understand the church 1 Cor ; 2 Cor ; Eph The New Testament calls the church a temple for a reason.

We keep him on the shelf until troubles arise or there is something our neighbor has that we really want. When we push all our peripheral issues to the periphery, this is all that is left and all that really matters. He is the author of The Presence of God and serves as director of doctrine and discipleship for Humble Beast, where he also helped start the Canvas Conference.

He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Chase, and their four children. From the very beginning, Eden was not meant to be static; it was headed somewhere. Thomas R. Thomas Schreiner shares 10 important things you should know about the biblical covenants—the backbone of the biblical story. What is Christian ethics and what role should it play in the life of a believer?

Graham A. That is what causes the Aurora Borealis. Imagine if God had created the gravitational fields to function similarly to an electromagnetic energizer that was polarized.

Imagine that all He had to do were to throw the switch and reverse the polarity. Then everything in the universe, everything as we know it, everything in the heavens and the Earth, would immediately repel and quickly separate. But that can't happen. Gravity can't be reversed. Gravity is not a polarized entity. It has a powerful disposition that is part of our lives and is inherent in the very soul of our existence. Gravity pulls everything together.

Stephen Hawking lived from Jan 08, , until Mar 14, , and as a theoretical physicist, he wondered how gravity came to exist. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. There is a lot to be considered to understand our existence. Studying the physical laws of the universe only helps us begin to visualize obscure details of the unknown. Note that Stephen Hawking did not deny the existence of God.

The way I see it, he merely was saying that gravity is responsible for the creation of the universe. When considering everything discussed, that makes the most sense. Daniel Johnson - I see you put a lot of thought into this. As for your question, did God create time? If you missed it, scroll back up and look for it in this article. I wrote another essay where I made reference to your thought about animals being aware of time. Looks like you and I think alike.

I love it! I find it to be far more powerful to ask the questions than to answer them. Facts and certainties do little to expand the mind, and spark the imagination. Thank you very much for your article, and these comments are wonderful. I agree that we can only attempt to understand God from a human perspective, and therefore barely scratch the surface.

Did God create time, or is time simply a human construct? Do other living beings on this rock have a concept of time?

When I run to the store to grab some dinner and return 10 minutes later, does my dog know I was only gone 10 minutes? What if time is simply OUR way of attempting to understand and give structure to the mystery of birth, life and death?

Perhaps God exists in a realm that is beyond time, simultaneously before the beginning and after the end, where past present and future are one, and time is fluid. You made a good point there. I used the same analogy in another article, of a two-dimensional being, failing to be aware of anything in a three-dimensional world. I found that the video you posted quite interesting. I always question everything, including my own philosophical ideas. The truth is that we know very little about the existence of the universe and of life.

Good questions. From my understanding, when the bible speaks in Genesis of a beginning, it is referring to the beginning of the material universe, not the beginning of everything. As you alluded to in the introduction of your article, the rules, concepts and laws that govern the created universe do not apply to the non-created realm; a realm as incomprehensible to us as a third dimension would be to two-dimensional beings.

Therefore I wonder if any attempt to unravel the mysteries of a realm beyond our comprehension, that follows none of the rules of the material universe including rules relating to space, time, energy, cause and effect etc , is to take on the impossible. Isn't it beyond both science and philosophy? I understand God to have created not only everything in our universe but also the rules that govern its every contingency.

Rules that do not apply to him, only to us including time, gravity etc. It fits better with the idea of time having no beginning or end. Interesting article, I spend a LOT of time considering these things as well. I have a few relevant comments and I hope to hear your perspective on them! I feel like you could cite one verse to clear up a lot of the hanging questions you are exploring. Ecclesiastes - He has made everything beautiful in its time.

Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. For a long time I struggled with "In the beginning" and where God came from, and what he was doing before, and why he started doing anything.

My solution to this problem was to define the word "In the beginning" a little differently to mean "before anything else. About time in Gods perspective. King David said that a day of Gods time is like years of ours.

We could suggest that this is absolutely literal, since God states to Adam that "In the day you eat of [the fruit] you shall surely die" and he lives nearly years after. Regarding 6 days of creation. If we consider the fact above we already have a seriously resonable timeframe for God to go about the natural, Evolutionary Creation process especially if he evolved several different species of animals at the same time from different "dust seeds" as I call them single-celled organisms.

Now if you also consider the Time Dialation that you already mentioned, we could have millions of years of "Observable History" which could have taken place in just moments over the course of 6 millennia. You explained that well. I read your article and thought of several things.

We are linear beings, God is not. Remember that cat from quantum mechanics which was theorized to be dead and alive simultaneously?

And the Holographic Universe? Scientists are beginning to think that we will experience a Big Rip, the universe will not collapse, but because of Dark energy, will speed up until we rip apart. In this scinario, we may have multiple Big Bangs occurring. Since God is nonlinear, He is able to be at all of these "beginnings. Such is probably how our universe popped into existence. Likewise, God is there and even a part of the "nothingness" because quantum mechanics has demonstrated two opposing states can exist at the same time for one entity it's been proven with photons.

As for God's measurement of time, I came up with an amusing concept. He had all eternity to create the Universe, not just six days and rest on the seventh. He created time as the last step of creation. More seriously, I wrote another article that gives another viewpoint of this, that time is cyclical. There is no beginning or end. My simple answer to your question is that our concept of "time" as we know it, is not measured the same way by God.

Therefore, what came first as related to"time" will remain part of the "mystery" of life, until the "time" that we meet God face to face. Let's Connect x. Subscribe to our Newsletter. Daily Devotionals x. Daily Bible Reading Plans x. Recently Popular Pages x.

Recently Popular Media x. The first verse of Scripture tells us that God created the heavens and the earth. The question arises as to what God was doing before He brought the universe into existence.

This question has been a favorite of skeptics. Robert Ingersoll, the famous atheist of the 19th century, wrote: If God created the universe, there was a time when he commenced to create. Back of that commencement there must have been an eternity. In that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly did not think. There was nothing to think about. He did not remember. Nothing had ever happened. What did he do? Can you imagine anything more absurd that an infinite intelligence in infinite nothing wasting an eternity?

Robert Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses , n. Jokingly he said, God was preparing Hell for people who ask such questions. On a serious level, he noted there was no time before God created and hence the question is meaningless.

When God created the heavens and the earth He also created space and time. Before time began there was only eternity. God is a timeless being and time only began with His creation of the universe. God Not Inactive Yet, we should not assume that God was inactive prior to creation. The Bible speaks of God loving and planning before the earth was created. The Apostle Paul spoke of God's eternal plan: Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love Ephesians In another place, Paul spoke of the promises of God.

In hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began Titus The Trinity This brings up an interesting question. If the world had not yet been created, then to whom was the promise of eternal life made?