Jesus’ First 12 Years: The Mystery of Christ’s Childhood

The beginning of the glad news of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And this one was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him. And without Him was not anything made that has been made. In Him was life. And life was the light of men. And the light shone in the dark, and the darkness extinguished it not. I’m going to skip down to the next to the last paragraph. And the word became flesh and sojourned among us. And we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And then the very last sentence: And from His fullness have we all received and grace added upon grace.

We will take that as the beginning, and I will now try to get through the background of Jesus Christ’s beginnings on earth. To fully appreciate the incarnation, God’s beginning on earth in bodily form, we have to turn this around and see things from His viewpoint, rather than a celebration of a nativity, the enormous change that took place in God when He became a man and that which He brought with Him in His coming into human form. Now, I know that in the Old Testament God seems to have appeared many times; yet despite that, it also seems that He never knew what it was like to actually be in human flesh, or in the form of human flesh, until the experience in Bethlehem.

Now, let’s talk about our Lord previous to that. There was a time before the eternals, as mentioned in the book of Titus. There was an age before the eternals when God was the All. That does not mean there was God and a great abyss of nothingness around Him. There was God, and He was All. Scientists have recently said that we may be…there’s a bubble theory floating around that the entire galaxies that we know, approximately 1 billion galaxies that have been estimated that we can see so far, maybe one small part of a great bubble, perhaps a hundred times larger. There could be an infinite number of these bubbles, each with about the same amount of matter. The universe keeps getting bigger, but that’s the material universe, and that universe still rests inside God. But there was a time when there was not God and this infinite, unknowable abyss of nothingness that surrounds us; there was only God in an unlimited expanse.

Within Him was fellowship, and this scripture tells us that He rested, or was in the bosom of, the Father. At the very center of God’s greatness, the north star aspect of God, the central part of God, in the very bosom, in the very center of God, was the Son. And there was this eternal fellowship going on between them. By the way, these are all the heavenly realms. There was God.

Now, for reasons we do not yet fully understand, He decided to create. I know you know why He created, but I don’t yet know why He created. It has become such a large thing to me that every time I look at this, I find another reason that provoked Him to create. The first thing He created was something similar to Himself. He created a spiritual sphere called the heavens, the heavenlies, and the heavenly places. Those are its three terms. He created eternity and the heavenly places. It was spiritual, and therefore invisible, because spiritual things are invisible. Then He populated it with spiritual beings that match the spiritual realm. Then it seems that this great, unlimited God did something incredible. It seems that He enfolded Himself inside this creation and established there, or perhaps brought with Him there, the throne of God at the center of this sphere, and He fellowshipped with angels.

Now, all of this I’ve just spoken of, the creation of spiritual realms, didn’t take much time. Maybe 1/4 of a day. Maybe half a day at the most, but about 1/4 of a day. Then He took another fourth of the day to create another realm: the physical realm, the one you and I are familiar with, something that can be seen, known, felt, weighed, and measured. They don’t share space with one another, but they do seem to touch. I’m trying to make all this really simple for you to get a visual image. Don’t ask me for chapter and verse on this, but I could make a strong argument. They seem to have touched, and a door stood between them. There is a place where commerce can be exchanged between these two realms.

So now, let’s stand at the door and look out, and we see unnumbered galaxies and orbs, but to angels, it looks really small. Because when you turn around over here, you’re really dealing with infinity. This is a big thing here, but on the other hand, as great as it is, are you ready for this? As great as it is, it could all be hidden in something smaller than an atom. Yes. The entire spiritual realm, because it has no dimension. Not just unmeasured, but because it has no dimension, it can be anywhere, including in you.

Now, this realm is the kingdom of the heavenlies, the kingdom of the heavenly places. May I say this, and it’s not accurate: that’s where Jesus Christ grew up. That’s where He was used to living. This is His greater knowledge. This is His greater experience. This is His hometown. This is where reality dwells. This is where the only truth there is. Truth is there and nowhere else. There are no pictures here. Everything is real. In fact, on this side of the door, everything is a picture; a physical picture of that. It is a shadow of the reality. It’s fascinating to go through the scripture and see how much of the Bible is described as nothing but a picture of what’s in the other realm. I will not get into that. That could take weeks, but this is a physical nursery rhyme picture of that reality.

Brothers and sisters, as you look here, you see physical things, and you see light, which is a reflection, an image of the true light. Over here, you could go blind in about a tenth of a second, saints. It’s all light. It’s all light. Over here, you’d have to stare at the sun for a few minutes to get ink spots in your eyes, but that light is nothing but a picture of that light. And so, we could go on and on and on. When He turned around here, He did all of this in about half a quarter of a day. Then He went down to one of the standard galaxies, sort of a vanilla galaxy, and moved out about halfway. There in that galaxy was a sort of a very, very common average star. Eight planets whirled around it, with a big empty space; very sequential, except for an empty space third one out.

He turned to the angels, and He said, “Now I am going to spend five days in such a little place.” They wondered how He could work so hard for the five and a half days He’ll spend in this little spot. How could he spend so much time? Because He would create so many forms of life that picture His own life. He populated that thing with so many forms, life forms. I think I will stop there because we need to know this. I’d like for you to look at the biology chart of heaven, of the heavens. Now if you go to a biology class here on Earth, you will walk up to the chart, and you’ll see down here the lowest form of life is a virus and a bacterium. Then you’ll come on up, and you’ll see the birds and the cattle and the monkeys, and you’ll get to man. He’s the highest life form we’ve discovered so far in biology, but from a divine viewpoint, the highest life form is divinity: God. The second highest life form in the universe is the angels. The third-highest life form is man. He was made a little lower than the angels.

When man fell, he fell and became just a little higher than the animals, but he’s still in third place. He went from the top of third place to the bottom of third place. Then the animals, then the birds, and the fish, and then the herbs. This is as you will find it in Genesis; this is God’s biological life form. Now, then, all of this you need to know to understand the incarnation. You need all of this to understand yourself and your spiritual aspects. This is all necessary background, and I hope you won’t forget it because it is important.