Christ Before Creation: Discovering God the All in All

NOTE: Gene recorded this near the end of his life, and while there are some bible verse references he mentions are incorrect (the verses are all corrected in the transcript below), the message he delivers is consistent and faithful to his almost 50 years of ministry outside of the institutional church.

The celebration. The celebration of a meal that the Lord Jesus Christ prepared. Where do we begin? There is only one place to begin: before creation.

Let it be said here and now that the entire religious world, with all its expositions, has completely overlooked something: what happened before creation and what happened after the end of creation.

Genesis 1:1 through Genesis chapter 2 – there is no sin in those two chapters; this has also been utterly overlooked. Revelation 21 and 22 – utterly without sin – none. Those are the only chapters in Scripture with no sin: one before the fall, and one after.

Now, I want to make it really clear to you, and to all of us, that if you cannot find what you believe strongly in in Genesis 1 and 2 and Revelation 21 and 22, then what you have is not worth pursuing in any serious manner.

Only two other things are exceptions. One is what we find in Colossians chapter 1: the most mistranslated single passage so pertinent to understanding the greatness of Jesus Christ, Colossians 1:15-16. All things were created by Him…no, things weren’t created by Him, not in that passage, but in Him. Not for Him, through Him, to Him, but in Him. Christ was there, and creation was inside of Him, not like Michelangelo’s God creating in the Sistine Chapel. Creation took place in Him.

When He said in Revelation 1:8, “I am the Alpha and Omega,” He was before Alpha, and He is after Omega. All things were created in Christ, and He is before all things. That’s Colossians 1:17: Christ before all things. Now what about after? Even after Revelation 22, that passage that is so often overlooked? In 1 Corinthians 15:28, that God might be All in All.

The final picture is of even Christ the Son, who, by His own words, stated, “I came out of the Father.” Now, in this passage, we find Him going back into the Father; when all things have been subjected to Christ, then Christ will subject Himself to the Father, and then God shall be All in All.

I want to repeat this. There are things before Genesis 1 and after Revelation 22, but in those chapters that have no sin and deal with things on the earth, keep in mind there isn’t any sin there; we get a look at God’s eternal purpose. Ephesians 3.

Now we see that there is something before, which is Christ, and after Revelation 22, when God is everything there is, and anything else that isn’t God, God is all that is there in, and God shall be All in All. Forty-two years ago, I stood for the first time in my life and began a conference by saying, “Let us go back before the beginning, when there was nothing but God, and He was All.” And forty-two years later, I say to you, “Let us go back before there was anything,” in the exact same words.