Christ Before Creation: Discovering God the All in All

Do not imagine God in a great, vast, empty space of nothingness. No, for God had not yet created nothingness. He was All, and nothing else existed except Him…who is the All? We must always begin there. You don’t begin with a verse. You don’t select a topic. You move from the point before anything had taken place: nothing, neither angels nor principalities nor powers nor nothingness; there was only one thing: God was All. He hadn’t yet created anything that wasn’t Himself. We begin there.

Look at this celebration, knowing it was in the thought of the fellowship of the Godhead, and He went out of His way to make sure you and I understood it. May I never begin a theme you can find in Genesis 1 and 2 and not end up in Revelation 21 and 22; may I never speak, but begin with Genesis 1 and 2, find it fulfilled in Revelation 21 and 22, and add to that. To that I may always begin with God the All.

We dare not go anywhere else. With Christendom in a great dearth, a drought, in fact, one that it’s a drought that’s been there almost from the beginning of the Christian era, of shallowness, that which is objective on the surface. Let me begin…let you always begin…with Genesis, and before that. He who was before all things, even Christ, God in Christ. And after that creation in Him, but there was a time when He was All, and He will end up someday in the final assessment, in the final essay; God will be All in All.

I want you to look at John 8 and know this: in John 8:58, Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Let it drench you; may it consume you, as we look at this celebration. Before that celebration, Jesus called Himself the very holiest name of God, and He did it three or four, perhaps five times: “I am.” Before Abraham, I am. It is the secret name which Jews will not pronounce, but I’m not a Jew. It is a secret name, and it simply sounds this way, and it’s not Elohim, and it’s not El Shaddai. It is simply YAHWAH with a breath in it; YAHWAH.

“I am that I am, I AM.” He stood there in John 8 and said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Before Abraham means He was there before the law. Before He said to Abraham, “I will give you the righteousness of God Himself.” The innocence, the purity, the rightness, the wholeness, the completeness, all that God is, I will impart to you, Abraham, because you have “faithed” Me. That was spoken to a Babylonian who was not circumcised, and God said, “I calculate, I reckon, I state that you, Abraham, are righteous.”

Christ said, “I am,” and there came the moment when He said to Philip, “Philip, I’ve been so long with the Father, and you’ve not seen Me.” How long had that been? It had been all the way back into the Godhead of eternity. Before Abraham was, I am. Before everything mentioned in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, I was, and I am. I am there.

And that statement in Revelation 1:8 doesn’t say, someday I’ll be Omega. He said, “I am right now the beginning, and right now I am the end.” Of course, He is the end because creation is inside of Him. He envelops creation; therefore, He stands at the end of creation while He begins creation. All things are in Him, and previous to that, He was All, all that there was, and then He placed creation in Him, and He who is not fettered…He’s fettered by nothing, not by space, nor time, nor mission, nor dimension. No calendar; He wanders all that there is, and He doesn’t take long to get from the beginning to the end, for He is at the end, and He’s at the beginning. He had to make space for Himself as All to place creation in Him. And we go back, and there He is, the Godhead, and they are fellowshipping.

Now let’s say that you have been in medical school for eight years. You come out of there; you’ll be talking about medicine. If I’m in theology for four years, I come out talking about theology, heaven help me. If you spend four years in accounting, your head will be filled with figures, because that’s what you’ve been subjected to; that’s where your mind and thoughts have been. Well, what if you had been in the Godhead for all eternity and suddenly became human? What would your subject be?

I will tell you this: whatever it was, it’s central to God. What did He talk about? He talked about God and all the aspects of God. We’re gonna find out what that is and be stunned and shocked. When He began speaking, listen, because He just got out of med school, accounting, theology, whatever you wish to say; He has been in God for all eternity, and He opens His mouth. And what’s on God’s mind is on Christ’s mind. What on earth does He speak of?

This certainly wasn’t doctrine. This simple Galilean had one of the simplest vocabularies that you’ll find anywhere in literature. He spoke in one syllable; He was a one-syllable God; listen to what He has to say.

Now we have a God who’s the All. Before Abraham, I was back there…with Noah. Before Abraham was, I was there in the garden with Adam, and my thoughts were on Adam and Eve. I had an eternal purpose, and I haven’t given it up yet, and it began before eternity and will go beyond eternity, and I revealed that; I revealed it when I made man.

When I created, I will demonstrate to you what was on my mind for all the eternals. When I close Revelation out, I will be speaking to you what is still on my mind. I have to pause here and say, listen to what you will hear, because in the simple observance of this celebration – and it is a celebration that God has given us- all these things come together. We catch the mind of God when He was back there: All and nothing but All.