Debrecen Messages #5 – What Was Christ Before Creation

And it’s a morning meeting, except we’re doing it at night. And we have a, we’ve added someone to our very auspicious number. And we have added an Albanian, very dear sister, who is here from, she flew out of Tirana, Albania today, now she’s here in Debrecen, Hungary. At least that’s where she is on this particular night, in this particular year. I don’t know where she is on the night or day you watch this thing. Alright, we’re talking about a revelation of Jesus Christ. I’m going to do just a little review for our Albanian, Kalia.

Everybody who ministers asks this question one time or other, where should I start? So we usually start in John. And we tell them about John because it begins in the beginning. Or, if we’re really going to do a Bible commentary, we start with Genesis, specifically Genesis 1:1, in the beginning. We’re trying to talk to a new Christian. We probably will start with 1 John 1;11, something we’re going to teach them or whatever it is. It’s usually rather poor and it’s usually centered on you, not the Lord. And it’s very teachy and it’s very much out of Aristotle. By the way, it’s your part of the world that gave us Aristotle. You did not do a good job the day you did that. That was not the kind of you. And, I don’t know. It’s all just kind of empty. What we usually get as new Christians. I hope this is better. Shucks, I know it’s better. It’s centered on Christ. But we will not begin with Christ of Galilee because that’s not where Christ begins. And if we’re not careful, we’ll be talking about Jesus and the carpenter shop and how he felt this. And he was good to people. And he’ll tell everybody to love one another. And we’ll read the Matthew and the Beatitudes. And we’ll hear about all the things we ought to do. And we’ll begin talking about that. Jesus did this because when he grew up, this was the custom he learned.

And we forget that we’re looking at someone who has been alive a long, long, long time before he got to this earth in Bethlehem. And that he’s grown and he’s remembering. So we’ll forget all of that and we’ll go back before Genesis, and we go back before creation when God is all. And I know that every brother in this room knows exactly what we have covered, and they can tell you just like that. And they would get it perfect, and they would be able to tell you everything exactly. I am so confident of this, I’m not even going to bother to ask them. Every comma, every dot. Well, y’all, I’ll go over it real quickly. This is what we’ve learned by looking. We looked at John 5 and 6 today. You didn’t see this on video. And we learned a lot of things that we discover in John 5 and 6 that tells us what happened before creation and the relationship of the Father to the Son. What’s going on in the Godhead? One of the things we learned was that God gave Jesus Christ You and me. He loved him and gave him you and me. Before the creation of the world.

Alright, here’s something else we discovered. That our names were written in the book of life before creation. That’s wonderful. But here was a puzzle. In Hebrews 4, we learn that the Lord finished all things before he created all things. And we know that’s not possible, and we don’t understand it. We haven’t even pursued it. But the brothers and sisters in this room understand that. Don’t we? How he finished all things before he created all things. Don’t we, brothers? No, we don’t understand that, but we’ve glimpsed it. We glimpsed it. Now, here is another amazing thing, and that is that we were chosen and marked off in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we were actually in Him before He created. Now, Kalia, you were in Christ. You existed in Him. You were actually there in Him before the foundation of the world. You were a chip of Christ. You were marked off. And the Lord said, that’s Kalia. We’ll work out the details later. But Kalia is destined to be mine. Now, this drives the Arminians crazy. They don’t want this to happen. They want you to be free to reject Christ, otherwise everybody that’s damned is damned, and everybody that’s predestined, they’ve got to get saved, and no matter what they do, no matter how evil they live, this drives them crazy. And then the Calvinists, they say it’s going to happen this way, this way it is. And we resolved all that. And we showed clearly, first of all, that Calvin lived too soon. He had never met Einstein. And the Arminians both, have to stop this. Because they do not understand that creation is in God. And that God envelops creation. And he’s not at the beginning of creation. He’s at the end of creation. And at the beginning of creation. If I take… What shall I take? If I take a ball and cut it open and drop a pencil in and close the ball up, is that ball at the front of the pencil or at the back of the pencil? And the answer is it’s in both places because the pencil is enveloped in the ball. And time was created all at once.

We are going through it this way, but it’s already all there. By the way, I’ll give you a new illustration of this just to show you that that’s not all I knew when I told you this. Am I going to have another pen? Am I going to have another handkerchief? Anybody got a string this time? Can I change to anything other than this handkerchief? Everybody’s looking desperately. Okay, have you got a blank sheet of paper you could give me and wind it up lengthwise? There is another way to illustrate this. Here we go. You’ve got to come with a string, or we’re going to show you. Better hurry. Oh, we’ve got a real string. A real honest-to-goodness. Ooh, we’ve got a string. Folks, we’ve really come up in this world. And I’m going to illustrate it. See the string out there, those of you in Wonderland?

Okay, I want you to watch the string move, okay? It’s moving forward. Now you can see that, can you not? But let’s imagine there is a one-dimensional creature. Not two-dimensional or three-dimensional. He’s a one-dimensional creature. You know what he’s doing? And this is not exactly accurate, but he’s moving up and down this string. Back and forth. That’s all he can do. He’s one-dimensional. He’s one-dimensional. He’s moving back and forth, he does not know he’s moving forward, does he? Can you tell he’s moving forward? You can see he’s moving forward. Can you see where he’s going? And you can also see where he came from. No, I tell you, he’s going just about another foot that’s where he’s going you can see that but he can’t see that. Now, if he should meet God along the way, what would be his impression? That God is also one­ dimensional and meets him here somewhere in this. All right. Now, I’m going to tell you what a two-dimensional creature thinks. A two-dimensional creature can move up and down this way, and he is aware that he’s moving forward. But he cannot see the future. And he can’t see the past either. What he’s doing, follow my head, is he’s moving back and forth like this. And he also knows he’s moving forward. Now that’s kind of us. We can move back and forth like this, and we can move forward. But we expect that if we meet God, God can meet us going this way or that way. But we think that that’s all God can do, that he’s caught in the same situation we’re in. He’s either going to go this way, back and forth, or he’ll meet us. He’ll either meet me, you’re the stringer, or he’s going to meet me from in the air, or he’s going to meet me as I’m moving forward. And that’s about all he can do. Now tell me something. Are you three-dimensional? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, I’m sorry, we won’t be spiritual yet. You are more than that. But right now, can you see the string going forward? Can you see where it came from? Do you realize that you could meet this string absolutely anywhere? Do you see that you could meet it way, way out there in the future? In the front, you can go around to the back and meet this string, and you can meet the one-dimensional or two-dimensional creature on it. You can see so much. Look, you can see behind and in front. Now then, if I could just put this string in you, a very big you. So big that this string can move forward. Then we have to ask, where is the string? The string is in you. And can you see the string? You can see the front of it, the back of it. You can watch the little one-dimensional creature moving back and forth. You can watch the two-dimensional creature. And you can watch us watching the string.

And you can meet that string anywhere you wish. In fact, you can meet that string where it has not yet gone. Time and creation are in Christ. And when he chose you, he was standing at the end as well as the beginning. Therefore, he knew what he was doing. You may be free to do what you wish along that string, but he sees you when you get to the end of it. At the same time, he sees you when you started out on the string. Does that help any? A little bit, maybe? He saw you here. He sees you down here. He watches you go the whole length. When you got down here to the very end, he said, I’ll choose you here. But I’m down here. How can he choose me here at the beginning? Aw, that’s simple, because he can go back to the beginning again and choose you there. And there you are again at the beginning, even though he has seen you at the end. Well, you understand that perfectly, don’t you? We will never understand this because we’re not God. Now, the astronomers have helped us by telling us that time and creation are not in a straight line, they are, in fact, curved. And here’s the beginning. That’s the big bang when creation starts. And creation flows out, by the way, all at once. We’re just following it through. And then creation comes back and collapses into nothingness at the same spot it began. So you see how close the beginning and the end are? And the Lord’s standing right there, where the beginning and the end are. It’s easy for him to choose you here, because he can see you here, and here, and here, and here. And thank you for this marvelous strain, which is so much better than that handkerchief. Now, if you’ll just dye this thing white, that’ll help even more. So we saw that, Kalia. And…

Then, Kalia, we dealt with the great mystery of all, and that is that Jesus Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world. He was crucified only once, and yet he was crucified before the foundation of the world and Jerusalem. And yet one could take place before creation and in Jerusalem and be the same. And that crucifixion not only is in Jerusalem, but that crucifixion is throughout all of creation and before creation. And if Jesus Christ was crucified before creation, then everything that was created was crucified before it was created. His foot is on the back of the neck of creation.

Listen very carefully. Creation was born crucified. Creation was born already crucified. When he died before the foundation of the ages, he not only created it, but he also crucified creation on the cross. And this creation that will one day disappear, this creation which will one day come to an end will come to an end because of the destructive power of the cross. But this creation has already come to an end. I haven’t seen it yet, but the Lord has. And when he crucified it, made sure everything was okay, aII things that were fallen were destroyed, then he created that which had already been crucified. And he can do all of that because creation is in him. Did I leave out anything? Did I leave out anything? Well, of course I left out some things. What else did I? What did I leave out?

Shall I help you or are you going to help me? Oh, we talked about being foreknown, yes, but that’s not what I had in mind. Spent one whole meeting on… I’ll give you a hint. It was the last two tapes. You folks who can’t remember, go back and watch the last two videos.

You’re talking about flowing in and flowing out. I presented to you Jesus Christ’s personal relationship to the Father before creation. Now, what was the point? The point was, when you find what Jesus Christ’s personal relationship to the Father is before creation, you find the foundation of how to live the Christian life. And there is no Bible study. And there is no prayer. There is instead, and I’m not going to finish that. You go back and watch. This is tape six. You go back and watch four and five again. Have you already forgotten, brothers, what the assignment was yesterday morning? That was so that you might begin to understand a little bit of things outside of space and time. The way the Lord and his Father related. We’re going to come back to this again and again. And this is something you must do, or be a hypocrite, if you ever preach these things. So we’re going to come back to this a great deal. Kalia, we have. You will watch five and six. Four and five.