The late Herbert W. Armstrong compared most people’s understanding of the Bible to walking in on a movie partway through. It is very confusing to start watching a movie an hour in, without knowing the context and the events that led up to that particular scene. The same principle applies to the Bible. To comprehend its true story, we must go back to the real beginning—which is not found in Genesis 1:1.
Eternal Prehistory
God inhabits eternity (Isaiah 57:15). He has existed with the Word forever, longer than time itself. John takes us back to a time before God created the angels and man, a time when He and the Word dwelled alone in the universe. That is the real beginning.The real beginning of history can be found in John 1. These verses unlock and reveal so much about the Bible. They are the key to the entire book. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2). John begins his epistles and his gospel account the same way: by pointing us back to the beginning, before any spiritual or physical creation, and perhaps millions of years before the re-creation of Earth depicted in Genesis 1:1.
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life” (1 John 1:1).
The Apostle John is the only New Testament writer to refer to Jesus Christ as the Word. He was Christ’s closest companion. Christ gave John a deeper spiritual understanding than the other apostles.
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