Genesis 1:1

Gold fish said:

What was before Genesis 1:1?Where was time matter and energy if there was nothing?And if time was nonexistent all time was at 0.So how did time go from 0 to 1?

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God created time. Each time you see God create stuff "Let there be light", the Hebrew language states that God is "speaking" things into existence.

When God has had enough and sends Christ for the 2nd time, all things will perish including time as those saved will be eternal and those unsaved also eternal just in heaven or hell. If we live for eternity when all is said and done, where will time be?

Time wont exist anymore.

You can simply chalk this down to "God spoke it all into existence". =)

God was before Genesis 1:1. From everlasting to everlasting.

I do not have an answer to your other questions but I suspect that only the physical came into being at that point and that the heavenly realms pre existed that. I also surmise that the progression of time, as we know it, is confined to the universe. I am strongly inclined to think that time in heaven is nothing like we understand. I think Heaven is out of our time and from there it can be past, present and future at the same time.


It is hard to describe but once these things occurred to me it felt right- even though I could be wrong. It makes sense to me... I don't know about anyone else.

Gold fish said:

What was before Genesis 1:1?Where was time matter and energy if there was nothing?And if time was nonexistent all time was at 0.So how did time go from 0 to 1?

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We are not told, so all we can do is guess, and that wouldn't be much.

Gold fish said:

What was before Genesis 1:1?Where was time matter and energy if there was nothing?And if time was nonexistent all time was at 0.So how did time go from 0 to 1?

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"Technically" you could say that Genesis 1:14 is the "setting up of time" (or maybe more accurately how humans would come to measure time). That verse says the sun and moon are set for the marking of days and seasons and years.

What existed before Genesis 1:1?

The only thing that existed before God created anything was God Himself. There was no time, matter or energy. Yet there wasn't "nothing" because God is "something". LOL

It's hard for us to wrap our brains around because the only thing we know of existence is tied to the material world and how would your imagination define a "space" that was only filled with an entity that is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, having no beginning and no end and immortal; yet "immaterial".

Than that entity creates a material world where He is still omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, having no beginning and no end and immortal; within the context of the material world He created. He can still "be" all these things because He is fundamentally different than the material world that He created.

Jesus speaks of a time before the world was here

John 17:5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

And Peter speaks of him being before the foundation of the world

1 Peter 1:20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you

Of wisdom it likewise says,

Proverbs 8:23-26 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world.

Christ is also called the wisdom of God, who came out from God and come into the world a light

John 1:10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

The traditional reading is "creation from nothing." If that's right, there was nothing before Gen 1:1. The authors of Genesis didn't have a modern understanding of space-time, so I'm not sure they'd say there was no time. But if you want to combine a literal reading of Genesis with modern physics (which is kind of an odd combination), you'd probably want to say that even time didn't exist. As to the quotations in post 7, phrases like "before the foundation of the earth" are speaking of things going on in God's realm. Descriptions of that are not likely to be literal. Maybe God's realm has something like time, but if so, it wouldn't be the same dimension as ours, probably.

Alternatively, there are signs in the OT of God bringing order from chaos. Gen 1:1 can reasonably be translated "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters." (NRSV) Note that the deep is there, but everything is "formless." In this case there was kind of something there, though I'd say it isn't "real" in quite the sense of the current universe.

However if you don't think Genesis is a historical account of creation, the question probably doesn't make sense. If you accept the scientific account, the earliest thing we know about is the "big bang," though even there we only know about it starting a fraction of a second after the nominal "beginning." But we simply don't know whether there was anything there before, or whether this universe is only part of a bigger system. We have a pretty good understanding of the visible universe back to that fraction of a second after 0, but beyond that, no.