Bible Truth Examiner

GOD A BEGINNING?

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GOD A BEGINNING?

Scriptures are cited from the King James (Authorized) Version, unless stated otherwise.

Question: Did God have a beginning?

Answer: A few of many Scriptures that teach that God has always existed, and therefore did not have a beginning are the following:

Psalm 41: 13: “Blessed be the LORD God of Israel from everlasting, and to everlasting.”

Psalm 90: 2: “From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.”

Psalm 93: 2: “Thy throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting.”

Habakkuk 1: 12: “Art thou not from everlasting, O LORD my God?”

God’s Unfathomableness

One of the qualities of God’s being is His unfathomableness, which is that quality of God’s being which makes Him impossible of being fully comprehended in all the details of His being, attributes, thoughts and works by any of His creatures. Of course God fully comprehends Himself. The difference is that all of His creatures are finite – limited – whereas God is infinite – unlimited.

The fact that God did not have a beginning is one example of His unfathomableness. Reason appeals to us from the standpoint of cause and effect. It is of universal experience that every event has a cause, therefore, reasoning back from many events to as many causes, we finally reach first events, which imply a first cause; and as such it must be causeless; hence eternal. This first cause we call God, or as the Scriptures put it: “He that built [made] all things is God” (Hebrews 3: 4).

Let us take the race of mankind as an example. Reasoning from effect to cause, we finally reach the original man and woman. But where did they come from? They could not have made themselves; for that would imply their existence before they existed. Who or what then made them? Our reasoning drives us to the conclusion that there is a first cause, and if it is the first cause, it cannot be the effect of any other cause. It, therefore, must have been causeless and therefore eternal. We call this first cause, God.  

Although we may be able to accept that God did not have a beginning, we cannot grasp how it can be so. A pertinent Scripture is Job 36: 26: “Behold, God is great, and we know [fully comprehend] him not; neither can the number of his years be searched out [His eternity cannot be fully comprehended by us].”