In The Beginning – another free chapter from The Genesis Project, a new book by Leke Alder.
The Universe and everything we see is made up of matter. Matter did not exist before the beginning of time. It was created “in the beginning.”
If you are a frequent traveller like I am, you may have noticed different packing habits at the airport. The airlines mandate that you carry no more than a specified number of suitcases, depending on your travel class, upper or economy. It all depends on how much you pay. The more you pay, the more you can carry.
The challenge for most people, especially women, is how to squeeze so much into those suitcases. They remove presents from boxes just to gain extra space. Boxes occupy space. They remove clothes from packages. That creates more space. They press materials down, and squeeze and squeeze so the suitcase can take more. No one packs like a woman, especially the Nigerian woman! Airlines the world over understand the packing habits of Nigerian women.
But all this squeezing is incomparable to the squeeze I am about to describe.
Take all the matter in the Universe – all the houses, all the bridges, all the water, the landmasses, our bodies (all 6.9 billion worth), the planets, galaxies… take everything. Squeeze them all together until you arrive at the size of the Earth. Keep compacting. Squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until everything looks like a compacted metal cube at a scrap metal yard. You can’t imagine that, can you? That cube will be unimaginably heavy and dense. You don’t have the energy to perform this squeezing feat but let’s assume you do. Let’s assume you’re some superhuman species with extraordinary squeezing powers. Now compress, and squeeze, and squeeze again until everything is now the size of a small cube of sugar. But we are not done yet. Don’t get tired. Now squeeze and squeeze again until everything is the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence. Remember we’re assuming that you are superhuman and that you have the power to compress all of creation into a full stop. I know you can’t even squeeze a small piece of paper into a full stop but let’s indulge ourselves in foolery.
That full stop, the dot, was the size of the Universe when it all began. When the Bible says, “In the beginning…” it was referring to that dot. Scientists call it a singularity. The Universe began essentially as…nothing. Both science and the Bible agree on this. “The Earth was without form,” the Bible says (Genesis 1:2). It had no dimensions. The Universe was a singularity.
The Hebrew word translated “Without form” is “tohu”. Among other words it means a worthless thing. The Universe was nothing, worthless!
Indeed the Book of Genesis uses an interesting word to describe creation in the opening verse of Genesis. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth” (Genesis 1:1). The word “create” in that verse is the Hebrew word “Asa”. It literally means to create something out of nothing. In other words, the world was created ex nihilo or out of nothing. (Science and the Bible agree).
But the man Adam was not created ex nihilo. The Bible interchanged the word “Asa” with another Hebrew word, “Bara” when it came to the creation of Man (Genesis 1:27, 2:7). It means to create out of something. Man was made from already existing material.
And so at “the beginning” there was nothing, zilch, zero… No universe, no landmasses, no water, no continents…not even time!
What was before “the beginning”? No one knows! The Bible doesn’t say and even science is stomped. In truth, we cannot talk of a time before the beginning because there was no time before the beginning. “Timelessness” is hard to imagine, and not a few might have considered St. Augustine wankers when he stated that time did not exist before the creation of the Universe. That statement might have been considered the output of an over-contemplative mind. We imagine that time has always been, but it is not so! Time was created alongside everything else at the beginning. The word “beginning” in the phrase “In the beginning…” is the Hebrew word “Reshith”. It is not so much a reference to “time” but the initiation of a series of historical events. Please note that. You need that understanding to configure creation in the Book of Genesis. Some modernistic translators in fact render that verse, “When God began to create…” It is a very apt interpretation because it uses an event-based turn of phrase to describe “In the beginning…”
The implications of “timelessness” are immense. For one, it means that God exists in a “dimension” outside of time. There must be another type of dimension outside our dimension. If God created our dimension He must be extra-dimensional. If He created time He could not have existed within time. He is not subject to it. He would later subject himself to time at his incarnation but that was eons later.
Hypothetically, let’s call our type of dimension “terrestrial dimension” and the type of dimension God exists in “extra-ordinary dimension”, or “xo-Dimension”, or “x_Dimension”, or “xD”. Whatever! Let’s settle on “xD”. It has brevity.
I’ll like to imagine that just as our dimension has 1D, 2D, 3D, 4D, etc, this “xD” dimension, in which God exists, has its own 1D, 2D, 3D, 4D etc. It may however be that our dimension is actually integrated into an overall scheme of dimensions and that we are the lowest strata of this integrated super dimensional scheme. Our dimension may just be a slice. But if there are indeed two types of dimensions, then the 1D, 2D or 3D of the xD dimension will be so advanced and so sophisticated.
Our terrestrial dimension is in some measure modelled after God’s xD dimension. As we have horses on Earth so they have horses in Heaven (Revelation 19:14). And in one or two instances we’ve even been instructed to model things after structures in Heaven. Moses was instructed to build a tabernacle after the model in Heaven for example.
God must of course exist in the highest numeric “D” of the xD dimension. He must occupy the highest dimension of the xD dimension. He lives in “the highest” the Bible says. “Glory to God in the highest!” the heavenly host sang in Luke 2:14. “Glory to God in the highest and on Earth peace, good will toward men!” the people sang on Palm Sunday. In other words, peace and good will to men in a geographical location called “Earth”, glory to God in another geographical location called “the highest”. There is a place called “the highest”. It’s the dimension God lives in. God the highest lives in the highest!
Now, let’s assign a numerical value to God’s dimension, though it may be safer to assign an alphabetical value. When a number is extreme in science we usually use the letter “n”. So let’s say God exists in the “nth” dimension. The nth dimension is thus “the highest”.
We have no scientific knowledge of life in the extra-ordinary dimension. It is beyond our cognitive capability. Our brain can’t handle the physics. We’re still struggling with understanding our primitive dimension. No computer we have now or in the foreseeable future can crunch the numbers associated with this dimension. The coordinates are infinite. Its geometry is a closed loop. The information we have about the extra-ordinary dimension comes from the Bible. It’s our only source of knowledge.
We know for example that this dimension has a restrictive and definitive timeframe reference. The Bible says it’s always “day” there. There is no night (Revelation 21:23 – 25). It is full of light but the light is not from the Sun. That “day” is created by a “glory radiance” proceeding from the being of God. “And the city has no need of sun or moon to light it, for the glory of God and of the Lamb illuminate it” (Revelation 21:23). Essentially, there is no passage of time in Heaven. It’s always “day”.
Because the dimension exists outside time, spoken thoughts will manifest instantaneously. There can be no time lag between speakings and manifestation. This will of course affect grammar. You can’t really say, “Let there be light” in that dimension. You’ll probably say, “Light be!” or “Light!” That’s how God spoke in Genesis according to the Hebrew text.
The creatures that exist in that dimension are bizarre beyond imagination. There are “living creatures full of eyes in front and in back.” One “living creature” species is said to be like a lion with six wings. It is “full of eyes around and within” (Revelation 4:6 – 8). That’s a creature with abnormal visual capacities. It can look “inside”, see into “itself” and auto stitch 3600 video images together with the eyes “around.” If it can look into itself, it means it can see “inside” – it can see “closed” dimensions. And because it can see “around” and “within” at the same time, it means this creature has higher dimensional capabilities, possibly 4D or higher.
We know from the Bible that the beings from this dimension possess extra-ordinary powers. That figures since they exist in an extra-ordinary dimension. (Your dimension defines you). Angels are described as “mighty” (Revelation 10:1). They can hold the winds (Revelation 7:1). Even phenomena possess extra-ordinary capacities in that dimension. Thunders speak! (Revelation 10:4).
Because God exists in the nth dimension His capacities will be unlimited. The Bible talks about “the exceeding greatness of His power” (Ephesians 1:19). Our capacities and manifestations are determined by our dimensions.
To be continued next week Sunday.
If you’ll like to receive Jesus into your life please pray this prayer: “Father I acknowledge that I am a sinner, that Jesus died for me, that you raised him from the dead. Father please forgive me. I accept Jesus today as my Lord and my Saviour. Amen.”
If God created our dimension He must be extra-dimensional. Click To Tweet