Time and Place. (2)

The Scriptural association of chronology and topography
with doctrine and purpose.

by Charles H. Welch

 #2. The purpose of the ages implied in Gen. i. 1.


The majestic opening words of Holy Scripture describe the first action of all time. “In the beginning” (B’reshith). The word reshith is the feminine form of rosh, “head”, and while primarily rosh means “head”, only incidentally “beginning”, reshith on the other hand, primarily means “beginning”, and incidentally “chief”, but is never translated in the A.V. “head”. The LXX translated it by the Greek arche, and so is parallel with John i. 1. That it is utterly futile to speculate upon what was “before” the beginning, our very language testifies, for, where time is not, “before” is meaningless.

An examination of the usage of reshith, “beginning”, leaves the mind with the impression that something more than “time” is implied. First we observe that there is no article (“the”), so that the Hebrew reads “In beginning”, and opens the door for the thought, “With what motive and with what ending?” There are two other occurrences of reshith in Genesis: the first is,

“And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel . . . . . in the land of Shinar, and he (Nimrod) went forth out of that land into Assyria (Asshur), and builded Nineveh, etc.” (Gen. x. 10, 11).

Here we have an illustration of the anticipatory character of reshith. Nimrod began with Babel, but he went on and added Erech, Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar, thereafter extending his conquest outside that land, including Nineveh and Calah.

The other reference to reshith is Gen. xlix. 3, 4:

“Reuben, thou art my firstborn, and the beginning of my strength . . . . . unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.”

Here again the “beginning of my strength” asks for its sequence, its correspondence, and the “end” is found to be failure and instability.

This word reshith is translated “firstfruits” eleven times (Lev. xxiii. 10, etc.), and it is the very essence of firstfruits that they anticipate a harvest to come. In Job viii. 7 and xlii. 12 the “beginning” is related to the “end”; as it is also in Isa. xlvi. 10.

By this time, most of our readers will have thought of the title given to Christ in the Revelation:

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending” (Rev. i. 8).
“These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God” (Rev. iii. 14).
“It is done, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” (Rev. xxi. 6).
“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Rev. xxii. 13).

With these glorious truths must be included the testimony of the apostle Paul:

“He is the head of the body, the church: Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence” (Col. i. 18).

Let us examine these references more carefully. Rev. i. 8 associates the title, “the beginning”, with the great age-abiding name Jehovah: “The Lord which IS, and which WAS, and which IS TO COME.” Here, in this Name, all time is comprehended, past, present and future, and He is the “Almighty”, so that what He “began” to do at the creation of heaven and earth, He will “finish” in the day of God. The “beginning” implies an end, or goal. In Rev. xxi. 6 the goal is reached: He that sat upon the throne said, “It is done.” When we ponder Rev. iii. 14 with Gen. i. 1, to what other conclusion can we come than that Christ is there in Gen. i. 1, the “beginning of the creation of God”, and in Him, the “first”, creation will at length reach its goal, for He is also the “last”, and He is the “Amen”, the faithful witness to the onward movement of the ages.

In Col. i. 18 there is a limitation. He is there seen, not so much in His relationship to creation, as to the church. True, all creation is the work of His hands (Col. i. 16, 17), but it is there in the background, while the new creation, already seen in the church, which is the body, sets forth in miniature the creation to come. Christ is undoubtedly “The beginning” of that new creation, which has as its goal what is vividly expressed in Col. iii.

“The image of Him that created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew . . . . .; but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. iii. 10, 11).

This, in its turn, exhibits the goal that is implied by the opening words of Gen. i. 1:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth . . . . . Then cometh the end . . . . . that God may be all in all” (Gen. i. 1 with I Cor. xv. 24-28).

Christ is “all and in all” to the church of the mystery: God shall be “all in all” when the complete new creation is laid at His feet. So, the words “It is done” of Rev. xxi. 6 refer to the works of Rev. xxi. 5: “Behold, I make all things new.” We observe also that in I Cor. xv. Christ is the “firstfruits”, a word which we have seen is implicit in Gen. i. 1.

We return to Gen. i. 1, and with increasing wonder look at those opening words, “In beginning”, could be expressed idiomatically, “As a beginning”, demanding, some time and somewhere, a sequel, an end, a harvest. God created the heaven and the earth with an object, and His purpose may be expressed thus:

In beginning God was ALL. Heaven and earth sprang into being at His command. But God is not merely Almighty, He is essentially “Love”. Creation therefore moved forward to the “Image”, in Whose likeness Adam was created. Adam however did not obey mechanically, as do the sun, moon and stars, and so the long discipline of sorrow accompanies the advent of man, leading irrevocably down to the “unspeakable” Gift of Love, and, at long last, up to the willing submission of a new creation.

We therefore complete our exhibition of the implication of Gen. i. 1 as follows:

In the beginning God was ALL, but when the end comes, God will be ALL IN ALL.

two vastly different things. He is indeed One that “declares the end from the beginning”, and worketh all things according to the counsel of His Own will.

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(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 34, page 169).

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