The story of redemption becomes even more meaningful when one examines events that happened before Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. Borrowing a definition from Webster, the word ‘precursor’ as used in the title means ‘one that precedes and indicates the approach of another’.
The first three words in the book of Genesis are ‘In the beginning’ and the Hebrew base for ‘beginning’ also means ‘first’. Therefore, those initial three words confirm there were events or happenings that preceded the events recorded beginning with Genesis 1:2.
There are other phrases in the Bible that confirm the existence of and the working of the mind of God prior to man’s physical creation. For example the phrases ‘before time began’ and ‘from the foundation of the world’ are also found in the Bible.
The first three words in the New Testament are exactly the same as the first three words in the Old Testament, i.e. ‘In the beginning’. The Greek base for beginning also means ‘first’ and ‘before anything’.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” John 1:1
This verse clearly ascribes deity to Jesus.
The Greek base for ‘Word’ means the eternal expression of the divine intelligence and the disclosure of the divine essence.
The Pharisees would not accept Jesus’ claim to deity. They boasted of their status and security by claiming they were direct descendants of Abraham.
“Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.’” John 8:58
The term ‘I AM’ means ‘I have always been’.
The redemptive plan for man, particularly for gentiles via the church through the God/man Jesus, was not fully revealed until the New Testament. The Apostle Paul taught that such a plan had been devised ‘in the beginning’ or ‘since the world began’.
“Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began, but now made manifest…” Romans 16:25-26a
The Greek base for ‘world began’ in the present context is chronois aioniois which means ‘before time began’.
The very next chapter in the Bible reveals that the wisdom of God was/is embodied in Christ.
“…but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:23-24
The Greek for wisdom in this verse means divine wisdom, infinite skill, insight, and purity.
The Bible also reveals that wisdom was with God in the beginning, or before the preparation of the earth to sustain Adam and all mankind.
In the eighth chapter of Proverbs, wisdom is personified.
“I have been established from everlasting, from the beginning, before there was ever an earth…While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields, or the primal dust of the world, when He prepared the heavens, I was there…” Proverbs 8:23-24, 26-27a
These verses clearly reveal that wisdom, which would be embodied in Christ, has always been with God.
Solomon then declares that wisdom’s greatest delight was to be with God’s highest creation, i.e. those created in God’s own image.
“When He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him as a master craftsman; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in His inhabited world, and my delight was with the sons of men.” Proverbs 8:29b-31
One cannot grasp the love that God has for His Son and for those whom He would create in His own image. Such love can only be embraced as the anchor of the soul.
There are other great Biblical truths that tell of God’s detailed preparation and plan for those whom He was about to create in His image and place on the earth.
God’s plan for man began long before the dimension of time and the Garden of Eden and will last long after, when time will be needed no more.