In that time before all time!

(Charles Spurgeon, 1864)  LISTEN to audio! Download audio

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Meditate, dear friends, upon the whole range of God's works in Creation and Providence.

There was a period when God dwelt alone, and creatures were not. In that time before all time, when there was no day but "the Ancient of Days," when matter and created mind were alike unborn, and even space was not-God, the great I AM, was as perfect, glorious, and as blessed as He is now.

There was no sun, and yet Jehovah dwelt in ineffable light.
There was no earth, and yet His throne stood fast and firm.
There were no heavens, and yet His glory was unbounded.

God inhabited eternity in the infinite majesty and happiness of His self-contained greatness. If the Lord, thus abiding in solemn solitude, should choose to create anything-the first thought and idea must come from Him, for there was no other to think or suggest. All things must be of Him in design. With whom can He take counsel? Who shall instruct Him? There existed no other to come into His council-chamber, even if such an assistance could be supposable with the Most High.

In the beginning of His way, before His works of old, eternal wisdom brought forth from its own mind the perfect plan of future creations-and every line and mark therein must clearly have been of the Lord alone.

He ordained the pathway of every planet, and fixed the abode of every star.
He poured forth the sweet influences of the Pleiades, and girt Orion with its bands.
He appointed the bounds of the sea, and settled the course of the winds.
As to the earth, the Lord alone planned its foundations, and stretched His line upon it.

He formed in His own mind, the mold of all His creatures, and found for them a dwelling and a service. He appointed the degree of strength with which He would endow each creature, settled its months of life, its hour of death, its coming and its going.

Divine wisdom mapped this earth-its flowing rivers and foaming seas, the towering mountains, and the laughing valleys. The divine Architect fixed the gates of the morning-and the doors of the shadow of death.

Nothing could have been suggested by any other, for there was no other to suggest. It was in His power to have made a universe very different from this-if He had so pleased. That He has made it what it is, must have been merely because in His wisdom and prudence, He saw fit to do so.

"You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power-for You created all things, and by Your will they were created and have their being!" Revelation 4:11