It’s a New Day, a New Week, A New Month and a New Year, 2023 begins today! You can’t say that very often! We received a record snowfall yesterday and through the night. Streets are closed, church is cancelled, power went out and we can’t get out of our own driveway. I can’t remember another New Year’s Day like this.

2023 has a lot of significants in my life. I met my wife 40 years ago this coming summer. It was a turning point for me after the decade before was such a disaster. I feel in my bones that this is truly the beginning of “birth pangs” that we read about in the Bible. More like those minutes before that baby is born.

As I mentioned before, I am beginning a study/ teaching through the Book of Genesis. It is title, “A Beginning!” Something new, ברא bārā’, “create, give being to something new.” The Hebrew word here means, “created from nothing.” not formed from any pre-existing materials.

So we read verse 1 with this understanding;

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created…

We also are to understand that God was there before the beginning of all things. Unbelieving man always asked the question, “who created God?” The Word here for God in the Hebrew is Elohim, a plural name of God. We comprehend the Father, the Word, or Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that all these divine persons equally concurred in the creation of the world.

The apostle John verefies this plurality in his opening verse of his gospel.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Jesus caries the name, “The Word,” along with nearly 100 others names in scripture.

“As there never was a time when God did not exist, and as activity is an essential part of His being (John 5:17), so, probably, there was never a time when worlds did not exist; and in the process of calling them into existence when and how He willed, we may well believe that God acted in accordance with the working of some universal law, of which He is Himself the author. It was natural with St. John, when placing the same words at the commencement of his Gospel, to carry back our minds to a more absolute conceivable “beginning,” when the work of creation had not commenced, and when in the whole universe there was only God.”

-Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers-

So much to meditate on in just the beginning few words of the Bible. So easy to just pass by and not realize the awesome wonder of our God, with mere words, bringing the universe into existence!

Some may ask, “”when did this take place?” If we believe that part of this creation is time itself, because It is stated; “… So the evening and the morning were the first day.” We recognize a 24 hour period as a day. And this phrase is repeated for six days after each stage until He was finished! Time came into existence and our clock began to tick. Was there a clue in these “six days,” of the age of man?

If we understand the complete history and story of man and time, we could see that…

2 Peter 3:8 But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Don’t miss this or fall into the lie that each day of creation took 1000 years. Don’t miss the word, “as,” not are. But maybe the hint is that man will exist in this new creation for 6000 years, and then tne “seventh day,” the “Day of Rest,” the millennial (1000) reign of God and His return to earth!

This clue may give us a starting year of 4004 BC. Following the genealogy from Adam to Jesus. We live today 2000 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, clearly traced through the biblical and historical record. Are we stand at the 6000 year marker? Is time about up?

This has been exhaustively written about for my entire time posting here on “Come Quickly Lord,” for more than 30 years. But now I will focus on Genesis and help new and seasoned believers take a closer look. Stick around, in 2023, if God tarries, we will get through this together.

Maranatha!