- [Narrator] Two events that took place
before the creation of the world.
Number one, the majesty of God,
the Father and Jesus.
Jesus explained who he was before the creation of the world.
There are many mysteries that Jesus shared with us.
Among these are what took place before the world's creation.
Jesus's prayer in John 17 is one
of the most magnificent chapters in the entire Bible.
Jesus talked about the glory and majesty he shared
with God the Father before the world existed.
John 17:1-5, New American Standard Bible.
"Jesus spoke these things; and raising His eyes to heaven,
He said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son,
so that the Son may glorify You,
just as You gave Him authority over all mankind,
so that to all whom You have given Him,
He may give eternal life.
And this is eternal life, that they may know You,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
I glorified You on the earth
by accomplishing the works which You have given Me to do.
And now You, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself,
with the glory which I had with You
before the world existed."
Before the creation of the Earth was God
and God had majesty with his son.
Genesis contains numerous beginnings,
including the creation of man and other creatures
but it is clear that God does not begin here.
God was present at the beginning of the Bible
and it is written that he was present
when the universe was created.
Before the existence of our universe,
there had to be an eternal something or someone
and the Bible makes it clear that this person is God.
Scripture actually shows this to us
in several verses throughout scripture.
The Bible teaches that God is uncreated
and eternal in his being,
and that is to say he always existed and always will exist.
In Genesis chapter one,
the singular El is replaced by the plural Elohim,
which means three or more Gods.
As a result, the very first sentence in the Bible,
Genesis uses a plural noun with a singular verb.
One could argue that it is grammatically incorrect
but theologically correct,
implying that God is three in one.
Jesus was aware of his preexistence and the nature of it.
He knew that there was a time in eternity passed
when God the Son and God the Father shared glory.
Jesus could not honestly or sanely pray this
if he were not Yahweh himself,
equal with God the Father.
In Isaiah 42:8,
Yahweh proclaimed that he shares his glory with no one.
If God the Father and God the Son share their glory,
they must both be Yahweh.
A Bible commentator noted, "He had one main petition:
that the father would receive him back
to the glory he had relinquished to accomplish his task."
This petition for a return to his pristine glory
implies unmistakably his preexistence
and equality with the Father.
It confirms his claim that he and the Father are one.
John 10:30.
The gospel of John has emphasized the glory
of Jesus throughout its record.
John was careful to record the many ways Jesus referred
to his own glory in this prayer.
The events leading up to the crucifixion
had begun with betrayal.
The phrase, "Now the Son of Man is glorified"
refers to the reason Jesus came into the world.
He would die and then be raised from the dead
as a substitutionary atonement.
The Son would glorify the Father
and the Father would glorify the Son.
They would promote each other's glory,
highlighting God's greatness
is in fact what Christians are called to do.
Everything we do in thought,
word and deed is for God's glory.
In the end, we see Jesus in his glory again
in the book of Revelation.
In the book of Revelation,
John was to document the things that he had seen.
John sees a powerful Jesus that does not compare
to any typical man.
Revelation 1.
"Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me
and after turning, I saw seven golden lamp stands,
and in the midst of the lamp stands,
I saw someone like the Son of Man dressed in a robe reaching
to his feet and with a golden sash
wrapped around his chest."
That was it.
John had seen the Son of Man, the honored Jesus Christ.
John described the loud voice he heard
as distinct and striking as the sound of a trumpet.
The powerful voice is that of the Alpha and Omega
the First and the Last, who stands
at the beginning and the end of everything
because Jesus identified himself with these names
in Revelation 1:18.
We know this was the loud voice of Jesus.
The First and the Last is a title that belongs
to the Lord, Yahweh, the God of Israel.
The title Alpha and Omega has the same idea
as the first and the last.
This is one of the New Testament passages
where Jesus clearly claimed to be God.
We can only imagine what went through John's mind
as he turned.
The sound of the voice he heard most likely
did not match up perfectly
with the way he recalled Jesus's voice sounding.
John described it as of a trumpet.
Revelation 1:10.
However, he was aware that it was Jesus
because of the voice's description of itself
as the Alpha and Omega.
After spending so much time with Jesus
throughout his ministry on Earth,
John finally had the opportunity to meet him face-to-face
after all these years.
The robe and girdle may evoke images
of a high priest from the Bible and they may also imply
that Jesus is the high priest of his people.
The only other occurrence of girdles
in Revelation is 15:6, also golden,
where it is priestly imagery for angels
in the heavenly temple.
Thus, Jesus appears not only as king, but as priest,
a combination of images that grew familiar
to Jewish people in the Maccabean period.
John then continues.
Revelation 1:14-15, New American Standard Bible.
"His head and His hair were white like white wool,
like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire.
His feet were like burnished bronze
when it has been heated to a glow in a furnace,
and His voice was like the sound of many waters."
Number two, the creation of angels.
The creation of the sons of God.
Genesis 6:1-4
and the book of Job captivate many Bible readers
because of the mysterious identity
of both the Son of God and the Nephilim.
In this Bible story from the Book of Job,
there is a wealthy man named Job residing
in an area called Uz with his extended family
and vast flocks.
He is blameless and upright,
always striving to live a moral life.
He had a very disciplined relationship with God.
Job loses all that he has.
The suffering shows too much for Job
and he turns bitter, anxious and scared.
Job wants to face God and protest.
Eventually, God steps in.
36 times Job asked God to speak with him.
He has now received his wish.
Job 38:4-7, New American Standard Bible.
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding,
who set its measurements since you know.
Or who stretched the measuring line over it?
On what were its bases sunk?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
The purpose of this question is clear, Job was not present
when God created the foundations of the Earth.
God possessed immense power, wisdom
and might that far surpassed Job's capabilities.
Therefore, Job cannot be compared to God in any way.
A Bible commentator noted, "Job was simply overwhelmed
with mysteries and paradoxes for which he had no answers
but in the midst of it all,
he came to understand what was too good to be told,
that God knows what he's doing in the universe."
These questions also served the purpose of reminding Job
that there were many things that he did not know.
This statement also reminds us
that God indeed did lay the foundations of the Earth.
He is the creator of heaven and Earth,
just as the Genesis record states.
Genesis 1.
We read, "When the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy."
It is revealed that angelic beings,
referred to as morning stars and sons of God,
witnessed the creation of the Earth
and celebrated the glory, power
and wisdom of God involved in the process.
After creation, there were reports of intermarriage
between the sons of God and daughters of men,
which was considered ungodly
during a time of fast population growth,
primarily because of long lifespans in the pre-flood world.
The Bible says, "And they took wives for themselves
of all whom they chose."
But who were the sons of God?
Both pre-Christian Judaism and the early church held
that the sons of God were spirits beings
or angels that took human wives
and gave birth to giants known as the Nephilim.
The three main perspectives
on the identity of God's sons are as follows.
Number one, they were fallen angels.
Second, they were powerful human rulers.
Or third, they were godly descendants of Seth,
intermarrying with wicked descendants of Cain.
The traditional belief is that the sons of God
were supernatural beings who had children
with human women, resulting in the Nephilim.
Here are the reasons supporting this view.
The fact that the phrase sons of God always refers
to angels in the Old Testament lends support.
Job 1:6, Amplified Bible.
"Now there was a day when the sons of God, angels,
came to present themselves before the Lord,
and Satan, adversary, accuser, also came among them."
Job 2:1.
"Again, there was a day when the sons of God, angels,
came to present themselves
before the Lord and Satan, adversary, accuser,
also came among them to present himself before the Lord."
Job 38:7.
"When the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God, angels, shouted for joy."
In all three cases, the sons of God
are spirit/angelic beings, including Satan.
The phrases used in Job suggests
that Genesis 6 is referring to spirits or angels.
Genesis 6:1-2 contrasts the sons of God with man,
implying that these are non-human beings.
Genesis 6:1 says that man began to multiply
and daughters were born to them.
The Hebrew word for man is the generic term
for mankind as used in Genesis 5:1-1.
The sons of God are contrasted with man.
Thus, the sons of God were distinct from man
and married all mankind's daughters.
As a result, the sons of God
must be non-human beings of some kind.
The context implies that the Nephilim
were the resulting offspring of spirit beings and humans.
The nephilim or fallen ones
in Genesis 6:4 are mysterious personalities.
The mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
The text does not explain how the Nephilim arrived.
"The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days
and also afterwards when the sons of God
came into the daughters of man and bore children to them,"
it simply states, but why are the Nephilim mentioned
in Genesis 6, alongside the intermarriage
of the sons of God and the daughters of man?
It is unclear how these mighty men of renown came about
if they were not the outcome of intermarriage
between spirit beings and humans.
Jude likely understands Genesis 6:1-4
to refer to the intermarriage
between spirit beings and humans.
Jude 6 tells us of angels who did not stay
within their position of authority
but left their proper dwelling.
Unless Jude is referring to an unknown event,
he appears to be referring
to the angels who left heaven to live on Earth
in Genesis 6:1-4.
These arguments support the traditional view
that the sons of God mated
with human women and gave birth to the Nephilim.
Though this may appear strange to modern ears,
the same could be said of the entire Bible.
Truth is stranger than fiction
and the world God has created is far
from what we commonly believe.
The sons of God saw the daughters of men.
It is more accurate to see the sons of God
as either demons, angels in rebellion against God,
or uniquely demon-possessed men
and the daughters of men as human women.
Jude 6, "And the angels
who did not keep their own designated place of power
but abandoned their proper dwelling place.
These he has kept in eternal chains under the thick gloom
of utter darkness for the judgment of the great day."
Jude 6 also explains what God did with these evil angels.
1 Peter 3:19-20 informs us Jesus proclaimed his victory
on the cross over them.
1 Peter 3:19-20, Amplified Bible.
"In which He also went and preached
to the spirits now in prison,
who once were disobedient, when the great patience of God
was waiting in the days of Noah,
during the building of the ark, in which a few,
that is, eight persons, Noah's family,
were brought safely through the water."
The fallen angels did not keep their beginning,
which means they did not follow the path
that they were created on.
The angels were created to be in heaven with God,
praising him and doing his bidding.
They, like humans, were created to glorify him
but humans were created to live on Earth, not angels.
Nonetheless, these angels left their beginning
or their starting point in heaven.
They chose to reject God's plan
for their lives by exercising their free will.
According to the Bible,
these angels are fallen angels because they left heaven.
What might happen to these angels?
According to the Bible,
2 Peter 2:4, New American Standard Bible,
"For if God did not spare angels when they sinned,
but cast them into hell and committed them
to pits of darkness, held for judgment."
The leader of these angels is Satan who transforms himself
into an angel of light.
The Devil plotted against God, his maker,
and he and the angels who followed him lost the battle.