ACT ONE: THE FELLOWSHIP BEFORE TIME

“God is love” (I John 4:8) and this means that He is a community of loving Persons. His very being, His existence is to love. For God, to be is to love. This means that God is constantly leaving Himself to give Himself to and to exist in Another. Each person of the Trinity exists in relationship toward Another. God is Father in relationship to the Son. The Son exists and lives only in and for the Father to whom He gives Himself entirely. Their mutual love expresses itself in a procession of Personified love, the Holy Spirit. To pray in the heart is to experience this immense circulation of love among the Persons within the divine family, drawing us into that same community of love.” George A. Maloney S.J,, Invaded by God: Mysticism and the Indwelling Trinity

“When we encounter God there is no individual to confront. For we encounter and are drawn into relationship, reciprocity, the dynamism of mutual love and self-giving going on within God. Utterly unlike the splendid isolation of the “Supreme Being” of conventional monotheism, the life of the Trinity known in Christian worship and prayer has within itself the fullness of what we experience in community, intimacy and sacrificial love!

“Prayer is already going on in God. In the love the All-embracing Father has for the Son, and in the love the Son has for the Father, in the issuing of the Spirit from the Father and the Spirit’s return in the love of the Son, there is everything we mean by prayer—intimacy, adoration, self-offering, love, desire, crucifyingly acute sympathy for a world torn by pain and joy. Our prayer is not making conversation with God. It is joining the conversation that is already going on in God. It is being invited to participate in the relationships of intimacy between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is an eternal dance already in full swing, and we are caught up in to it. Prayer is allowing ourselves to join the dance and experience the movements, the constant interplay of the Persons of the Trinity.” Martin L. Smith, The Word is Very Near You: A Guide to Praying with Scripture

“The Great Dance has been from all eternity and first and foremost in the Love that has always been going on between the Father and the Son. Lewis (C.S.) says, ‘What grows out of the joint life of he Father and the Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God.’ To enter into the Dance, then, is to enter the Holy Spirit and to enter the living, dynamic activity of Love that has always been between the Father and the Son.” Leanne Payne, Real Presence: The Glory of Christ with Us and Within Us

ACT ONE/INTRO

THE FELLOWSHIP BEFORE TIME

There is only one way to begin this journey and it is by first turning our attention to Paul’s glorious words of praise and proclamation in his opening remarks in his letter to the Ephesian ekklesia ( 1:3):

"Blessed be the God and father of our lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before him in love."

A.C. Gaebelein writes of this passage in Ephesians (“God’s Masterpiece"):

"...this is without doubt the greatest doxology in the entire Word of God” and “is the key to the great revelation which follows in this chapter…the bud which the Holy Spirit gradually unfolds.”

Everything in the Christian life flows out of this revelation given to Paul. In order to know, to appreciate, what the spiritual blessings are in the heavenly realms, we must step back before time, before the foundation of the world, a time so hidden from us by our mortal frame and yet from where we derive “all spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ…before the foundation of the world.”

This place before time in the joint life of the enthroned Father and the Son is the headwaters of the Christian life. In that place, the heavenly realm, before time, there was only One who was before the Father “holy and without blemish” and that was Christ, the Son of God.

In this place before time, there was a fellowship in the Godhead, between the Father and the Son. John writes of this fellowship in rhapsodic prose in his first epistle (1:1-4):

“We are writing to you about something which has always existed yet which we ourselves actually saw and heard: something which we had an opportunity to observe closely and even to hold in our hands, and yet, as we know now, was something of the very Word of life himself! For it was life which appeared before us: we saw it, we are eye-witnesses of it, and are now writing to you about it. It was the very life of all ages, the life that has always existed with the Father, which actually became visible in person to us mortal men.

"We repeat, we really saw and heard what we are now writing to you about. We want you to be with us in this—in this fellowship with the Father and Jesus Christ his Son. We must write and tell you about it, because the more that fellowship extends the greater the joy it brings to us who are already in it.”

The life the apostles saw was the life of the Father and the Son that always existed, before time, before the foundation of the world. This life became visible in the person of Jesus Christ, which always existed with the Father.

“We want you to be with us in this—in this fellowship with the father and Jesus Christ His Son (that always existed in the eternals). We must write and tell you about it, because the more that fellowship extends the greater the joy it brings to us who are already in it.”

“The more THAT fellowship extends the greater the joy it brings to us WHO ARE ALREADY IN IT.” It is the fellowship of the Father and the Son that Jesus came to bring us and to extend on this planet. John is not writing about a future heaven but of the fellowship with the Father and Jesus Christ His Son RIGHT NOW! to those of “us who are already in it.”

"I will continue to speak of Yourname Father, in order that Your love, which was poured out on Me, will be in them, and I will be in them."  John 17:26

ACT ONE
THE FELLOWSHIP BEFORE TIME

WHILE SOME STORIES BEGIN
“Once upon a time,”

NOT THIS STORY.

You must realize that this story,
THE STORY OF ALL STORIES,

Begins……………………….before time,

before ALL beginnings or endings or anything in be tween.

In Eternity Past,

Before Time existed…
or Space
or Matter

There was God and God was…

“ALL IN ALL!”

There were no heavens or firmament to contain HIM

for HE was EVERYTHING.

There were no...
Angels
Cherubs
Or Seraphim.

No Devils
Or Fallen Angels.

No Sun, Moon or Stars.
No Galaxies or Supernovas.
No Rainbows or Rainstorms.
No Mountains or Oceans.

No Men or Children of Men.
And certainly...there Were no holy "things.”

NO HOLY…
Temples
Churches.
Synagogues.
Cathedrals.
Kingdom Halls.
NO HOLY…
Steeples.
Stained Glass.
Sermons.
NO HOLY..
Clergy.
Bishops.
Archbishops.
Priests.
NO HOLY…
Choirs.
Masses.
Orders of Service.
Hierarchies.
Liturgies.
NO HOLY…
Sacraments.
Vestments.
Altars
Pulpits
T.V. Preachers

No-THING existed because God
Who is infinite personality…

This Triune community of
Father,
Son and
Spirit

Was…(And this bears repeating)

“ALL IN ALL!”

Yes, Beloved. There was ONLY GOD
and GOD was EVERYTHING!
And while nothing else existed,
The most staggering thing of all…
This God…Who was EVERYTHING…
And ALL that existed was…
and still is…
and always shall be…

L O V E!

You see…there was a communion, A fellowship of L O V E!
IN God and TOWARD God…
In the L O V E of the FATHER for the SON
and the Son for the Father
and this L O V E was the Height and Depth
The Breadth and Width
of ALL that God was
Who Was Everything!

GOD WAS “IN-LOVE” WITH GOD
And this L O V E was IN God and Could be found
Nowhere else.

At least…Not yet!

THIS CELESTIAL DANCE
EXISTED IN THE GODHEAD
BEFORE TIME!

The FATHER and the SON
delighted in each other’s company…in each other’s hearts…
and especially…in beholding each other’s faces.
And this rhapsody of L O V E was the

PASSION and PLEASURE Of God’s heart
Flowing like a torrential river.

And this rhapsody of L O V E had a name—
and its name was...

S P I R I T!

The Comforter
The Helper
The Spirit was the Outflow,
The Music of the Dance going on in the Godhead
Before Time.
Before the Foundation of the World.

The Outpouring of their L O V E!
Bursting forth as a fountain of
JOY UNSPEAKABLE
Out of the Throne of their Heart
One-toward-the-Other.

And it looked like…

C E L E S T I A L F I R E!

The Father delighted IN HIS Son.

He called HIS Son—

“THE BELOVED.”

The Son lived IN the bosom of the Father,
beholding HIS Father’s face.
The Son delighted IN the Father
and called HIS Father—

“ABBA.”

Behold! How They Loved Each Other!

Only The Father Sees And Knows The Son.
Only The Son Sees And Knows The Father. (Mat. 11:25-27).
Hear now the Son speak of
All that existed before Time,
When there was nothing but God
and God’s L O V E toward and in God was
ALL IN ALL:

“Father…You loved Me before the foundation of the world…yea, when You established the heavens, I was there…beside You, like a Master Workman, and I was daily Your delight, rejoicing before You always” (John 17:24, Proverbs 8:267, 30).

Hear now the Father speak of
All that existed before Time,
When there was nothing else but God
and God’s L O V E toward and in God was
ALL IN ALL:

“This is my Beloved Son in Whom my soul delights.
I loved HIM before the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 12:18-20).

And in their love for one another
And out of their love they conceived a plan...
A staggering plan
Beyond all comprehension…
To expand their fellowship
On a planet they would call
“earth.”

Glory, glory, glory, praise and adoration!
Hear the anthems swelling out thro' all eternity!
Father, Son, and Spirit--God in revelation--
  Prostrate each soul before the Deity!

Father, source of glory, naming every fam'ly;
And the Son upholding all by His almighty power;
Holy Spirit, filling the vast scene of glory--
  O glorious Fulness, let our hearts adore!

God supreme, we worship now in holy splendor,
Head of the vast scene of bliss, before Thy face
  we fall!
Majesty and greatness, glory, praise and power
  To Thee belong, eternal Source of all!