This question continues to intrigue people. Do you know the answer?
WE ARE used to living in a limited world. Everything around us has limitations — beginnings and endings. We are aware of infants being born. We are aware of grandparents dying. We observe animals, plants and insects beginning life. We see their lives come to an end. We speak of the birth and the death of civilizations, of storms, volcanoes and comets. We are accustomed to seeing things get old. Clothing and furniture wear out. Automobiles fall apart. Buildings deteriorate. Our bodies become wrinkled and slow. To mortal man everything has a beginning, a period of usefulness and an end. We mark this progression of events on our clocks and calendars. To us, only what is measurable by hours, days and years seems to have real significance. So when we hear that God is eternal, that He always has been and always will be, our minds balk. The words tend to be meaningless because we have nothing familiar to relate them to. And that is just the problem: we are trying to relate what cannot be related in physical terms. We are trying to apply the limitations of the physical existence we know to the unlimited spiritual plane on which God lives. The two cannot be compared. Our minds can encompass an hour, a century, a millennium, but they cannot grasp eternity. They are not big enough to fully comprehend spiritual existence. We can't even fully comprehend the physical universe! As an illustration, let's consider for a moment what God has created. Astronomers estimate that 100,000,000,000 galaxies each with 100,000,000,000 stars dot the universe. And who knows how many planets and moons? God says He counts and names them all (Psalm 147:4). Now if we allow God one full second by our reckoning of time to count and name each star in the heavens, do you know how long it would take Him to name them all? Working nonstop, by our clocks and calendars, it would take more than 300,000,000,000,000 years just to count and name them. How long must it have taken Him to design and create all those stars? To us these figures are inconceivable. But not to God. God is eternal. One of His names in Hebrew is Yahweh — the "Everliving One." The Creator is not bound by the laws of space and time as we are. While men are able to theorize about time warps and the relation of energy to the speed of light, God masters it all. To Him, according to His wishes, "one day... is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (II Peter 3:8). God "inhabits eternity" (Isaiah 57:15). That is to say He comfortably dwells in what we might think of as beginningless and endless time. Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1 show that at whatever point in the past we wish to consider as the beginning — no matter how far back we try to stretch our finite minds — God already existed. "In the beginning God...." Where did God come from? He didn't "come from" anywhere. He was always there! Far more important than the past is eternity into the future and how you can have a part in it. The Everliving God wants to change you from the temporary, limited, physical being that you are to an immortal, immensely powerful, spiritual being — a member of His very Family, no more bound by the physics of time and space. By receiving God's Holy Spirit you can have the possibility of living forever. Notice how the apostle Paul explained the vast difference between those who have God's eternal Spirit and those who do not. "Though our outer nature [the physical] is wasting away [getting older, deteriorating], our inner nature [the spiritual nature in those having the Holy Spirit] is being renewed every day." Paul continues, speaking of the trials of his life: "For this slight momentary [not lasting] affliction is preparing for us an eternal [everlasting] weight of glory beyond all comparison [the temporary and eternal cannot be compared!], because we look not to the things that are seen [the physical universe and all we know about it] but to the things that are unseen [the eternal spiritual plane as revealed in the Scriptures]; for the things that are seen are transient [temporary, having a beginning and end], but the things that are unseen are eternal" (II Corinthians 4:17-18, Revised Standard Version). You can read about this incredible potential — the purpose for which you are alive — in our free booklet Why Were You Born? and the article "What Will You Be Like in the Resurrection?" You have never read anything like them!
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