This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from Chapter 4: Written from the Foundation of the World.

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Before closing this three-part study on the phrase, “written from the foundation of the world,” we still need to understand two prepositions: “from” and “before.” One or the other appears in each of the ten Scripture references to “the foundation of the world.” And the placement of the prepositions is key. (Read Part 1 and Part 2.)

From and before

As we’ve seen, the word “foundation” (katabole) appears ten times in the New Testament in the phrase, “the foundation of the world.” When the preposition “from” (apo) appears before “foundation,” it normally signifies something that occurs across time, and thus unfolds throughout human history. And when the preposition “before” (pro) precedes “foundation,” it depicts something that occurs before the creation of the world.

For example, Jesus speaks of truths hidden from the foundation of the world – that is, since the beginning of human history – but now revealed through his parables (Matt. 13:35). He tells the religious leaders of his generation they are to be held responsible for the blood of the prophets shed from the foundation of the world – that is, since the time the first prophets appeared (Luke 11:50).

And, in teaching about a future judgment day, Jesus tells the sheep at his right hand he has prepared a kingdom for them from the foundation of the world, a kingdom in which the intersection of heaven and earth, which sin destroyed, is restored, and from which the wicked are banished forever (Matt. 25:34; cf. vv. 41, 46).

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This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from Chapter 4: Written from the Foundation of the World.

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In the previous post, we explored the meaning of the Greek word translated “foundation.” Now, as we continue to discover when the book of life was written, we examine one of several Greek words rendered “world.”

Kosmos

Four different Greek words are translated “world” in the New Testament, but Jesus and the New Testament writers only use one word, kosmos, when employing the phrase, “the foundation of the world.”

Kosmos means “that which is ordered or arranged.” It’s where we get the English term “cosmetics.” It’s related to a verb that means “to set in order,” or “to adorn, decorate.” As William Mounce explains, “In classical Greek and the LXX [Septuagint, or the Greek translation of the Old Testament], kosmos communicated the idea of order and adornment, and from this it developed into the basic term for the cosmos or the universe.”

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This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from Chapter 4: Written from the Foundation of the World.

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Two key statements in the book of Revelation tell us the book of life was written “from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8; 17:8). What does that mean? Is John saying the  book of life was written before the creation of the cosmos, or perhaps as part of God’s ex nihilo work of calling everything into existence? Was it written some time after creation, perhaps associated with the Fall? Or is there another explanation?

In this post, and posts to follow, we begin to address this thorny question by exploring the words “foundation” and “world,” and distinguishing between the use of “before” and “from” in relation to the biblical phrase, “the foundation of the world.” Later, we unpack Revelation 13:8 and 17:8. Then, we consider God’s saving work in eternity past – that is, outside of time – through foreknowledge, election, and predestination, for these terms relate to the book of life. 

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