QUESTION: Where did God come from and what was He doing before He created the universe?

ANSWER: This question makes an assumption that is incorrect. Josh McDowell writes regarding this assumption:

This question assumes that everything, including God, is subject to the limitations of time and space, as people are; that there is nothing outside of time and space, an assumption that the scientific community has questioned and pretty much dismissed since Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

Einstein showed that time can actually be altered, slowed down, speeded up, when objects start to travel at extremely high speeds. This would suggest that the common concept that all things originate and operate within the context of fixed time and space, is not necessarily correct.

While not totally understandable, the facts do make it easier for many skeptics to accept the biblical teaching that God exists outside of time and space as we know them (Psalm 90:4; Colossians 1:17; 2 Peter 3:8). To accept that God exists outside the time and space framework as we know it basically makes any question meaningless about where He was or what He was doing before He created life on Earth.

This question might be a legitimate question if God is confined to time and space, but He's not. He is eternal: He always has existed, and He always will exist.

God also has not chosen to tell us in the Bible what happened before creation took place. Since nothing was created before then and only God existed, we could only know the truth about this subject if He revealed it to us in the Bible: His written Word to mankind. Without that needed information, we can not know what He was doing before He created the universe.

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Bibliography:

McDowell, Josh. Answers to tough questions skeptics ask about the Christian faith. Wheaton, Ill. Campus Crusade for Christ. 1980. (pp. 56-57)