The first word
"In the beginning God created heaven, and earth."
Genesis 1:1
In Hebrew, "in the beginning" is one word: בְּרֵאשִׁית, Bereshit. Six letters. The first word of the first book of the Bible.
Letters that are pictures
Hebrew letters didn't start as abstract shapes. Each one began as a little picture, and each picture carries a meaning. An ox head. A house. A hand.
So a Hebrew word can be read two ways: as a word, and as a row of pictures. Read Bereshit as pictures, letter by letter:
The sentence
Put the six pictures together, in order, and here's what they say:
"The Son of God destroyed by his own hand on a cross, with thorns on his head, as a gift to the covenant."
That is hidden inside the first word of the Bible. Written by Moses around 1400 BC, fourteen centuries before the cross.
The cross, and the tree
The last letter, Tav, was drawn as two crossed sticks. A cross.
Its picture also means a tree, because a cross was a tree: wood. That's exactly how the apostles described the crucifixion:
"The God of our fathers hath raised up Jesus, whom you put to death, hanging him upon a tree."
Acts 5:30
Paul says it too: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us (for it is written: Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree)" (Galatians 3:13).
The mark that saves
Tav also means a mark, a sign. And the Bible uses it exactly that way. In a vision, God sends an angel through Jerusalem before judgement falls:
"Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem: and mark Thau upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and mourn for all the abominations that are committed in the midst thereof."
Ezechiel (Ezekiel) 9:4
And the command to the destroyers: "but upon whomsoever you shall see Thau, kill him not" (Ezechiel 9:6).
The Tav, the cross, is the mark of those God saves. Six hundred years before the crucifixion.
Why this is a big deal
The Bible's very first word, the first thing ever written in Scripture, carries the cross inside it. The Son. God. Destroyed by his own hand. Thorns on his head. A gift. A cross.
The end of the story was written into its first word.