The Bible makes it very clear that God knows the future, in fact God Himself offers His foreknowledge of the future as one of the proofs of His divine nature, “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done” (Isaiah 46:10).  God even challenged others to predict the future (44:7).   God does provide in the Scriptures a clear demonstration of His foreknowledge.  In the book of Daniel, He predicts the succession of world empires that would follow Babylon over the next five centuries (Daniel 2:31-44).  God called Josiah by name three centuries before He was born and described how he would wage a campaign against idolatry (1 Kings 13:2).  In like manner, God called Cyrus by name and stated one hundred fifty years beforehand that he would serve God’s purpose in allowing the Jews to return to their land and rebuild the temple (Isaiah 44:28-45:1).  Added to this, God also predicted centuries in advance many details concerning the life of Christ (Isaiah 7:14; Micah 5:2; 1 Peter 1:20).  God’s knowledge of the future can also be incredibly precise, for example Jesus knew that Peter would deny him exactly three times (Matthew 26:34 “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times”).   

 

Knowledge and Free Will

 

Sadly some feel that God’s ability to know the future and thus the future actions of men and women somehow means that man is truly not free to make his own choices.  Calvin argued, “By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which He determined with Himself whatever He wished to happen with regard to every man.  All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or death” (John Calvin, Institutes p. 206).  “The internal affections of men are no less ruled by the hand of God than their external actions are preceded by His eternal decrees; and moreover…God performs not by the hands of men the things which He has decreed, without first working in their hearts the very will which precedes the acts they are to perform” (John Calvin, “A Defense of the Secret Providence of God”, Calvin’s Calvinism, translated by Henry Cole, p. 247).  Concerning Adam’s transgression, Calvin wrote, “God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at His own pleasure arranged it” (Institutes, III, xxiii. 7 (Volume 2, p. 232).  In contrast to such views, the Bible asserts both God’s foreknowledge and man’s free will (John 3:16; Jeremiah 18:7-10; Deuteronomy 30:15-19).   “The foreknowledge of the future is not itself causative. Free actions do not take place because they are foreseen, but they are foreseen because they will take place” (Lectures in Systematic Theology, Henry C. Thiessen, pp. 81-82).  “A traffic reporter in a helicopter may foresee two automobiles that will crash because they are on a collision course, but his foreknowledge does not cause the accident” (The Godhead, 1998 Power Lectures, p. 171). 

 

Galatians 1:15

 

“God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb”.  From Paul’s conception, God knew that He would select this man to be an apostle to the Gentiles, yet such foreknowledge did not override Paul’s freewill.  Paul noted that when God called him, “I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19).  We find similar selections from birth in the case of John the Baptist  (Luke 1:15); and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5).  Lest someone argue that Paul was given an easy chance to become a Christian, that is how could Paul resist Christ, after Jesus appeared to him. How quickly such people forget the rest of the Bible.  Must we bring up the names of Cain, Pharaoh, Balaam, and the Pharisees (who personally beheld the miracles of Christ), to realize that many people before Paul had personal encounters with God and yet still refused to repent!   Added to these facts, becoming a Christian, after being the most visible and vocal opponent of Christians, demanded courage and tremendous personal price.  It cost him prestige, fame, fortune, respect, social and business relations, and his personal safety.

 

Acts 2:23

 

“This Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death”

 

The plan to have Jesus die for the sins of the world, goes back even beyond the Creation (Eph. 3:10-11; 1 Peter 1:20). Peter makes it clear that the crucifixion of Jesus was no accident, neither was it an act of desperation on the part of God, a last minute idea or a change from the original plan. This verse also links together divine foreknowledge and human choice.  No one forced the Jewish leaders to deliver Jesus up to be crucified, it was their own authentic and real choice.  Here we learn that God is even able to use misdirected free will or selfish choices on the part of men to achieve His purposes.  He used Assyria to punish Judah, even though the Assyrians had no interest in serving the purposes of God (Isaiah 10:7).  He used the stubbornness of Pharaoh to glorify Himself and punish Egypt, even though Pharaoh had no interest in seeing that the God of the Jews was honored (Exodus 9:16).  Yet, in all of this the choices that Pharaoh, the Assyrians and the Jews made were there own genuine choices (Exodus 8:15; Isaiah 10:7 “Yet it does not so intend, nor does it plan so in its heart”). 

 

 

Does God choose not to know?

 

T.W. Brents argues that, while no man has the right  to limit any of the attributes of God, He can limit Himself.  Thus, he avers, although God had the power to foreknow all things, He has limited His own knowledge.  ‘He saw fit to avoid a knowledge of every thing incompatible with the freedom of the human will’” (Lectures pp. 173-174).  Passages that are used to support this view are Genesis 18:20-21 “I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry”; 22:12 “For now I know that you fear God”).  Yet we need to be careful here, for God also might be speaking accomodatively, because in the first verse, we know that God is omnipresent, and thus the Lord Himself does not “go” anywhere, but is always everywhere all the time.  God certainly does have the ability and power to limit His knowledge, but I believe a better alternative exists than simply saying that God chose not to know.

 

God knows all the contingencies

 

“He knows the outworkings of the free acts of His creatures.  He not only foreknows how certain events will lead to other events in the total complexity of reality, but He directly knows how the complex motives of multitudes of men will work themselves out in multitudes of personal acts”(Zond. Ency. p. 532).   Added to this, Scriptures infer that God also knows all the possibilities or all the options, and all the options that could be exercised without violating His justice or sidetracking His will.  For example, God will allow Abraham to appeal for the sparing of Sodom and Gomorrah, and God is willing to spare the city on behalf of ten righteous people (Genesis 18:32).  Yet at the point of ten the conversation ends, indicating that there are no more options after this level but the destruction of these cities.  We see the same flexibility in Exodus 32:10 “Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation”.  In response, Moses will appeal to God and ask for mercy upon the nation (32:11-14).  God will change His mind as a result of Moses’ intercession, indicating that in this situation more than one option existed.  As noted in a previous lesson, God even knows what people would have done if they were given the opportunity (1 Samuel 23:11).

 

The Certain and Uncertain

 

People tend to forget that there are things that God has purposefully planned such as the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the church that were certain (Acts 2:23; Ephesians 3:10-11).  On the other hand, there are things in the future that remain flexible.  Note the above examples:  On certain conditions, Sodom could have been spared, and another option existed concerning the future of the nation of Israel during the lifetime of Moses.  In like manner, God decreed against the city of Nineveh, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4).  The city repented, and the city was not overthrown, indicating that in certain areas, the future remains open.  Through Jeremiah, God made it clear that the destinies of nations are not written in stone, nations can come to a premature end, or they can survive longer than expected, and the free willed actions of men tip the scale in one direction or the other:  “At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it. Or at another moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it; if it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good with which I had promised to bless it” (Jeremiah 18:7-10).  The same principle applies to the salvation or condemnation of individuals (2 Peter 3:9; Ezekiel 18:21-24).  Thus the eternal reward or condemnation of any living individual is not so fixed that they cannot alter it by their own free willed choices (2 Timothy 2:11-13).

 

Applications

 

·        This is one reason why God commands us to pray (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  There are things that cannot be altered, for example, one cannot change the fact that salvation is in Jesus Christ (John 14:6; Acts 4:12), that one must be baptized to be saved (Mark 16:16); or that one will eventually die (Hebrew 9:27).  Howbeit, there are things that are flexible.  God told Hezekiah to get his house in order for he was going to die, Hezekiah prayed and God granted him fifteen additional years of life (Isaiah 38:1-5).  This is one reason why I noted previously that on a number of things, God allows men to tip the scales in one direction or another.

 

·        The examples of Hezekiah and especially Moses make we wonder how many opportunities have I missed?  Do we stand paralyzed in the face of some situation or do we pray and realize that other options may exist?  Secondly, have we lived up to what our future could be?  God has the ability to see all the various possibilities for our lives, including finances, the level of happiness in our marriages, our spiritual growth, how many people we influenced with the gospel, our level of learning and experience and so on.  It is easy to look at your present life and say, “Well, this was meant to be”, without realizing that such a resignation to “fate” is erroneous.  If we have a definite say in our salvation, then obviously we have a definite say in our own level of happiness, growth, and maturity (Hebrews 5:12 “For though by this time you ought  to be teachers”).  Notice the expression, “ought to be”.  They had not lived up to what they were truly capable of.  They had not been destined to become weak Christians, rather they had willingly missed the opportunities to become strong and knowledgeable Christians.

 

·        Thus before you pass up a great opportunity for spiritual growth, ask yourself, “How will this affect my future?”  “What will this deprive me of in the long run?”  How we live today is very important, because every moment we are constructing our future here and the one we have in eternity!