September Newsletter

DOES GOD KNOW THE FUTURE?

In today’s spiritual landscape, we are starting to hear from communications through technology and perhaps even in some pulpits that God does not have a perfect and exacting knowledge of the future. That we can’t rely on this knowledge from Him. How do you respond to this when you hear it? And how do we respond to this crisis of thought in the Christian community today?

As for me, and I am sure for you as well, we have always heard, read, and been taught that of the omniscience of God. The Prophet Isaiah’s words teach that God knows” the end from the beginning” (46:10). God’s knowledge is complete, far reaching, current, past, now, and, as Hank Hanegraaff writes, “His Words are exhaustive, including even those things in the future.” (Job 37:16; Psalm 139:1-6; 147:5; Hebrews 4:12-13.

If what God teaches and if God’s amazing knowledge of the future is fallible, then even the divinity and deity of Jesus and all that he predicted in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24) where Jesus teaches from the Mount of Olives about the future, His return, and instructions on remaining watchful are in question. Hanegraaff points out that if God’s knowledge of the future is incomplete, “we would be foolish to trust Him to answer our prayers, thus negating the ‘confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, he hears us. And if we know that He hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of Him.’” (1 John 5: 14-15)

Some will say and suggest that God can’t know the future completely because His plans change as a result of what people do. No, God does not change…people change in relationship to God. You have heard the analogy before. Walk in a head wind, you are thrown off balance. Change your direction and make a U-Turn of sorts…now the wind is at your back. The wind didn’t change but, you changed in relation to the wind.

God blesses us all and His promises are complete, but He withholds blessing when we disobey and withholds judgment when we repent. (Ezekiel 18; Jeremiah 18: 7-10)

Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, “My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure.” Isaiah 46: 9-10 NKJV

In Christ,

Pastor Dan

Excerpts taken from Hank Hanegraaff, the Bible Answer Man.