The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum God's Foreknowledge

A post by Pilgrim made me think about the foreknowledge of God.<br><br>When you stop and thimk about how, even for babies who die, God ordains and thus knows the events that happen in people's lives, it really contrasts how much God knows compared to how little we know. Here's a thought: We know God has no "Plan B" that He has to rely on, as if we could mess God's plan up. But do you think God knows what would happen in our lives, say, if God had led us to take a different career or if we had lived somewhere else?<br><br>And here's another thought: When God created the universe, when He created the trees and the iron ore, and the rosebushes, He must have known about how these would be used to create the cross, to make the nails, and to make the crown of thorns, right? And He must have known about the Fall, and all the falxse religions and idols, and all the people who would curse His Name.<br><br>I think it is interesting that Jesus spent His early years in a carpenter's shop. That is truly amazing! He is the Master Carpenter. After all, He is the Creator of the universe! And He is the Author and Builder of our faith! I wonder if He ever felt the rough wood and thought about the splintery cross rubbing his flesh. I wonder if He ever winced in pain if He stepped on a nail and then remembered the future pain He would bear.<br><br>Here's a thought: Do you think God knew that I would be posting this message while eating a sandwich and drinking a soft drink...Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things, but I wonder how many details of our life God foreknew and foreordained.

Greetings SBC,<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Here's a thought: Do you think God knew that I would be posting this message while eating a sandwich and drinking a soft drink...Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things, but I wonder how many details of our life God foreknew and foreordained. </font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>I would say if He has numbered the hairs on your head, when a sparrow falls to the ground, and was pleased to own the cattle on a thousand hills, then yes, He is even invested in the minute details of your life. [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin[/img]<br><br>In short, nothing comes to pass apart from the determinate purpose of God. Hope that helps.<br><br>Sincerely in Christ,<br><br>~Jason

Something that has always bothered me inside about God's choosing all events is that it seems to make me a robot. I know that is not so, but it is something my mind plays with. Any thoughts on that?

Amen! And, after all, God knows what we are going to ask for even before we ask for it! Also, I thought about it a moment and realized that some of the small things in our life that we don't see as very significant may be very significant.<br><br>For instance, at the house I used to live in, by bedroom light fixture hung over my bed and over a cedar chest where I would do jigsaw puzzles. Well, I decided to take a "break" from doing my puzzle (like you can take a break from something fun [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/groovin.gif" alt="groovin" title="groovin[/img]). I went downstairs and grabbed a magazine and had just settled in the recliner to read it when I hear a huge *THUNK* from upstairs. Turns out the light fizture cover of my lamp had fallen off...onto my cedar chest! Had I been up there...I don't even want to think about how bad it would have hurt and what damage it could have done!<br>

sb_and_reformed,<br><br>You wrote:<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]When you stop and thimk about how, even for babies who die, <span style="background-color:yellow;">God knows and ordains</span> the events that happen in people's lives,</font><hr></blockquote><p>Without addressing why you wrote this statement in the order in which it appears, perhaps all of your questions can be answered if I would simply rearrange what you wrote in their proper theological/biblical order? <br><br>Thus it should read thusly: [color:blue]When you stop and think about how, even for babies who die, God <span style="background-color:yellow;">ordains and knows</span> the events that happen in people's lives,</font color=blue>. The point is that "foreknowledge" is the consequence of God's foreordination. He knows because He has foreordained all things. In one infinitesimal moment in God's intuition, He planned every minuscule detail and event that would ever occur. His "knowledge" (foreknowledge) of everything is therefore infinite, infallible and immovable.<br><br>So, taking one of your several questions:<blockquote>But do you think God knows what would happen in our lives, say, if God had led us to take a different career or if we had lived somewhere else?</blockquote>we can and must say that God would certainly know what would happen in this situation because it would never happen if He hadn't decreed exactly every detail.<br><br>Does this help? [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin[/img]<br><br>In His Grace,

Didn't know you were going to be that picky [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/yikes.gif" alt="yikes" title="yikes[/img] but you are right. I agree with you, and I can see how you might get the wrong impression from how I wrote that. I too believe that God knows everything that happenes because it is Him who is ordaining it to happen.

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Didn't know you were going to be that picky</font><hr></blockquote><p> [color:red]Picky</font color=red> or [color:blue]Proper</font color=blue>? <br><br>We have allot of Arminians dropping in, by their own "free will" [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif" alt="laugh" title="laugh[/img] (free-agency maybe a better term), who would contend and state the order you had in your post--[color:red]God knows and ordains</font color=red>. They, unlike you, would refuse to change the order (i.e. [color:blue]God ordains and knows</font color=blue>), being like Boethius. I am sure you remember that he attempted to reconcile God's sovereignty and foreknowledge and man's free-will by saying that "time" (past, present, and future) where "always present" before God and thus God's sovereignty is that He merely foresees what will happen, past, present, and future, as in the present, but He does not sovereignly foreordain anything. Thus, he was not being picky, but setting the terms in their proper order to keep any confusion from resulting.....<br><br>Hope this helps.

Sometimes I tend to get to philosophical and don't really reject nonsense that isn't biblical. On one such night I was writing a PM to Pilgrim and had one of those close and personal experiences with God's soveriegnty. I'm not sure if this works and I didn't send the PM to Pilgrim because it seemed superfulous but still it is crazy that my friend's email came right as I was questioning God's means of working out His sovereignty. I was leading my point with a point about my relation to the church. <br>Dear Pilgrim,<br>I know when you read this that your nose is going to wrinkle and your eyes are going to squint. And I think that you are going to accuse me of making an argument that is nothing more than ornate golden bowl to fill it with excrement (to filtch from Luther). A friend of mine once accused me of turning God into this machine that churns out glory. I must admit that I was a pretentious but somewhat unoriginally creative existentialist non-believer. And every now and then I go through this Eccessiastical crises (the original treatis against existential thought). But here's how I see it at times. The Christian walk is a series of trials and struggles that we can not survive in our own strength. So God puts us through these sturggles to purify us. We survive one of these trials and before we can breath a sigh of relief once again we go under again. God does this to prove to us that we can not do anything a apart from Him. And over the course of a lifetime of struggle we learn that He is everything. But we can not stop struggling because to do so is to fear the loss of God's benevelant sanctification. <br>We have the promise that he will complete this work and I duly thank Him. But why is it that I have this intellectual wall around me seperating me from other Christians who are going through the same process. I was not raised in a Christian home. I can not got to my earthly Father for spiritual advice. Every now and then a unique homegrowner will come my way. But they can only go so far before I become frustrated at the difference between me and them and alienate them. I haven't met a single Christian that was brought out of the world that really interests me that is a contemporary. I trully feel grafted into a strange and somewhat unreachable body. <br>So back to my argument. How is Christian fatalism a bad thing? While the universe is mathmatically procise and the inherently dynamic because God is running the show in an intimate and realistic way. Which is unfathomable because reality is only a plane that we are allowed to comprehend. But here's the rub. I just got an email that I had sent to a sister to encourage her that I had forgetten about. In the email I said that God was passionately in love with her. She then wrote the same to me. So God worked on this level of reality to encourage an encourager. It's so crazy Jeff. My whole argument about being somehow distantly a part of the Christian body becomes moot because this sister who is not intellectually as dizzying as me just reduced me to my state without God. There is no difference between me and her because God is not an elitist in the sense that his salvation is some special club where only the right kind of people are allowed in. Talk about making wise simple. I'm an idiot I guess. But praise God because if I wasn't I'd be going to hell. And more importantly God has shown that He truly is mathmatically procise and inherently dynamic in working things out according to His will and council. Anyway, I think that He worked this all out I hope this encouraging to you becuase I am out of the funk that I was in. I'll file tonight under Romans 8:28-39 and go to bed.<br>

Aaron,

No nose wrinkling or eye squinting here! [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin[/img] All who are God's children are confronted with such thoughts and usually arrive at the same conclusion in God's good time.

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[color:"blue"]So God puts us through these sturggles to purify us. We survive one of these trials and before we can breath a sigh of relief once again we go under again. God does this to prove to us that we can not do anything a apart from Him.

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[img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/yep.gif" alt="yep" title="yep[/img] There is a two-fold purpose in our trials:

[*]We are being, as you say purified. Or, as Paul wrote "that we might be holy and without blemish before Him." (Eph 1:4) And again, "For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son . . ." (Rom 8:29). But impetuous Peter, who probably was more experimentally knowledgeable of this great transformation wrote: "seeing that his divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that called us by his own glory and virtue; whereby he hath granted unto us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in that world by lust." (2 Peter 1:3-4). It's hard to imagine most of the time, at least it is for me, that "I" am being transformed into the image of Christ and will be presented holy before God at that great and awesome day.[*]This second great truth is that we, experientially, are being prepared for heaven where we shall ever be with the Lord. In our present state we are certainly unfit for the grandeur that awaits those who have this hope. We are yet sinners! simul iustus et peccator. The "old man" that yet has a glimmer of life within us is forever trying to make us rely upon ourselves; to exert that fictitious autonomy, which our father Adam fell victim to. The world's adage, "God helps those who help themselves", although having a ring of truth to it, is nothing less than the Devil's lie. For the Spirit of God is always working in and through us and even bringing forth unutterable prayers within our souls during those most perplexing and unbearable trials. Our Lord Christ is not only our justification but marvelously and mysteriously our sanctification (1Cor 1:30). As we are given this deep knowledge of God working in us we are humbled to the dust and cry out as did Mephibosheth, " What is thy
servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?" (2 Sam 9:8) And with Peter, when we are given to behold the sovereignty of our God, we shamefully utter, "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." (Lk 5:8).[/LIST]Thus, dear brother, this all part of that "growing in grace" and being made fit and holy so that we may dwell with Him Who bought us with his own blood.

Colossians 1:9-10 (ASV) For this cause we also, since the day we heard [it], do not cease to pray and make request for you, that ye may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;

In His Marvelous Grace,

I had something happen today that made me realize the sovereignty and foreknowledge of God. I was going out of my house to go to class and I closed the door and realized that I had locked my keys in the house. I went around and tried to get the screen off my bedroom window and that didn't work. I called my dad who, through a chain of phonecalls got ahold of my grandpa who came by and helped me get my screen out so I could get my keys. I arrived at school 15 minutes late, and had barely enough gas to get there. I took my test and did other things and got home and heard on the TV that a tornado touched down near Oakland City. Had I left school a few minutes later, I'd have seen that happen and coulda been hurt or something. That is the extreme of it all. I was prolly nowhere near where the tornado supposedly touched. But I was at home and thinking to myself. Had I not locked my keys in the house, I woulda stayed at school longer and coulda been driving in the weather. And this made me realize that despite God ordaining all events, I am not a robot because God is above and beyond me.<br><br><blockquote>[color:blue] "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.</font color=blue> (Isaiah 55:8-9 NASB)</blockquote><br><br>I share this to say that God revealed Himself to me today just like He planned to and I can't do anything apart from praise Him for it!<br><br><blockquote>[color:blue]Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.</font color=blue> (1 Corinthians 10:31 NASB)</blockquote><br><br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Here's a thought: Do you think God knew that I would be posting this message while eating a sandwich and drinking a soft drink..</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>Marie,<br><br>How could He not? [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/wink.gif" alt="wink" title="wink[/img]<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things, but I wonder how many details of our life God foreknew and foreordained.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>To ordain one thing requires that all things be ordained. Moreover, if God does not know all things, He could not know any-thing. We as finite creatures can know some things only because God knows all things, otherwise we would have to know all things to know any-thing. Boggles the mind, don't it? [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/dizzy.gif" alt="dizzy" title="dizzy[/img]<br><br>In Him,<br><br>Ron