Volume 4, Issue 3
_This column is based on questions and answers excerpted from
"The Bible Answer Man," CRI's live call-in radio broadcast. In this
issue of the Newsletter, Rob Bowman addresses the question: Does
God know everything, including the things that human beings will
choose to do in the future?_
It isn't too surprising to hear non-Christians, liberals, and
cultists deny that God knows all things. What _is_ surprising is
that a growing number of theologians who profess to be evangelicals
also deny it.
The Bible repeatedly affirms that God knows all things. His
knowledge is "perfect" (Job 37:16) and "beyond measure" (Ps.
147:5). He sees every move we make, knows the innermost thoughts of
our hearts, and knows what we are going to say before we say it (1
Sam. 16:7; 1 Chron. 28:9; Ps. 139:1-6; Jer. 17:10; Heb. 4:12-13).
Jesus tells us that our heavenly Father even knows how many hairs
are on our heads (Matt. 10:29-30). Unlike the false gods of the
world, the Lord knows _everything_ that will happen in the future
(Isa. 41:21-24; 42:9; 44:7). God revealed to Isaiah, for example,
the name of Cyrus -- the king who returned the Jews to their land
after their exile in Babylon -- more than a century before Cyrus
was even born (Isa. 44:28--45:1). God even knows what people would
have done if their circumstances had been different (Matt. 11:21).
Despite this evidence, some people deny that the Bible teaches
that God is all-knowing. They point out, for example, that Genesis
reports God coming to look for Adam in the Garden of Eden after
Adam and Eve had sinned (Gen. 3:9-13). Later, the Book of Genesis
reports God as saying that He would go down to Sodom and Gomorrah
to find out how bad their sin was (Gen. 18:20-21).
These passages, however, do not actually say that God did _not_
know everything. Nor are these passages difficult to understand.
Parents often ask their children where they are or what they have
done, _even though they already know,_ in order to get the children
to face up to their wrongdoing. God does the same thing with us....
Source File: crn0040a.txt
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