Is the Future Set in Stone?: A Biblical study of God’s relation to time and knowledge of the future

by Troy Edwards

To the wicked he says, I know you not; that is, he does not approve of them. Christ says, I know my sheep and am known of mine; that is, I approve of them, and they approve of me; for in any other sense of the word, he knows other sheep as well as his own. Therefore, when know and foreknow, in these places, are made to signify simple prescience, the sense is perverted.4 John Goodwin agrees with both Copinger and Scott. He writes: It is not to be denied, but that the Scriptures do attribute προγινώσκω, or foreknowledge unto God in several places, as Acts ii. 23; Rom. viii. 29; xi. 2; 1 Pet. i. 2, &c. Though evident it is that in some, if not in all of these places, the word rather imports a preapprobation than a simple prescience or foreknowledge, according to the known signification of the simple word γινώσκω, which, though properly it signifieth knowledge, yet in Scripture language, according to that idiom of speech, wherein the consequent is put for the antecedent, not unusual in the Scriptures, frequently imports approbation, as Matt. vii. 23; Rom. xi. 2; 2 Tim. ii. 19.5