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

by Troy Edwards

In more recent times, Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser, based on Romans 11:2, says proginosko is in reference to relationship: “The idea of knowing a person in Hebraic thought (in which Paul was immersed) is that of coming into relationship with a person…. Therefore the idea of ‘foreknew’ is to come into a relationship with someone before some point in time.”6 A better understanding of proginosko fits within Scriptures overall understanding of God, in which we are told that God is love (1 John 4:8).

Since proginosko has been so tainted by man-made theology, founded primarily upon philosophical ideas about God rather than by divine revelation, it is best to allow the Bible to become its own dictionary and

define the meaning of foreknowledge for us. The best way to do that is to see how the word is used in relation to men. In Acts 26:4-5 we read: My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among mine own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews; Which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee. (Acts 26:4-5)

Here we see that proginosko is being used in reference to a future that can go one way or the other dependent upon the behavior of the people. Therefore, it is not set in stone. Hence, it would be impossible to define proginosko as foreordination or exhaustive knowledge of future events here.

In another place Paul writes, “But if any man love God, the same is known of him” (1 Cor. 8:3). And in yet another place Paul writes, “But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God” (Gal. 4:9a). The consistent idea in all of these passages is reciprocal love and intimacy rather than arbitrary predestination or detailed foreknowledge of free-will behavior.

In his expanded translation, Jonathan Mitchell defines the word “foreknow” in Romans 8:29 for us: “….because those whom He foreknew (whom He knows from previous intimate experience)” (Jonathan Mitchell New Testament).

through sanctification of the Spirit, unto

God continues in a reciprocal relationship with a remnant of believers who have decided that, despite how the rest of their countrymen behaved, they will never worship false gods and will continue to love and serve the true God.

“Of all the families on earth, only you have I intimately known. This is why I will punish you for all your crimes.” (Complete Jewish Bible)

This is the heir: come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours. (Luke 20:13-14) According to our Lord’s teachings, God was hoping for a different outcome when He sent His Son. Instead, they killed Him. This appears to contradict the ideas that some derive from Acts 2:23. Thankfully,

The New Century Version is one among several English translations that dare to translate “shâmêm” as “surprised:” He could not find anyone to help the people, and he was surprised that there was no one to help. So he used his own power to save the people; his own goodness gave him strength.

I realize that it is popular today to tell people who have fallen into sin that God is not disappointed with them, but that is not necessarily Biblical teaching. God never stops loving us no matter how far we fall into sin but that does not mean that we cannot “shock” or disappoint Him with our behavior.

R. W. Dale further explains what it means for God to be jealous: The pale, dead, epithets of metaphysical theologians who seem afraid to suggest that God is alive, their catalogues of Divine “attributes,” may be well enough when God is “afar off,” but when He is “nigh at hand” we want words of another sort. What, after all, lies at the root of this revelation of God as “a jealous God?” Jealousy is but the anger and pain of injured and insulted Love. When God resents the illegitimate transfer to material symbols of the devotion inspired by His own acts, it is not because His greatness suffers any diminution or because His authority is impaired.

It is His Love which is wounded. He cannot endure to lose any of the affection, trust, or reverence by which He has stirred our souls. It is the energy of His Love for us which makes Him long for all the poor treasure of our hearts.2 As Dale states, it is better to accept what God Himself says about His nature than what our intellectual ivory tower theologians tell us how such truths should be understood. While some would claim that God having described Himself as “jealous” or “having a passionate love” is merely language intended to condescend to the minds of finite men, we do not find any hint of this idea within the text itself. God reveals that this “jealous” or “passion” is a part of His very character. In

It is difficult to understand how a God who created man in His own image and likeness (Gen. 1:26-28) could endow him with passion and emotion if He does not possess any.

A God with passions and emotions is inconsistent with a God who resides in an “eternal now”.

While some semantics attempt to distinguish between “passion” and “compassion,” the word etymology shows us that one cannot be compassionate apart from having passion.

God’s desire is to show compassion. However, God sees the future as open rather than settled because He uses the word “if” in relation His actions. God does not experience the emotions commensurate

Notice the word “repent” used in this passage. Daniel Whedon explains: Repentance in God does not imply changeableness in the Divine nature…. But the Divine nature is emotional. Indignation and grief over the sins of men are passions as true and pure as love. The emotionality of anger, grief, or pity no more implies imperfection in God than does the emotionality of love. Can we for a moment think of a personal God destitute of feeling? And when his creatures suffer and fall through sin, what feelings but indignation and grief might be expected to move his holy nature? By repentance in God we are, therefore, to understand the change of feeling which must needs occur in the Divine nature towards any of the children of his grace when they turn from his truth, and presumptuously sin against him.4

We see that God has access to all knowledge. He has no limitations imposed on him from outside forces or from internal disabilities. But God is not a victim of his knowledge, somehow forced to know what he doesn’t want to know or to remember what he wants to forget.1 – James R. Lucas

Thus saith the Lord unto this people, Thus have they loved to wander, they have not refrained their feet, therefore the Lord doth not accept them; he will now remember their iniquity, and visit their sins. (Jeremiah 14:10)

The word “now” used in these passages tell us that God’s act of “remembering” does not take place in some eternal void, but in the same space and time that His creatures experience. If the eternal now doctrine was true and the future was set in stone then the language in these passages are meaningless.

Another translation of Ezekiel 33:16 says, “I will not remember the bad things they did in the past, because now they live right and are fair. So they will live!” (v. 16; Easy to Read Version) If this means what it says then it is clear that God is not living in an eternal now with the past, present and future before Him. If this was true then He could never forget the bad things that were done in the past because they would be right there before Him as a present reality.

The truth is, if God is in an “eternal now” then He is viewing every act of sin you committed at the same time He is trying to have a relationship with you in the later part of your life. Scary, isn’t it?

If we continue to listen to theologians who must deny the ordinary meaning of Scripture to support a concept that is nowhere found in Scripture then we become reliant upon them for understanding the Bible rather than the Holy Spirit and the clear language put forth in Scripture. Either God means what He says or He doesn’t. If God really does not forget our sins

If we are to understand what Scripture says without the need for commentaries and scholarly theological interpretation, we need to move away from the idea that God is residing in some “eternal now”. Either the Bible is true or God being in an “eternal now” is true but we cannot hold to both. To hold to the latter idea means having to offer reinterpretations of the otherwise clear, plain language of the former.

No one can know the mind of the Lord apart from the Spirit of Christ (1 Cor. 2:9-11), but once we are connected to Him, we are able to understand what God is thinking. The Contemporary English Version says, “But we understand what Christ is thinking.” As one writer stated, “It will be a fatal mistake to drift from the truth that God’s Mind has been and is revealed to the human mind and that the Holy Spirit is the Revealer.”1 Amos 4:13 says: He is the one who made the mountains. He created the wind. He lets people know his thoughts. He changes the darkness into dawn. He walks over the mountains of the earth. His name is Yahweh, Lord God All-Powerful. (Easy to Read Version) Here we learn of God’s willingness to give people knowledge of His thoughts. Therefore, it is a mischaracterization of God to imply that His thoughts are intentionally mysterious to all, including His own children.

near? If God can be found now but is not able to be found later then God cannot be in an “eternal now”.

Here we are told that God can have thoughts that come into His mind that were not there before. God

Again, the Easy to Read Version is helpful here: “I never even thought the people of Judah would do such a terrible thing.” If the future was “set in stone” as is taught in most circles of Christianity then God’s statements above are questionable. Since

God’s thought processes are no mystery to His children who are willing to read what He has revealed about them in His written revelation to us. He shows us that His thought processes work in the same fashion as the humans that He created in His own image and likeness. To believe anything other than what God has revealed is to get beyond His Word and into man-made philosophies.

Thankfully,

Who told them which was which?

When God is said to “repent,” it is not any accommodation either to weakness, or human language. To admit that God, at any time, ceases to speak plain, simple truth, is, in principle, to undermine the whole Scriptures. For if the ordinary rules of thought, facts and language are twisted or violated in one place, why not in any other? And if in any others then where? Just wheresoever fancy pleases. But God no such dangerous scope to fancy. Repentance is a mere change of mind. Now when God, from regard to his courage &c, raised Saul to the throne he had first mind to do so; and when, for his sins, he was determined to pull him down and setup another, he had so but, so far as Saul was concerned, a change of mind, while yet the Lord changeth not. But is it not said “He is not the son of man that he should repent?” True He does not repent as a son of man repents, that Is turning from sin. He repents as God repents, that is changing the kind his providence as wisdom, justice and mercy require to suit different circumstances and persons.2

Our English word repent, therefore, does not always give the true meaning of these words, especially when they are affirmed of God, as this word is generally used among us to signify pain or sorrow for something one has done wrong. This, however, is not the meaning, when these words are applied to God; but they are used to denote a change in the mind or purpose of God. Those passages are no more figurative, therefore, which affirm that God has repented or changed His purpose, than any other passages which speak of His will or conduct towards the human family.3

Then, there is Ezekiel 24:14: I the Lord have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent; according to thy ways, and according to thy doings, shall they judge thee, saith the Lord God.

Finally, Zechariah helps us to understand that God can “change His mind” about refusing to “change His mind”: For thus saith the Lord of hosts; As I thought to punish you, when your fathers provoked me to wrath, saith the Lord of hosts, and I repented not: So again have I thought in these days to do well unto Jerusalem and to the house of Judah: fear ye not. (Zechariah 8:14-15) God said he would not “repent” but then does exactly that. Hence, to take certain passages in which God says that He won’t change His mind and claim that He never changes His mind is a dishonest use of Scripture and falls under Peter's rebuke of “private interpretation” (2 Peter 1:20). This

quote from an 1865 Bible commentary is definitely worth sharing on this point: God is often spoken of in the Scriptures as repenting, —as, for example, at the flood, (Gen. vi. 6,) and during the sojourn of the Israelites in the wilderness, (Exod. xxxii. 14;)—while, on other occasions, it is said that “God is not the son of man, that he should repent,” (Num. xxiii. 19,) and, in Rom. xi. 29, “that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” We may here remark how false and unfair that method of interpreting the Scriptures is, in which one class of passages—that which each considers favourable to his own peculiar views—is adduced and dwelt upon, while others, which he regards as unfavourable, are passed by unnoticed. In order that the whole truth may be elicited, both classes of passages should be examined and compared with each other. In accordance with the passages just quoted, it is as erroneous to say that God cannot repent of anything as simply to ascribe to him human repentance.4

W. W. Kinsley summarizes the effect that this doctrine of God’s exhaustive foreknowledge has if it is taken seriously in relation to prayer: The doctrine of God’s perfect foreknowledge is not only unphilosophical, but also unscriptural. The Bible exhorts us to the deepest earnestness in prayer,—to downright importunity,—and encourages us to believe that the fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much. No petitioner can plead with any genuine unction unless he believes that he can actually effect some change in the purposes existing in the divine mind at the time his prayer is offered. If he were convinced that everything had been prearranged from all eternity; that his tears, and sighs, and passionate words of longing had been present in God's mind always; that they never had exerted, and never could exert, any influence, effect any change, as there could never be a time when they would first arrest God’s attention,—how could he wrestle, agonize, in prayer? It would seem but empty show to him, that he was merely playing a part. Every word he uttered would fall back dead. If he believes in God’s foreknowledge, he must, while he prays, if he prays as the Bible commands, utterly forget his belief and fall into the temporary delusion that the matter is yet undetermined, that God’s heart is tender, can be moved, that his purposes can be changed. He must forget his belief, must go ahead just as if foreknowledge were not true. Think you God would force his children to suc...

Any doctrine about God’s attributes should be practical and should not have to be set aside for practical purposes. If a doctrine concerning God’s nature is impractical and must be put out of our minds when we are praying then the doctrine is nothing more than philosophy. If it is merely philosophical then more than likely it is also unbiblical (Col. 2:8).

If God is in an “eternal now” where the future is already a settled reality then prayer is meaningless except for the fact that each person’s prayer was already a part of the fixed chain of events.

the great Evangelist, D. L. Moody, compared the idea that God does not “change His mind” in response to prayer to “deism” and “pantheism:”

But when you ask a deist or a pantheist if his God answers prayer, he will tell you no. “Does he hear the cry of distress?” “No.” “Does he hear the cry of the humble?” He will tell you that the Lord of the universe and the God of the universe has just made this world, and has wound it up as a clock, and it is going to run; that His laws are fixed; that you need not pray; you can’t change God’s mind; that he never answers prayer. If your child has gone astray you can’t pray to Him, because He has no mercy. There is no mercy but in the wind, and you may as well go out and pray to the thunder, to a storm, or a shower, to the moon, the sun, the stars, because God is every thing and everywhere, and yet is nowhere. They don’t believe in the personality of God. You may just take pantheism, deism and atheism, put them all together, and there is not much difference. I would as soon be the one as the other, because they are in midnight darkness and gloom. They know nothing about the God of love and the God of the Bible.4 (emphasis are mine)

It is urged that prayer changes man, but cannot change God. We do not contend that prayer changes God’s character or nature, but only his actions toward us. And if prayer changes man’s character it must change the action of God toward him, or his government is not suited to the character of its subjects. The change in man produced by prayer demands and is met by a change in the acts of the Divine administration in regard to man, which proves that God is not unchangeable in his actions. This is all that successful prayer demands. That there is change in the Divine action, and in the forms and methods of the Divine manifestation is evident from nature.6 Here we see that if prayer has any meaning at all then God cannot be the inflexible deity of a fixed future. Prayer should be able to move God to perform or change an action: To be unmoved by a prayer for help, shows insensibility, and not greatness of nature. God is an emotional being, and like all beings with emotional natures of a high order, is moved by the presence of pain, want and sin.7

In 1899, Wesley Philemon Carroll wrote, “Here is not only a change of the Divine Mind, but Divine assent was given to that which Moses asked for, and the destruction of the people averted.”8 Carroll further writes on this “change of the Divine Mind:”

It is not true that God is unchanging. In all the God-like attributes that pertain to the Supreme Being, God is now, always has been and always will be unchanging, but in His ways and methods—and I say it with all due reverence—He is not unchanging—in other words, the Divine Mind may change. It has been my pleasure and privilege to hear—many times from the pulpit, even—much about the “unchangeableness of God’s purposes,” and, while God forbid that I should assume to unfairly criticize my fellow men—especially those occupying pulpits; we hear too much criticism of that class on every hand— for their honest opinions honestly expressed, yet I have sometimes thought that such utterances were made without due consideration.9

Horatius Bonar also believed that God’s “change of mind” in Exodus 32 was to be taken literally: Repent.—The word frequently occurs in the same connection as in our text; Ex. xxxii. 14, “The Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people” (see also 1 Sam. xv. 11, 35; Jer. xxvi. 13, 19). In these and other like passages, it denotes that change of mind which is produced towards an object by an alteration of circumstances. Nor is this inconsistent with unchangeableness in God. It is true that he is without variableness or shadow of turning; there is no caprice or vacillation in him. But his unchangeableness is not a mere arbitrary principle, —a thing which makes him feel the same towards a person, however he may change from good to evil, or from bad

to worse. It does not mean that his proceedings are unchangeable, though it does mean that his purposes are so; nay, the very change of his proceedings may be the result and manifestation of the unchangeableness of his purposes.10 While it is understood that God

E. M. Bounds, gives us some insight into Hezekiah’s prayer: The prayer was to God. It was that God should reconsider and change his mind. Doubtless Isaiah returned to his house with a lighter heart than he did when he delivered his original message. God had been prayed to by this sick king, and had been asked to revoke his decree, and God had condescended to grant the request. God sometimes changes his mind. He has a right to do so. The reasons for him to change his mind are strong reasons.11 Bounds further writes, “….

God heard Hezekiah praying, saw his tears, and changed his mind, and Hezekiah lived to praise God and to be an example of the power of mighty praying.”12

knew that you show mercy and don’t want to punish people. I knew that you are kind, and if these people stopped sinning, you would change your plans to destroy them. (Jonah 4:1, 2; Easy to Read Version)