Satan's Biggest Lie About God: He Knows the Future

YES! God knows the future, BUT ONLY IF He wishes to preset or predestine or preordain the future.  Satan's biggest lie about God comes from how many theologians believe they have a corner on the whole truth when they apply God's foreknowledge to ALL the future, even those that He has NOT preordained.

This faulty theological generalization comes out of the following BIG THREE faulty hermeneutic presuppositions.

1. What is applicable to one is applicable to all? There may be truth to this presupposition but it has to be qualified. In any specific statement from God or from man, there always has to be a specific context surrounding such declarations and they cannot be ignored. For example, when God told Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5: 
   
   
   “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
   and before you were born I consecrated you;
   I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
           
   Now to conclude that God consecrated everyone before they were born mandates the conclusion that everyone is appointed to be a prophet to the nations. The flaw in logic is quite obvious.  It is like saying that because Bill Gates is rich and God is fair and perfect, therefore everyone should be rich as Bill Gates. These are non sequitor conclusions to very faulty logic borne out of very faulty assumptions about hermeneutics. Again, only an understanding of the right context of the declaration will generate the right interpretation.
   
   
   This faulty method of interpretation is also applied to God's foreknowledge. Just because God has preordained many things including the Second Coming of Christ and many details behind it DOES NOT MEAN that God has preordained everything. There are many things that God does not know only because He does not care to know, and YES, the sovereign God has the power to NOT care to know everything.
   
   
   The reasoning proposed by the Open Theology folks is also quite valid logically. God does not know what cannot be known. The logic is the same as what I discussed in an earlier blog about whether God has the ability to make a square circle. ( Can God Make a Circle with Four Sides? )
   
   
2. There are no alternative interpretations? This is another one of Satan's biggest lies. We forget that even in the temptation of Christ, the main role of Satan is to distort the truth about God. So Satan uses theological bias to narrow the interpreters mind in order to make him commit more error, that of adding to the meaning or removing from the meaning. The ultimate result is that we miss the blessing of true and complete revelation.


This flaw is most often applied to the following Scripture passage from Isaiah:


 Isaiah 46:9-11 - English Standard Version (ESV)

9     remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
    I am God, and there is none like me,
10 declaring the end from the beginning
    and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
    and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
11 calling a bird of prey from the east,
    the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
    I have purposed, and I will do it. 


Quite a few theologians read these verses, especially those underlined, and immediately conclude that the only interpretation is that God knows everything including the future because He is omniscient (all-knowing). Because of this limited definition or construct proposed by the early church fathers, the interpretive result is limited by man-made definition. Hence, because of such limitation, the church fathers shackled themselves to no other reasonable interpretation but that the Sovereign God pre-ordained everything to the minutest detail.


This construct, however, cannot be supported by Scripture without glaring contradictions. Fortunately, there are alternative interpretations that are both logical, reasonable and best of all supported by Scripture.


For example, the construct that God knows everything is Biblically supported if such knowledge is limited ONLY to past and present events including some of those that are in the processes of occurring. Omniscience, therefore, should have limited its definition only to this scope, The rest is foreknowledge which is knowledge of future things AS IF they are past to God.


Now, why is this separation or distinction in definitions necessary? The answer is quite simple. If we scour through the Bible, we do not see any contradiction or exceptions to omniscience if limited to past and present only. However, if we include foreknowledge as part of omniscience, then we begin to see quite a lot of bothersome passages like:


• God changing His mind in many instances like in the case of Hezekiah (Isaiah 36), Jonah (Jonah 3: 10 - 4:4), Moses changing God's mind twice (Exodus 32:7-14, Numbers 14:13-25)
• God getting angry in more passages. If God already knows the future, He should not get angry, otherwise, this makes God a hypocrite downgrading His integrity. Many well-meaning theologians are blind to this insulting option.
• Jesus (who is God) is surprised by the faith of the centurion and the faith of the Syro-phoenician woman.
Because of this dichotomy, we have to separate foreknowledge from omniscience where foreknowledge becomes an option for God to exercise instead of something that cannot be helped because of who He is.

Furthermore, most quotes from Isaiah 46:9 substitute the word "declare" with the word "see". Declaring the end from the beginning is worlds different from seeing the end from the beginning. In fact, this is a quote from God himself, and God was quite careful to chose the correct Hebrew word.  Seeing the end from the beginning does show foreknowledge. However, scripture did not and does not and hopefully never will state "see". Instead, scripture used the word "declare". Declaring includes the intent to intervene into history. God will not declare something that he cannot nor will not do. So when he declared the end from the beginning in Isaiah, he was simply exposing the interventions he was going to do in the future. Hence, every declaration of God IN ISAIAH ONLY in this case, is marked on stone and predestined.  There is no foreknowledge here, or foreknowledge is NOT NECESSARILY present here if we were truly unbiased. Instead there is a planned divine intervention which God wishes to reveal explicitly. The bible in many parts shows that God's intentions MAY BE changed like what he did to Hezekiah and the city of Ninevah in the book of Jonah.  However, God's declarations are set on stone.  This is not foreknowledge.



Protecting the Sacred Cow. This perhaps is the most subtle but stubborn hermeneutic hindrance to honest interpretation. Most theologians have their own sacred cow to protect as if God needed our protection from misinterpretation. Any honest exegete needs to approach any passage, no matter how many times studied, with an objective, logical, reaonable, common-sensical and biblical mind. An exegete needs to be willing to abandon all previous beliefs if God shows otherwise. Then the honest scholarship comes as he begins to synthesize the rest of Scripture (NOT the rest of his theology) with the current passage.




The following are examples of the most common theological "sacred cows" that many believers refuse to change or revise even in the light of verses that contradict them:



• The belief that God is all-knowing or omniscient is well derived and well meant. So is the belief that God never changes his mind. However, it has to be qualified in the light of contradicting Scriptural examples.
• Once saved, always saved? This proposition naturally comes out of Calvinist theology. Unfortunately, it is a conclusion based on Calvinist doctrine and not necessarily an honest synthesis of Scripture on the issue. I would be the first to admit that if I accepted the TULIP statements or the Westminster Confession in its entirety, then that would be the natural logical conclusion. However, it ignores so much of Scripture on the subject. Also it pales when it comes to the preponderance of Scripture on the same subject.
• The limitless love of God can forgive any sin? This ignores Jesus statements that there is an unforgivable sin
• Women preachers and teachers. This is a charismatic gift of the Spirit. Do the gifts discriminate against gender?  The argument is similar to the practice of slavery and women suffrage. Just because slavery was tolerated by the New Testament authors in their context does not necessarily  mean that Christians should tolerate it today.  Just because women were rarely educated during Christ's day does not mean they are still educationally inferior today.
• You want more examples? Feel free to comment...