ALONE WITH GOD------

QUESTION: To what extent does God know the future in our individual lives? Does He know our ultimate end? Did God know absolutely which choice Adam and Eve would make in the garden?

ANSWER: I will say that the questioner has asked a difficult question here and is treading in far-out territory. When we finite creatures with our little finite minds endeavor to analyze and categorize God, we can’t go very far until we are left swinging in midair. I am sure I will not be able to satisfy the mind of this questioner.

One thing we can know for certain is that God knows everything that is going on in our lives words, thoughts, deeds, attitudes and feelings and absolutely nothing is hidden from Him. Hebrews 4:13 says, "...all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." Ecclesiastes 12:14 says, "...God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing,..." Then it is certain there is nothing secret to God or hidden from Him. Jesus was a jump ahead of His adversaries all the time because He knew what they were thinking in their hearts before they said or did anything and He out-maneuvered them at every turn.

As to just how thoroughly God knows the future of our individual lives, I am not able to say. But I believe we have scriptures to prove that we have something to do with that ourselves. Galatians 6:7 says, "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Every person is charting his own future day by day right now. In Matthew 7:2 Jesus said, "...and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." Whatever we give out in our dealings with other people will come back to us just like we put it out. Therefore, we should all be really particular to put out such things in our lives that we will be glad to see coming back. Our futures are all affected by our choices and decisions we make now and are determined by the seed we are sowing now. It seems clear to me that we are all on trial and probation here and God lays out His course of life for us and if we walk in it He will bless us and if we don’t, He won’t. But the choice is ours. I feel that I can say with certainty that if we take God’s way and commit our lives into His hands that He surveys our lives far enough ahead of us to prepare us for any eventualities and protect us from any traps or snares the enemy has set for our feet down the line. Psalms 139:3 says, "Thou compassest (winnoweth: margin) my path..." This indicates that the Lord goes ahead of us in our path and winnows out the things there that He wants us to meet with and this confirms what has been said before.

Does God know our ultimate end? I am sure everyone will not agree with me when I say this but I do not believe He does. I am not at this time convinced of that. I do not in any way diminish or discount God’s omniscience in saying this. I recognize that God has the power to know the ultimate end of every one of the billions of people of earth but I do not feel that He chooses to exercise that power. In other words, I believe God knows everything He wants to know and needs to know to properly handle His affairs and deal with every man as He would in all fairness and mercy. Let me say it this way, if I believe that God has the power to know everything; then by the same token I believe He has the power to put out of His mind anything He wants to put out of it and to not know anything He doesn’t want to know. And in the very nature of things, I believe this is one thing He does not choose to know; at least up to a certain point. One brother said he was praying about this very thing and asking Him if He really knew everything. And He said God answered him and said "I know everything I want to know." That seems to me a reasonable premise in this regard.

It would seem to me that if God allowed Himself to know our ultimate end, it would be difficult for Him to deal with men as the Bible tells us that He does to bring them to salvation. And in my little mind I would have difficulty associating much meaning to the command to His disciples to evangelize the world and take the gospel to every creature and all who will believe will be saved and all that believe not shall be damned. What meaning would this have if He knew beforehand what would be the ultimate end of each person. Read Job 33:14-30, which describes the different ways and means God uses in His dealings with men. Verses 29 and 30 say God works all these things often with man to bring back his soul from the pit and to enlighten him with the light of the living. What meaning would all this have if God knew they would not be drawn back from the pit anyway. It is clear in the Scriptures that salvation, in its provision, is universal (Christ tasted death for every man Hebrews 2:9) and is offered unto all on a "whosoever will" bases and the choice is up to each individual as to whether he will accept it and be saved or reject it and be lost in the end.

Did God know absolutely which choice Adam and Eve would make in the garden? I am fully conscious that God thoroughly understood and knew the risk involved in creating man as He did; a free acting agent with the power of choice and free exercise of will. He fully understood the possibility of sin when He gave them the commandment He did. But that commandment gave work ability to their exercise and free choice. A service of free choice, prompted by the free will of the individual, is the only thing that would satisfy the yearning in the heart of God for love and companionship from a moral, intelligent being. He created man an intelligent and moral being like Himself, capable of responding to love and giving love in return and thus fulfilling that yearning that God had. He could have made man a robot with power only to do as he was programmed to do but that would not have fulfilled the deep yearning for love and companionship that God had.

This would have been the only way that He could have eliminated the possibility of sin. God knew this so He made ample provision for such a situation, in the event it happened, in the plan of salvation which He made. And the plan of salvation is so complete, perfect, comprehensive and all-encompassing as to meet every need of mankind that it certainly demonstrates that God knew well what He was about when He set it up. To say that God absolutely knew what Adam and Eve would do and all the doleful and devastating consequences of it all would be to reduce the whole human and spiritual drama to a kind of war-game situation between God and the devil to see which one could outdo the other and to set man up in the middle as a target to catch the full blunt of the whole operation and as a prize for the winner. It is also to say that God’s deep yearning for a family and love and companionship overcame His better judgment and He just went ahead and made man anyway.

I do not, I cannot think of God in that way. I know God could know everything if He chose to, but I believe He has wisdom to not know some things and it is a mutual advantage to Him and us for Him to not know those things. God never created man for a target between Him and the devil. He made him upright (Ecclesiastes 7:29), in His own image and after His own likeness (Genesis 1:26-27) and wanted him to stay that way. The fellowship and communication between them in the garden was perfect and sweet and God wanted it to continue that way. But man, by an act of his own will and by his own choice, believed the lie of the devil and was deceived into disobeying the commandment they had and lost their righteous estate and fell into sin which changed the whole picture. Then God set about to bring His plan of salvation into action which He did approximately 4000 years later in His Son, Jesus Christ.