How Does God Know the Future?

 

Transcript:

“How does God know the future? Well, he just looks down the corridors of time, and he can see things. Well, okay; but when he created, did he know what the result of his creation was going to be? And if you say, Yes; did he know with specificity? And [or] was it simply the fact that he just threw it out there, and then looked and went, Hey, I win at the end! Praise me! That is the simple foreknowledge view of how God knows the future; and there is a lot of people who believe that; because if God’s knowledge of future events flows from the accomplishment of his purpose in all of creation, then that word sovereignty arises, kingship, authority, power; that begins to then address the issue of the nature of the will of God, and the will of man.”

I like these short clips, because they focus on one topic at a time, which makes it convenient to give them a reply. So the question being posed here is, Does God know the future comprehensively and exhaustively? And if so, how? 

The answer to the first question is, Absolutely yes. God knows the future fully, comprehensively, and exhaustively. He sees it like a movie. He is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end (Rev. 1:8; 1:11; 21:6; 22:13). He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). There is no future event that is obscure or hidden from his view.

In answer to the second question, “How?” The Calvinists like to present only two possible options: (1) By “looking through the corridors of time,” or (2) By meticulous predestination and predetermination of all future events (thus canceling out all elements of human freewill). These are the only two possible options in Calvinism (and Calvinists choose the second of the two).

But there is a third option, which Calvinists don’t want to know about: The third option is, That it is possible for God to know the future exhaustively and comprehensively (including all the future freewill choices and decisions of man); but without having predestined or predetermined it—and thus without canceling human freewill.

Calvinists then argue, How? The answer is, We don’t know how; but just because we don’t know how, it doesn’t follow that therefore he can’t. Just because we don’t know, or can’t fathom, how God is able to know the future exhaustively, without having predestined and predetermined it; it doesn’t logically follow that therefore he can’t.

How did God know that if David took refuge in the city of Keilah, that the inhabitants would hand him over to Saul (1 Sam. 23:12)? Was it because he had “predestined” it? Obviously not, because it didn’t happen. So how did God know? By “looking through the corridors of time”? That doesn’t work either, so how did he know? The answer is, Because he is God. Just because we don’t know, or can’t fathom “how” he does something, it doesn’t logically follow that therefore he can’t. Thus it is Calvinism that limits the power, ability, omnipotence, and sovereignty of God more than anything else.

The Calvinistic theological position is that if I can’t fathom how God can do something, it therefore follows that he can’t; which is a very arrogant, conceited, self-centered, man-centered theological position. Thus it is Calvinism which, above all other things, denies and limits the sovereignty of God. It diminishes God to the level of what man can or cannot comprehend.