Does God Know the Future? (White vs Sanders)

Debate Format and Introductions

Knowledge of the future? Well, that is the question that will be debated tonight. And before we start tonight's debate, I'd like to thank some folks that have really helped out putting on this debate.

And first of all, in an inclusive or wide fashion, I'd like to thank the staff, faculty, and as well as the students of Reformed Theological Seminary for helping us put on this debate. As well, in an exclusive nature, I'd like to thank Dr. Mawinney, Dr. Frame, and especially George Finley, who helped me coordinate all the events here.

And the next thing I'd like to talk about is exactly the structure of the debate. So if you did want to take notes, let me explain to you how this is going to occur. We're going to start with a 20-minute affirmative opening, followed by a 20-minute negative opening, then a 15-minute rebuttal statement, and another 15-minute statement.

We will then take a five-minute break, after which, 10-minutes affirmative cross-examination, followed by negative cross-examination for 10 minutes, 10-minutes affirmative, 10-minutes negative, and then our two 10-minute closing statements, after which we will be taking questions.

Now, as far as the questions go, we're going to be trying something tonight. We had a debate last night. It went a little bit long, so this is what we're going to be doing tonight. You will see cards put on the end of your pews.

If you could please, this is what I would like for you to do. Please state on the top of the card which one of these gentlemen you would like the question to be given to, either Dr. Sanders or Dr. White.

Please keep your question as brief as possible. That will help us out. Thirdly, also state your name on the bottom of the card. When you're done with your question, please place that in the basket when we make a love offering, just during the beginning part of the cross-examination.

It would help us out a lot. We're going to get started, but first I want to introduce a couple of gentlemen. Firstly, here to my right and your left, Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Huntington Christian College, author of What About Those Who Have Never Heard, No Other Name, and The God Who Risks.

He's the contributing author to Christianity Today. Would you please welcome Dr. John Sanders. On my left is the Professor of Apologetics at Columbia Evangelical Seminary and Adjunct Professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

He is the author of several books, including The Forgotten Trinity, The Roman Catholic Controversy, Is the Mormon My Brother?, The King James Only Controversy, The Same-Sex Controversy, The God Who Justifies, and The Potter's Freedom.

Would you please welcome Dr. James White. Dr. White is taking the affirmative position of does God have perfect knowledge of the future? And he will begin with a 20-minute affirmative omen. Thank you.

James White’s Opening Affirmation: Exhaustive Foreknowledge and Sovereign Decree

Good evening. Thank you for joining with us this evening. It is a momentous thing to gather in a place dedicated to the glory of God and the truth of the Christian faith to engage in debate on the subject of God's nature, His power, His sovereignty, and His knowledge.

It is a weighty thing to take into our hands His divine revelation and to consider the object of our worship and our praise. But it is also very much in line with apostolic practice to give an answer for the hope that lies within us, yet with gentleness and reverence.

May God be glorified in what takes place here this evening, in our obedience and honor of His word and in our thinking. I come to this debate with a strong commitment to the truth of God's omniscience, His sovereignty, and His freedom.

This commitment is not the result merely of the study of these issues in an academic setting. Instead, I come to it as one who has taken the great truths of the sovereign and triune God of Scripture together with the awesome message of His powerful saving grace into the forefront of battle.

As an apologist, I have borne testimony of the truth of God's solitary existence over against Mormon scholars from BYU. I have defended the Trinity against Muslim apologists and followers of the Watchtower Society.

And I have stood many times to defend God's sovereign grace against all forms of synergism, whether they are expressed in the classical semi-Pelagianism of Rome, the anti-liturgical and barren dress of the old-style Church of Christ, or in the traditional garb of standard evangelical Arminianism.

And so I am honored to have the opportunity to stand here this evening in defense of the proposition that God possesses full, exhaustive, unquestioned, and infallible knowledge of all things, which to us creatures may be styled past, present, or future.

I firmly accept the thesis that God, from all eternity, did by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

I believe that not only does God's kingly and eternal decree ordain whatsoever comes to pass, but I believe this truth to be vital to the Christian faith. Without it, we are left with the horrific specter of a God who creates, knowing full well the possibilities that may come from His action, but due seemingly to an overwhelming desire to create creatures with libertarian free will, He risks the project, resulting in a torrent of unforeseen, indeed unexpected and worse, meaningless evil.

The problem of evil this evening, I do not believe, is a stumbling block for the sovereign king who, as inspired scripture tells us, works all things after the counsel of His will. The problem of evil lays squarely in the lap of he who would seek to establish that God is responsible for risking the existence of meaningless evil, pain and suffering that has no purpose.

The pilgrim church has always clung tenaciously to the truth of scripture, God works all things for the good, but a God who learns, who experiences failure and frustration, who has no certain knowledge of the actions of His own free creatures, cannot live up to the promise of that wonderful passage in Romans chapter 8.

Open theism is indeed the logical continuation of Arminianism. I happen to agree with the criticisms leveled by open theists against their Arminian brothers with reference to the inconsistencies that exist in historical Arminian theology.

But of course, as one standing firmly in the Reformed tradition, one who humbly and thankfully bears the name used by Clark Pinnock of Paleo-Calvinist, I do not believe the answer to the inconsistencies of Arminianism is to take from God the very attribute He Himself identifies as the chief by which we are able to distinguish Him from false gods.

The only way to make Arminianism biblically consistent is to abandon the traditions and philosophical underpinnings upon which it rests in favor of the biblical truths of God's sovereign freedom, man's depravity, and compatibilist freedom, and the perfection of the work of Christ in behalf of His people.

Open theism does indeed make Arminianism more consistently wrong. Much ink has been spilled over the past decade on this topic and it is doubtful anything new is going to be propounded this evening. A debate like this offers us the opportunity for interaction, for cross-examination, which often shines a much brighter light upon the issues than written forms can afford.

But in the few moments I have to establish my case, allow me to ask that we turn our attention to the only sure guide we have been given in matters of faith and morals, the Theanostos Scriptures, the Holy Bible.

My primary focus in presenting a biblical defense of the truth of God's exhaustive and infallible knowledge of future events will come from the trial of the false gods in Isaiah 40 -48. In this passage, we find God exposing the false gods for what they are, the mere creations of men.

But in proving them false, God gives us a number of standards, tests, indicators of true deity. One of these indicators is that God will not only accomplish His holy purpose in opposition to the purposes of men, of course, a divine truth enunciated in many other places in Scripture, such as in Psalm 33, 10 -11, but that He is able to reveal the contents of the future, for He is the creator of all things.

The connection between God being the creator of all things and His knowledge of past, present, and future, though patented in the text of Isaiah, is passed over with barely a notice in the leading presentations of open theism currently published.

Take, for example, this challenge to the false gods found in Isaiah 41 -26. "'Present your case,' the Lord says. "'Bring forward your strong arguments,' the King of Jacob says. "'Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place.

"'As for the former events, declare what they were, "'that we may consider them and know their outcome. "'Or announce to us what is coming. "'Declare the things that are going to come afterward, "'that we may know that you are gods.

"'Indeed, do good or evil, "'that we may anxiously look about us and fear together. "'Behold, you are of no account, "'and your work amounts to nothing. "'He who chooses you is an abomination.'". Now, we cannot dismiss such passages by merely stating that God will accomplish those things in the future that He can accomplish without interference from the autonomous decisions of free men.

Just the opposite, in fact, is true. Consider well what is said here. God places the idols in the dock, so to speak, and sarcastically begins to expose the foolishness of anyone who would make them their god.

Now listen to the challenge that God presents. "'Let them bring forth and declare to us "'what is going to take place. "'As for the former events, declare what they were, "'that we may consider them and know their outcome.'".

We dare not miss that this challenge is two-pronged. First, God challenges the idols to reveal the future. He does not challenge them to simply affirm that they will accomplish their purpose in the future, but instead to tell us, quote, "'what is going to take place,' end quote.

God is not going to challenge idols to do what He Himself cannot do. And the second prong is to challenge the idols to tell us not only what has happened in the past, but why it has happened. We simply cannot understand this challenge outside of the truth of the divine, sovereign, eternal decree of God.

This, I submit, is the source of the Christian belief in God's perfection and timeless sovereignty, not the ruminations of Plato or Aristotle. But God continues, "'Declare the things that are going to come afterward "'that we may know that you are gods.'".

God presses His case, demanding from the idols the very knowledge that brings us together in this debate this evening. Can idols know what is going to come afterward? No, they cannot. This shows that they are not gods.

I must emphasize that these words were written approximately 2 ,700 years ago. I did not make them up. God provided us with a test for any pretended god. A god who cannot declare the things, not hopefully predict or optimistically hope, but declare the things to come afterwards is not a god at all.

Indeed, so basic is this truth that God can sarcastically taunt these idols, for they are not only incapable of declaring the future, they are incapable of doing anything at all. The sarcasm comes to full fruition in what comes next.

Indeed, do good or evil, that we may anxiously look about us and fear together. Behold, you are of no account, and your work amounts to nothing. He who chooses you is an abomination. What we believe about God and His relationship to His creation is not a matter of mere scholarly interest.

The one who chooses an idol is Toeva, an abomination. I believe I have firm biblical support for asserting that belief in falsehoods concerning God's very nature is taken by God as an affront, and the one who chooses such an idol himself is reprehensible in God's sight.

Such are grave words, but again, Christians have confessed them to be inspired words,.

God's words,.

And hence we must listen to them and reverence them in humble obedience. This theme involving the interconnection of the Creator, bringing all things into existence and God's knowledge of all things, including the future, continues throughout this section in Isaiah, and yet the major works on open theism that are in print today dismiss this section with barely a word.

While one will find complaints from open theists in their writings that their favorite texts have not been satisfactorily dealt with by those who oppose their proposition, my reading brings me to the opposite conclusion.

It is the literature of open theism that has thus far avoided serious exegetical interaction with the key passages that demonstrate its unbiblical nature, which leads us to an important consideration.

There are many troubling statements in the literature proposing open theism that will lead us to believe that the position has a lower view of the consistency, perspicuity, and sufficiency of Scripture than those professing the name of evangelical should hold.

What do I mean? Well, consider the words of Clark Pinnock. In his work, The Most Moved Mover, he speaks of the diversity among the biblical witnesses. He seeks to find its overall drift. He says, quote, The Bible does not speak with a single voice.

It is dialogue between the different voices, end quote. The Bible presents to us the search for the mind of God, and in this search, quote, various points of view compete and interact, end quote. Its many authors have views which may vary so that in his opinion, quote, the text is open to various plausible interpretations, end quote.

Dr. Sanders, in responding very briefly to the declaration of Isaiah 46 .9 that God declares the end from the beginning, says that such a passage, quote, can be interpreted harmoniously with either divine foreknowledge or the present knowledge model defended here.

It all depends on the content the interpreter gives to the expression, end quote. Are we truly limited merely to the whim of the interpreter? Or does Scripture give us a sufficiently full revelation of truth in and of itself?

The reality of God's certain knowledge of future events underlies a tremendous amount of biblical revelation. Consider Jesus' statement to Peter in which not only are Peter's sinful actions of denying Christ foreknown, but even the time frame in which they are to take place is a part of the divine revelation.

I invite the audience to consider well the explanations offered by various open theists regarding such a clear, definitive prophecy on the lips of the Lord Jesus. I will allow Dr. Sanders to express his own, for I must confess that having read it on pages 135 -136 of his book, I confess I am not certain how to understand it outside the fact that seemingly he believes that it supports the idea that Peter anyway did not believe in exhaustive divine foreknowledge.

I would say if Peter didn't at the time of Jesus' words, he did by the time of the cockroach. In any case, it seems to be the position of Gregory Boyd, Clark Pinnock, and John Sanders that since God's ultimate purpose is to create a universe in which free creatures with libertarian freedom interact with him, and that God will never violate that freedom, that it follows that Jesus might well have been proven wrong in what he said to Peter that evening.

Indeed, given that open theism denies to God the ability to know what free creatures are going to do, how could it be otherwise? Think about just this one example of divine prophecy. How many free will choices unknown to God went into the fulfillment of Jesus' words to Peter?

Peter had to choose to follow Jesus after the arrest. He could have run like most of the others. He had to choose to warm himself by the fire. Others, including the servants who identified him as one of Jesus' followers, likewise had to choose to be there that evening.

They had to choose to stand by the particular fire Peter was at. They had to choose to look at him. They had to choose to comment. Peter could have chosen to run after the first identification or the second.

Peter could have chosen to acknowledge Christ. In any one of these scenarios, the prophecy of the incarnate Son of God would have been rendered false. If the free actions of free creatures is unknown to God, how could Jesus have said these words?

Was he risking becoming a false prophet, and for what reason? No, the fact is Jesus well knew the future. There simply is no other consistent way of understanding the combined testimony of these passages.

The fundamental concern of open theism is the assertion of libertarian free will. Even though the Bible plainly and clearly presents compatibilism in such signal passages as Genesis 50, Isaiah 10, and Acts 4, it is the constant refrain of opponents of God's sovereign decree that such a viewpoint leaves no basis for true relationship between God and man.

Here again we see the need to allow God's revelation to have its place of primacy in our thinking rather than the philosophical systems of men. Upon what biblical basis are we to say that God's timelessness precludes true interaction with His creatures when we, as time-bound creatures, are supposed to begin our thinking with the recognition that God's ways are not our ways and His thoughts are higher than our own?

How can we intrude ourselves into His eternal existence and say that unless He exists and acts as we do, that we will not believe what He says in His word? His giving of specific predictive prophecies that encompass myriads and myriads of human decisions shows us clearly that He does indeed have exhaustive divine foreknowledge.

His word tells us that He works all things after the counsel of His will. He tells us that He makes the blind and the lame and the deaf, even illustrating His purposes in the blind man in John 9. He tells us in Amos that if disaster befalls a city, has not the Lord done it?

The biblical testimony is vast and wide, and should we not recognize that we are bound to accept God's revelation of these truths, always understanding that it is our bent to limit God and to conform Him to our image?

Should not this recognition cause us to examine very carefully any attempt to make God ever more like the creature, impressing upon our views of Him very creaturely limitations so as to make Him, we think, more approachable or attractive?

Surely Dr. Sanders can point to the testing of Abraham in Genesis 22 and, if the rest of the canonical testimony to this event is not allowed to have its say, construct a system in which God learns something about Abraham that, despite His allegedly exhaustive divine knowledge of Abraham's character over His entire life, He had not known about Abraham up until that time.

Dr. Sanders even raises the idea that possibly God would have had to through whom to achieve His purposes should Abraham fail. Indeed, I can only note in passing that this remained true ten minutes after the test as well.

Abraham continued to have libertarian free will and on open theistic grounds could have proven unfaithful despite the test anyway. Various prophecies can be examined that seem, from the human point of view, to propose support for the idea that God was surprised by certain events or caught unawares, forcing a reversal of course.

I am certain these passages will come up for closer examination in the course of our discussion this evening, but I wish to point out initially in reference to this area of study that it is surely improper for the creature man who is as a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes, as the blade of grass that flourishes and then passes away, to insist that the God who reveals Himself as eternal, the Creator who is before time itself, who brings forth all things, the Ancient of Days, the Alpha and Omega, should be thought of in creaturely terms of existence just because He has chosen to interact with man in time.

That is, we must recognize our problem of time-bound perspective. We must recognize that if God works His will within time that this is going to create for us as the creature the perspective of time-bound action.

Hence we must, as Calvin put it, allow God to lisp as He speaks to us. We cannot insist upon a particular philosophical framework that forces us to deny one element of God's revelation that is beyond our finitude to grasp experientially, namely His eternity and timelessness, so as to make more real the personal interaction of God in time with His creatures.

A God who cannot exist eternally and yet by the power and wisdom of His decree interact meaningfully with His creatures in time is not worthy of being described as the God of the Bible. And yet open theists like Clark Pinnock make the existence of such a God impossible by definition.

Indeed, it is instructive to note his assertion that such a view of God is, quote, a person-destroying conception of God's knowledge, end quote. That is, if God is timeless, His decree inviolable, then by definition, without offering the first bit of meaningful exegesis of such key passages as Isaiah 10 or Acts 4, true human persons cannot exist.

We see in such words the true foundation of open theism, at least in Pinnock's view. Man's freedom and autonomy is the primary focus, the bedrock to which the revelation of God must be made amenable. Finally, I wish to make note of a further testimony to the truth of God's infallible, exhaustive knowledge of all events in time, derived from the cross of Christ.

All to the doctrine of God, and given the holistic fabric of Christian truth, you will rend the beautiful tapestry of sound doctrine. Only the God of Scripture is sufficient to sustain the gospel of grace.

A God who learns new things each day, experiences surprise, disappointment, and failure, not merely as we see His eternal plan unfold in time, but in reality as He experiences the progression of time and encounters an unknown future, cannot present a sufficient basis for the high truths that make the Christian faith glorious.

Consider the work of Jesus Christ. Dr. Sanders has identified the very fall of Adam as an implausible event that God knew the possibility but truly believed man would more likely remain faithful to Him.

Hence, we cannot view Christ as a lamb slain from the foundation of the earth. Indeed, Dr. Sanders has written that while the Incarnation was planned from the creation of the world, the cross was not, and up until the Garden of Gethsemane, quote, other roots were perhaps open, end quote.

Consider the implications to Christian theology of such a view. Given a denial of God's exhaustive knowledge of future events, including the free actions of human beings, God could not know that any one of us here would ever exist, let alone could He know our sins.

Hence, the cross at creation could barely be a possibility, let alone the centerpiece of God's self-glorification, the gospel of Jesus Christ. All basis for true substitutionary atonement is erased by a denial of God's exhaustive knowledge of the future.

I truly pray that God will, by His Spirit, make us obedient to His Word this evening as we consider this vital topic. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Dr. White.

John Sanders’ Opening Response: Open Theism, Prayer, and a Partly Open Future

Well, thank you, Dr. White. You've laid out some of the focused questions and issues presented to an open theist from a strong Calvinist perspective. The question is, does God have perfect knowledge of future events?

And though I'm supposed to take the negative position on that, to be honest, I have to answer that question in the affirmative. Yes, God does have perfect knowledge of future events. But we'd have to get the question much more refined, and that is, what's the nature of the future and what are events?

Because I don't believe the future exists, and so I don't believe those events are there. So God has perfect knowledge of all reality, and God's knowledge of reality is as reality is. If the future doesn't exist, then God knows it doesn't exist, and God doesn't have illusions about a reality that does not exist.

So I will later on, I think, try and get into some more specifics about how the question has to be defined. But let me start with, why in the world would I come to such an asinine view? Well, it isn't fun to take a minority position that everybody ridicules.

I mean, I don't go out of my way just to look stupid. My wife would tell you I do it just by accident. When I was a young Christian, I was taught that my prayers of petition could influence God. Not that anyone could get God's arm up behind his back and say, all right, all right, I'll give you that.

But we had the divine invitation to pray and ask God for things, and that God might do something because we asked that God would not have done had we not asked. And that's the way I was taught to pray in this Baptist church.

Now, when I got to Bible college, we had to read some standard works of evangelical systematic theology. And when we got to the chapters on the nature of God, and I'm reading through them, and they're talking about God being immutable, and there's different definitions of immutable, but they were saying that nothing about God changes.

God's knowledge doesn't change. God's will doesn't change. God doesn't have emotions because that would be a change. And God is impassable, that God cannot be affected by creatures. And in particular, I remember reading J .A. Packer's book, Knowing God, which has lots and lots and lots of good things there.

But in his chapter on prayer, the next to last paragraph says, I know there are passages in Scripture which seem to indicate that God is affected by our prayers. But that's not true. That, as a young Bible college student, thoroughly unnerved me.

And I had to start rethinking things. Had I been taught to pray incorrectly? Now, that's a genuine possibility that our views of piety are incorrect. Or was what I was reading in my theology books incorrect?

Or perhaps some of both? But anyway, I began a long process of evaluating these ideas. And after a number of decades of examining Scripture and thinking particularly about prayer, I have concluded that God genuinely responds to us.

And in terms of researching theology and philosophy and reflecting on our spiritual lives, I've concluded that we can actually affect God. So then, if that's true, and I take that, then I work my way to that conclusion, then what else has to be true to follow that?

So what most evangelicals live out in piety, I believe, is correct. And we need to make some corrections in, in this case, my Arminian theology, in order to develop a more biblically faithful, logically consistent, and spiritually helpful view of God.

Now, certainly Dr. White thinks it's none of those. But I beg to differ. A summary of the openness of God. According to openness theology, the triune God of love has, in almighty power, created all that is, and is sovereign over everything.

In freedom, God decided to create beings capable of experiencing the divine love. God loves us and desires for us to enter into reciprocal relations of love. Now, here we may disagree. I believe that there's genuine give and take with God.

God not only gives, God has self-chosen to receive as well. It's God's sovereign decision to do it that way. So in creating us, the divine intention was that we would come to experience the triune love and respond to it with love of our own, and come to freely collaborate with God towards the achievement of his goals.

And God has, in sovereign freedom, in my view, decided to make some of his actions contingent upon our requests. Not that God had to do it that way, but God decided to do it that way. So God elicits our free collaboration in his plans.

Hence, God can be influenced by what we do, and God truly responds to what we do. There's a genuine interaction of give and take relationship with God. Third, the only wise God has chosen to exercise a general rather than a meticulous providence.

Now briefly, meticulous providence is an understanding of providence that God is in control of every single detail. So one illustration of this is Professor R .C. Sproul, who says that if one molecule is running around loose in the universe, then God isn't God.

So that's meticulous providence. I believe in general providence, that God sets up the rules by which the creation is going to function. And within those rules, much like rules of a basketball game or rules of performing an opera, there's plenty of freedom within the rules, but there are certain structures that are set up solely by God.

And I believe that one of these, then, is implicit, that God has given us libertarian freedom. Libertarian freedom means the ability to do otherwise than I did. Even though I was brought up a certain way, even though my church has taught me a certain way, I still could, even having formed a character, I could act out of character and do otherwise.

So I reject compatibilistic freedom, which Dr. White believes is the biblical view. I think libertarian freedom is the biblical view. Now, I believe that God usually elicits human cooperation in bringing about what God wants to see accomplished.

But God can intervene directly and unilaterally without us. He doesn't have to rely upon us, but I believe most of the time God does. So if God wants the hungry fed, he does depend upon us to do it. Could God just create bread for everybody?

Yes. He could do that, but he has chosen not to. In the case of Moses, when God is seeking to persuade Moses to return to Egypt and serve him, I believe that God is flexible in his plans and that God originally wanted Moses to speak directly to Pharaoh.

Moses says, I'm not a good speaker. God says, how about this? Your brother Aaron is a good speaker. He got an A in speech class. Tell you what, I'll talk to you, you talk to him, he'll talk to Pharaoh.

So I think that God was flexible in going to plan B. Fourth, God has granted us the necessary freedom for a truly personal relationship of love to develop. Despite the fact that humans have abused that freedom by turning away from divine love, God remains faithful to his intentions for creation.

Finally, the omniscient God knows all that is logically possible to know. God knows the past and present with exhaustive definite knowledge and knows the future as partially definite or closed, settled, and partially indefinite or open and unsettled.

It's not all figured out. The future does not exist. But certain things God has said, I will bring this about regardless of what humans do. And those things are settled. There are also other things that are settled unless God intervenes.

For instance, a certain earthquake, the big one, is going to hit Southern California one of these days. And God knows precisely when that will happen unless God intervenes to prevent it. So I don't believe that God is caught off guard.

And this denial of what we would have to be more specifically call exhaustive definite foreknowledge of future contingent events, that's the most controversial aspect of the openness position. Now, as Dr. White mentioned, openness is coming out of an Arminian perspective.

However, there are Reformed who are proponents of open theism. They're particularly Dutch Reformed. Vincent Brummer, University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. My Dr. Vater in South Africa, University of South Africa.

Adria Koenig is an open theist. And Andrikus Burckhoff, another theologian in the Netherlands, is also. I'll skip now. Does the Bible portray God as having full knowledge of the future? Well, let's take a look at some of these.

I believe that there are two kinds of biblical text on this question. One, those where God declares that something will happen, the future is settled or definite, because God says this is going to happen, I guarantee it.

And those where the future is not definite or settled. For instance, God declares a future event, but whether it comes about or not is conditional upon human action. So, I believe there are two kinds of text.

Not just one kind of text in Scripture, but these two kinds. And what's the best theory then to explain both sets of text? For instance, God uses the word perhaps. He says, perhaps you will do this. Why would God say perhaps?

God uses the word if. For instance, Exodus 4, 2 -9. Moses says, but what if the elders don't believe me? God says, okay, here's a sign. If they don't believe you, perform the sign. And then God says, now here's a second sign.

So if they don't believe the first sign, here's a second sign. And then he says, and if they don't believe those two signs, here's a third sign. Surely they'll believe those three signs. God uses the word maybe.

Maybe this will happen. Maybe the people will repent and come back. God expects things to happen, and they don't always happen. For instance, Isaiah 5, 1 -4 speaks of the wild grapes. What God wanted for Israel was to be obedient and be a servant to God.

And at that point in their history, they were not. God says, I planted good grapes. And this is what I get. God tests individuals and Israel. Dr. White mentioned Genesis 22 where God tested Abraham. And it's interesting that the only one said to learn anything in that text is not Abraham, though I'm sure he did learn something, but the text doesn't say Abraham learned anything.

But God says, now I know that you fear me. And I believe there's reasons why God was putting him to the test with Isaac there. God tests Israel in Exodus 15 and Exodus 33, saying, what am I going to do with you?

You're so obstinate.

Okay, put away your jewelry.

Put away your celebrating. Let me see. Are you serious at all? What should I do with you? And other examples like this. And why would God test them? If God eternally knew with certainty what they would do.

Or, even worse in my opinion, if God had eternally ordained what they would do. Why is he testing them? God is said to grieve in Genesis chapter 6, 4 through 9. Why would God grieve? If God always knew, and even more forcefully, why would God grieve if what is happening is specifically what God had ordained to happen?

Other biblical texts portray God as changing his mind, or sometimes it's translated repenting. Actually, a variety of words are used. Genesis 6, I've already mentioned. Exodus 32, God says to Moses, I'm going to start over again with you and make of you a great nation.

And Moses says, please don't do that. And God responds by changing his mind and not bringing about the threat. 1 Samuel 15, 11 and verses 15 -35 also say that God changed his mind about Saul being king.