Originally posted by 1Way
You have a point, there is much more to learn that we can't know yet, but that is pretty much beside the point, we are talking about what we can and do know. What we do know is significant and God given.
33O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! 34For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? 35or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? 36For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen.
American Standard Version. (Ro 11:33-36).
12 Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measuree, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? 13 Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor hath taught him? 14 With whom took he counsel, and who instructedf him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding? 15 Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. 16 And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. 17 All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.
18 To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him? 19 The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains. 20 He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image, that shall not be moved. 21 Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: 23 That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. 24 Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. 25 To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.
27 Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God? 28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
The Holy Bible : King James Version. 1995 (Is 40:12-28).
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
The Holy Bible : King James Version. 1995 (Is 55:8-9). [/QUOTE]
2
God does not need sleep
Thanks for standing corrected for overstating the truth, indeed, for a most important length of time, God needed sleep.
See Isaiah 40:28 above.
3
I'm sorry, but now I have to take back my compliment that you seem to tend to reference scripture for your points. This is not a fictional forum, we are talking about absolute truth. As best as I can tell, those who most clearly propogated the idea that time is something that was created was the ancient Greek philosophers and mythologists. That idea is foreign and contrary to God's word.
The creation of Time. see verse 5
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
The Holy Bible : King James Version. 1995 (Ge 1:1-5).
16 Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.
The Holy Bible : King James Version. 1995 (1 Ti 6:16).
Secondly, the idea that God sees and knows the beginning and the end at once is a near maligning of what God actually says. God says that concerning things not yet done, He takes care of such matters because He is wise, i.e. the entire bible teaches that there is none wiser than God, so He plans really well, and that His plans come about because He is able to bring them into being, not because He already saw what will happen (Exhaustive Foreknowledge) but because He is "able" to bring about His wise plans. God "declaring" the end from the beginning is a statement of His authority and power, it is not a statement of exhaustive foreknowledge.
God’s consciousness differs from that of his rational creatures in that there is no succession in it. This is one of the differences between the infinite and the finite mind. For God there is no series of decrees each separated from the others by an interval of time. God is omniscient, possessing the whole of his plans and purposes simultaneously: “All things are naked and opened” to his view, in one intuition. God is immutable, and therefore there are no sequences and changes of experience in him. Consequently, the determinations of his will, as well as the thoughts of his understanding, are simultaneous, not successive. In the formation of the divine decree, there are no intervals; but only in the execution of it. Christ, the atoning lamb, “was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in these last times” (1 Pet. 1:20). The decree that Christ should die for sin was eternal; the actual death of Christ was in time. There was an interval of four thousand years between the creation of Adam and the birth of Christ; but there was no such interval between the decree to create Adam and the decree that Christ should be born in Bethlehem. Both decrees are simultaneous because both are eternal decisions of the divine will:
See Psalms 90:1-4;
Furthermore, every time God does not do what He said and or thought He was going to do, that completely eliminates the notion that God's foreknowledge is exhaustive. It take a 5 year old's mentality to understand that if you perfectly know what you will do, you would never change your mind about it. It's just that simple. God relenting, that is, the God of the bible, is mutually exclusive to a God that has exhaustive foreknowledge.
One of the attributes of God is that He is immutable, (See Hebrews 13:8, 6:17, which means that He never changes. There is no reason for God to change. He knows the end from the beginning. God knows the end from the beginning, and there is no reason for Him to change His mind. He is carrying on the program that He outlined at the beginning, and He is simply following through on it. Therefore, God does not change.
But Scripture does say that God repents. Follow me carefully here: There are expressions used in the Word of God which are called anthropomorphic terms; that is, there are certain attributes of man which are ascribed to God. In the Bible certain physical and psychological attributes of man are attributed to God.
In Jonah we have an example: God repents. To repent means to change your mind; that is what it means when it applies to me. When I repent, I change my mind. I did something wrong, and I now see that it was wrong. I turn from it, and I go to God and ask forgiveness for it—I come over on God’s side. To confess your sin is to come over and agree with God about your sin.
But does God repent like that? Does He change His mind? Does He say, “My, I made a mistake there; I shouldn’t destroy Nineveh”? No. We need to see that the city of Nineveh had two options when this man Jonah entered it with his message of judgment. They could reject God’s message, they could ignore it, they could pay no attention to it, and if they did, they would be destroyed—God never changed that. Or they could accept God’s message, they could turn to Him, and God would deliver and save them. God is immutable—He never changes. When His Word is rejected, when people turn from Him, they are lost. But when they turn to Him, He will always save them, regardless of who they are.
Therefore, who changed? Did God change? No, but it looked as if He did. Jonah had said, “Yet forty days, and this city is going to be destroyed. God is going to destroy it.” But God did not destroy Nineveh. Did God break His Word? No. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The city had two options. If they had not accepted His Word, they would have been destroyed. But they did accept God’s message, they believed God, and they turned from their wickedness. God didn’t change; He will always save people when they turn to Him. Although it looked as if God changed, it was really the city of Nineveh that changed, and that makes all the difference in the world.
See Numbers 23:19, Psalm 33:11, Malachi 3:6, James 1:16-18,
