Judgment Day...Is There Any Hope?
I often hear things spoken or taught by Christians that just don't make any sense in light of what they claim they believe about their God. For example, the people who believe that God has total foreknowledge of all future events, nevertheless seem to fret over the eternal destination of non-Christians. They irrationally spend huge amounts of time, effort and money to try to persuade "the lost" into accepting Jesus as their Savior. In case you don't readily see the problem with that, let's look at it another way. If, as they claim, God already knows the future exhaustively, then it follows logically that He already knows exactly who will be saved and who will be damned. So then, all our worrying, praying, and sharing the gospel message with people is a total waste of time. It is already a done deal in God's mind.
By the way, this also applies to any future rewards coming to Christian individuals for service. If God already knows how everyone is going to live out their lives, then He already knows the specific rewards that will be given out to all believers at His return, so any attempt on our part to try to please or influence the Lord in the present is useless as well. None of our prayers or efforts can possibly change the future judgment that God already sees taking place. For if God knows the future exhaustively, then that knowledge is no different than God's knowledge of the past...it lies fixed, certain, with no hope of any change or alteration. It truly amazes me that people who hold onto this belief are not bothered by the contradictions and implications. Many of them actually claim that God wouldn't be a God worth worshiping if we could understand Him. They believe that an incoherent theology is somehow a proof that it must be true.
If God's infinite knowledge, however, somehow did include all future events, then hundreds of Scripture verses would be rendered meaningless. I'd like to briefly point out and comment on a few of these passages.
2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
The verse above was written in reference to the final judgment that will one day be upon us. It clearly implies that God's promised coming as our Judge is being delayed because He is patiently waiting for as many people as possible to repent in order to be spared from the promised wrath to come. This verse is incoherent if God already knows the future.
In the book of Revelation, the risen Christ gives the apostle John some messages to pass on to various churches in the region. To the church at Ephesus He says...
Revelation 2:
2 “I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars;
3 and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary.
4 Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.
It obvious that Jesus was intimately aware of all of that church group's thoughts, feelings and activities up to that particular point in time, but it is likewise obvious that the future was not something known and fixed from the Lord's perspective. He urges the people to repent in order to avoid some unpleasant consequences that might otherwise come their way. If you take the time to look at the other churches God addresses in Revelation, He similarly knows all about them up to that present moment, but then offers them guidance to insure a good future for themselves. Their future is not seen as something fixed, but rather a mix of possibilities and probabilities that would flesh themselves out according to how they would choose to live in the present. The future is always formed, built, and realized in the present, assembled by the interaction of God and men moving forward, moment by moment.
"Hope" is another word related to this topic that makes no sense if God already knows the results of His coming future judgment. Hope serves no purpose if the future is already known by either God or men.
Romans 8:24
"...hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?"
If God already knows our future, even if we don't also share that knowledge, hoping is useless on our part. Hope cannot change a fixed future. Hope by it's very nature assumes and acknowledges an uncertain future. Hope involves the desire and expectation of a good future, while at the same time realizing there is no absolute certainty of this occurring. We always hope for the best, but we know by experience that disappointments are often what comes around the corner instead.
Interestingly, the apostle Paul includes "hope" as being part of the nature of love, stating that love "hopes all things" in 1 Corinthians 13. He also says love "suffers long", probably because love's hopes and desires are often unrealized. I want to point out that the word translated to us in English here as "love", was actually penned by Paul as the Greek word "agape", which of course is defined as God's very own love toward us. Therefore, I believe it's safe to conclude that God Himself has hopes and desires, and that He, like us, also suffers and experiences true grief, sorrow and disappointment, whenever His own plans are not perfectly realized in the present.
This idea of a hoping or grieving God that is plainly revealed in the Bible does not fit well with the theology of those who see God as a stiff Sovereign, controlling and predestining every event that ever has or ever will occur. It is also hard to imagine God hoping or grieving over things that He has supposedly seen in the future from the eternal past. No, God's hoping and grieving only truly make sense when His own experience of life is placed right alongside of us in this present moment. The past is gone...the future doesn't exist. It is in this context where the Scriptures make the most sense.
Genesis 6:
6 And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
7 So the LORD said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
The passage above and many others like it in both the Old and New Testaments clearly show God being genuinely affected and disappointed by the actions of the people He lovingly created. The Israelites continually frustrated His desires for them, generation after generation, right up until He sent His Son to redeem them. Speaking of the Israelites and how they let God down, the prophet Isaiah wrote the following...
Isaiah 5:
1 My Well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill.
2 He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it; So He expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes.
3 “ And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, please, between Me and My vineyard.
4 What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?
Jesus had the following to say about them in His time...
Luke 13:
34 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!
Yes, the Lord has patiently tried for thousands of years, in many different ways to get all of us to turn from our sinful ways and embrace Him as our loving God and Creator. Today we find ourselves in the final age of harvest, in which the Lord, by His Spirit, is gathering millions of lost, hurting sheep who will populate His promised coming Kingdom. Today, however, even His redeemed ones living on the earth continue to alternately bring Him pleasure and pain. The New Testament epistles address this often by exhorting us to turn away from our old lives and live our lives worthy of God's purchase of us by His Son's own blood on the cross.
Ephesians 4:
30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
31 Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice.
32 And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.
Hebrews 10:
35 Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward.
36 For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:
37 “ For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry.
38 Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him.”
39 But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.
So then, getting back to the idea of the coming final judgment...is there any hope for any of us? Or is the future already a foregone conclusion? I believe there really is hope. There is hope for every single person living on the earth today...if they will only humble themselves and cry out to their Creator who is patiently "hoping" they will do that very thing. I pray we all draw closer in our relationship with Him, and that we discover more and more of the riches of who He really is...the great I AM!
-nOFuTuRe
What a glorious hope we have! Good job, again.
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Opentheist,
I can see how your point appears logical. I mean who is their right mind knowing something would not just get it all done and over with. Who would want to wait and see how things pan out.
But, what if everything was a choice? Choosing to love, choosing to hope, choosing to have faith? What if in all that we do it was an open choice and that choice alone was what destined where we went. You know the whole I truly love you thing.
Let's say I am a scientist and I can create anything I want. Most of the time we create things to serve us, mechanically, emotionally, physically..on and on...
Let's say I am lacking help and companionship. I decide to create, using our growing knowledge in stem cells - a human. In this creation of the human I have also designed their brain to love only me, serve me and do everything that I told it to do. Personally, I would know that my needs were met as long as it lived. Heck, life would be pretty. However, because I am intelligent and can reason, I would also know that I designed this creation to serve me out of my coding, I told this thing to serve me and me alone and to be happy about it. Plus, I gave the thing intelligence, but I was not letting it live to its potential, it was conditioned to serve me.
I think this is where the Bible and God come in about a choice. You don't have to choose God, love God or believe in God - that is YOUR choice not mine. I cannot change it, I can only share what I believe. In no way would I want to force that on you.
Which brings me to the point of God knowing all of this. Why would he or she or just a being that is more knowledgeable than I not want to get things over with, why wait? Here lies the issue, "Can anything created rise above its creator?" Can a watch be more intelligent than its designer? Granted I think we are trying to hit that point with genetics and stem cell research.
What do you think?
Too much out there that shows an intelligent design. I can get into that debate, and would like to talk about the vast contradictions with evolution that I have found. Boy, how could a protein find its exact design when the probability that the protein not being toxic was 1 in 1.28X10 (175 power) - amazing as anything over 10 (50 power) is impossible. Its like saying that a tornado passing through a junkyard created a 747 by the time it passed.
Fare well and good day, great to share with you.
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OpenArms,
Thank-you for taking the time to read and comment on some of my writings. I like two points you brought out...the one about choice and the one about intelligent design. If our future has already been either meticulously planned or is exhaustively foreknown, then our "free-choice" is a myth or illusion at best. How can God engage in real fellowship with us and enjoy being with us if He already knows the future?
"Intelligent design" is another issue that is a hot topic debated lately. Like you, it amazes me how people can dismiss the obvious evidence of a Creator and choose blind chance as the cause of all the incredible life and magestic universe surrounding us. However, there was a time when I was just like them...totally blind...but thankfully God opened my eyes one day. Thanks again for sharing, and God be with you.
-nOFuTuRe
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