According to the Scriptures, God is eternal and infinite in all His attributes. As the intelligent all-powerful God, He created the universe in all its complexities. In creating the world He set the stage for the activities of human beings. But how could God predict what will happen when choice is left to His creatures? According to the Scriptures God has knowledge of everything. His understanding of all events is unsearchable (Isa. 40:28). Christ possesses "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3). Having knowledge of all things actual or possible, God in creating the world knew fully all that would follow from His creation.
The Scriptures also reveal that God has a plan in which He has determined what the future will hold. Having knowledge of all possible as well as all actual future events, God knows in advance any plans, regardless of how detailed they are, and He is able to predict with absolute accuracy not only what He Himself will do but also what will follow from natural law and human choices. But how can God know the future without controlling it? He can predict in advance the choices human beings will make because He has perfect knowledge of what each individual will know and experience.
The supreme example of this is the death of Christ on which the whole plan of redemption hinged. God did not have to be on the sidelines and worry whether Pilate would order the execution of Christ or whether the soldiers would carry out the orders to crucify Him. God had absolute certainty from His omniscience that this would be the case. At the same time God is not responsible for the immoral acts of human beings, because they choose freely without any sense of compulsion from a higher being. Accordingly, every one of the hundreds of prophecies that have been fulfilled exactly as the Bible predicted are illustrations of the fact that God can view as certain all future events that are determined by humankind.
But how can we explain life's tragic situations and acts? Since God is perfect, He would not adopt any plan if there were a better one. Humanly speaking, God might have determined any one of several equally good plans. In one plan Mr. Black is saved, and in the other plan Mr. Brown is saved. Because of His perfection, God in keeping with His character chose the best plan - there could be none better. While we in our human limitations cannot understand tragedies and events in history that seem so contrary to what God would wish, we can only conclude that if we had the full picture and understood everything, we would choose to do exactly what God did.
A chief dispatcher of a railroad may publish a timetable. He may determine a schedule for freight times; he can also determine a schedule for passenger trains. The schedule is published, and the trains run as scheduled. If the dispatcher were omniscient, he would know in advance how many passengers would board each train. He would know whether the trains would run as scheduled. Yet he would not force anyone to board the trains. There would be certainty without compulsion. In a similar way, human choice from God's point of view can be determined without forcing anyone to do anything.
- John F. Walvoord, End Times
link: the best possible world (27 jan 09)
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