DOES GOD KNOW THE FUTURE?

In the book of Job, God makes a bet with Satan that Job will remain faithful to God, even if all the good things in his life are taken away. Now, if God knows the future, wasn’t he cheating? Or did he not know the outcome for certain?

If God knows the future, why didn’t he build a fence around the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Why didn’t he warn Abel? He warned Noah of the flood and Abraham of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Jews in slavery how to escape the Angel of Death, but these disasters God would have known about in advance because he was the one who supposedly caused them.

But note: “If a thing he said does not come to pass, he is a false prophet.” (Deut 18:22). God said David’s kingdom would last forever, and it didn’t. Jesus said the second coming would happen before his generation passed away, and as far as we know it didn’t. So aren’t both false prophets?

Unlike Abraham, Jephathat did have to sacrifice his child because of a promise he made to God. No angel stopped him, no ram appeared in the brush. And if God knew the outcome, why didn’t he warn Jephathat that he would have to sacrifice his daughter? And why wasn’t Lot told that he could rescue his daughters but would lose his wife? And why would he free his people from slavery only to have them wander, homeless, for forty years?

Presbyterians believe that Man has free will and choice, but that it’s all planned out, even which choice you will make. That’s always confused me, frankly. And it gives God a power of knowing the future that I don’t think stands up to the church’s own logic.

If God knows the future, isn’t the whole exercise of our existence futile? I propose that God does not seem to dwell outside of time, therefore being able to see past and future equally. His behavior seems as utterly linear as our own. And if that’s the case, then the Apocalypse won’t be the result of Satan trying to take over the world, but rather, God knows in advance only because he is the one who will cause it.

Whether or not God knows the future is important, because if he exists as linearly as we, then all these supposed “prophecies” (though they’re not made by actual prophets) and visions of an impending apocalypse are false. It’s also important because our prayers for our future have unforeseeable outcomes – unforeseeable even by God. Show me in the Bible where it says, “God, knowing the future, left the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil unguarded, even though it would cause guilt and suffering of a million generations of man.” If God knows the future, he’s a mean (and cheating) old man.

And lastly, but not leastly, if God knew the future back when there were real prophets, why no warning to rotate crops, maintain wild areas, stay away from fossil fuels, and otherwise protect the environment, when lack of that information in advance has caused many civilizations to fall, and may ultimately result in the failure of the entire human race? Strange thing not to mention, isn’t it?