God perfectly knows Himself, and, being the source and author of all things, it follows that He knows all that can be known. And this He knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries or ages yet unborn.
A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Tozer - Omniscience
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5 comments:
Thank you for this quote.
I am looking at the subject of predestination and the elect through the eyes of Gods foreknowledge, in that he knows who would accept his offer of salvation and who would not.
Because God is beyond the limitations of time, I started to look at how he is the God from the beginning and is the God at the end / future and is there in the middle / present.
Therefore he knows who will be saved because he is already there, he knows who will be judged because he has already judged us...And because he is beyond the limits of time he knew this at the beginning of creation.
It started to give me a headache last night and your quote has helped me out terrifically.
Thanks heaps craig.
`includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries or ages yet unborn.'
So that includes the hour of his own return, then?
Craig, if I may make a comment: you say `he knows who would accept his offer of salvation and who would not'. This is the view I used to hold, but it's not compatible with Scripture, which says (Romans 9:16) `It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy'. If salvation were a matter of our totally free and unconditioned acceptance or rejection of God's offer then we'd be able to boast that we had accepted it, unlike Judas and Pharaoh, but the Bible is clear that `it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast' (Ephesians 2:8 - 9).
Hi Daniel,
I know the understanding from where you are coming from. But I don't think it is the right interpretation of the Scriptures.
Paul clearly says that faith comes from hearing the word of God. There fore, it is the Word of God that is God's gift that grants faith.
Gods mercy is that he sent his son..the word of God...because there is absolutely nothing we can do to save ourselves...
I also think it is a furphy to say boast about accepting help...
17th October last year I collapsed to the ground at work, parallelized on my right side due to viral encephalitis. I was on the ground for over an hour before someone found me. He called the ambulance and they took me to hospital.
Am I going to boast that I accepted their help?? not on your nelly. But I did accept gratefully their help.
The same thing happens when we accept Christ through the convicting work of the Holy Spirit . It is he who convicts us through the word, it is us who accepts the word...
Blessings craig b
Thanks, Craig. I don't want to usurp Custard's blog, so I'll just make this my last post on the matter -- you can always e-mail me through my profile to continue the discussion if you wish.
I think that `this' in Ephesians 2 must refer to faith -- the Word of God isn't mentioned in that passage. The Word of God goes out to those that remain unconverted as well as those that get converted, so that cannot be what makes the difference -- it must be the work of the Holy Spirit in opening the heart (cf., e.g., Acts 16:14). (And `this' cannot refer to Jesus because of the impersonal pronoun `it'.)
I agree with you that `there is absolutely nothing we can do to save ourselves', but this means that even our faith must come from outside. (If it didn't there would be something we could do to (help) save ourselves.)
Interesting example about your being paralysed. But if you were really paralysed then you didn't accept the help of the ambulance people -- you weren't able to accept or reject their help, and your presence in hospital was entirely due to them, not you.
If you had been able to reject them then you could have boasted that you, unlike others, had the good sense not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Yes, we accept the word, but the question is `why?'. The Bible teaches that we accept only because he opens our hearts and gives us the faith to accept.
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