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IS GOD’S VIEW OF THE FUTURE ‘OPEN’ OR ‘CLOSED’?

One of the most heated recent theological debates centred around the notion of whether God not only knows the future, but whether He decrees it. On one side of the debate there are those who claim that the future is open even to God. They claim that the future is up for grabs. God, in their view, has expressed His desire for how He would like the future to unfold. In order for this to happen, because the future is open, God’s purpose needs people to move history toward this end. Those who have a closed view of the future strongly disagree with this assessment.

One of the reasons why I have a Theologically closed view of God and the future is that the Scriptures are full of predictive prophecies and very often the account of their precise fulfilment as well. Far from the need for God’s people to leave the bleachers and step onto the field to try and help God out, we have Biblical records of God’s immediate and unaided redemptive intervention into human affairs just as He had prophesied. We refer to this exclusively divine attribute as God’s sovereignty.

What Christ prophesied in Matthew 24 is a classic example of this. There was no way that His disciples could have manipulated the fulfilment of the events which Christ stunningly predicted. This is why I am confident that He will also orchestrate the events described in the closing Book of the Bible in His good time!

Join with me in a quest to grow in our understanding of these things as we look at a chapter of the Book of Revelation each day via YouTube. As you do, I invite you to leave your comments and questions (as you’ll some have done) and let’s see if we can unpack this culminating book of the Bible together. [continue]