Tom, being able to see possibilities doesn't make the future clear at all.
Using the example I gave previously, I married my husband. This is past. In case he dies, I may marry or not marry again. This is future. The reality (a past choice) is clear. The possibility - my choice between the two options - is unclear.
Of course I know the two possibilities; what I don't know is which one will become a reality. So, I can see the possibilities, but this doesn't make the future clear at all.

Tom, I was thinking about temptation. You said that for a temptation to be real, there must be a chance of failure. I would say that for a temptation to be real, there must be the opportunity for failure and the liability to failure, or capability of failure.

Assuming your husband died, there are actually millions of scenarios. Some of these scenarios (or possibilities) would involve you re-marrying and some of them wouldn't. It wouldn't be right to conceive this as simply two future scenarios.



"Possibility of yielding" is the term the SOP uses. In terms of Christ, if there was never a chance that Christ would yield, then He didn't risk anything when He decided to come. He could only have risked something if there was a possibility (or chance) of loss involved.

Similarly it could only be said that heaven was imperiled for our redemption if there was some chance of loss involved.

If it is at all set, it's as set as the present. Choices are always made in the present, not in the future.

Consider a given point in time, like yesterday. There were choices made then, choices being made now, and choices that will be made tomorrow. Choices have been made, are being made, and will be made, in the past, present and future.

The choices made yesterday impacted what choices are possible to make now. Similarly, choices being made now, impact choices that can be made tomorrow. As time goes on, fewer and fewer choices are possible that can be made in the future, because what were possibilities will have become realities.

???
The greater the number of possibilities, the more unclear the future is. The past is clear precisely because there is just one possibility: that which has happened.


Ellen White is using human language, not heavenly language. We speak in terms of possibilities, risks, uncertainties. But who said God must see things in the same way we see them? This is like the story of the three hebrews. Ellen White says that their lives were at stake. But God knew He would deliver them.

True, but if the future is set, so is the present, because the choices which now are future will be made only when they become present. Both the past and the present choices were once future.

I was commenting on this post:



Thomas said that he doesn't see how it would be possible that our present choices impact the future if the future is set. You are saying here that if the future is set, then so is the present. That certainly follows, but how does this address Thomas' point? Saying that the preset is set doesn't help explain how the future can be impacted by present decisions given that the future is fixed. Your idea looks to be that everything is fixed, and nothing is impacted by out decisions (it should be noted that "impacted," as Thomas used it, means being able to change what it otherwise might have been had the given choice not been made).

To get to the bottom line, you're saying everything is fixed, past, present and future, which is certainly logically consistent. If the future is fixed, then so must the present be, and everyone agrees that the past is fixed.

I hadn't realized he had used "impact" in this sense. My idea was that all choices impact future choices - including past choices (which were once future, and then present, and now are past).

BTW, have you noticed my post above this one you've just replied to?

No. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.



"Clear" has to do with how well one can see something. For us, certainly, the past is clearer than the future, but for God having a great number of possibilities doesn't make the future any less clear to Him.



You keep saying this. Of course she uses human language, since she's a human. But why is this noteworthy?



Clearly He doesn't. We can't see the future, but He can. Nobody has been claiming that God sees things like we do.

What we've been disagreeing about is the content of the future. You think it's single-threaded. I think it's multi-threaded. God sees the future as it really is.



But Christ was omniscient. At the time of which it is said that "Christ risked all," He knew what the risks were. So there must have been a possibility of loss.