Tom, yes, God is unique and special. He "inhabits eternity." He is omnipresent. God occupies the past, present, and future simultaneously. Therefore, He knows "the end from the beginning." No one else possesses these supernatural abilities. Why? Because they are not God. He is not bound by our space-time continuum. Neither does God's unique and special abilities alter it. As you like to say, "The future is what it is." The future is totally and completely open. It can play out any number of ways. We are free to choose as we please. Nothing is hindering us. Especially not the fact God knows what we will choose and how things will unfold. Again, His knowledge is based on His supernatural ability to occupy the past, present, and future simultaneously. His being ubiquitous in no way alters our reality.

The fact is God is omnipresent in time and space without altering or changing time and space or our freedom to choose as we please.


God does indeed exist. Therefore, He cannot know otherwise.


I agree with you that God knows which individuals will be involved and the character traits they will cultivate. But do you agree with me that knowing as much involves knowing countless details in advance? Think of the myriad of choices and outcomes involved in cultivating character. Think of all the people and all the choices and all the outcomes involved in creating nations and laws and churches and doctrines all culminating in legislation enforcing Sunday laws.

I wonder if time and space really are entities, making it possible to be inside or outside of them. Water is an entity which you can either be in or not be in. Time is the continuous progression of events.

I wonder whether it really is a blessing to be omnipresent in time. Every hurt, every pain, every euphoria, every laugh being ever equally present in an eternal "now". When you are in time, every time the hammer finds your thumb rather than the nail, the pain eventually fades away. But if all the times you hit your thumb with that hammer were all equally present, there would be no relief. At all times God would be experiencing Eve reaching for that fruit. At all times God would be experiencing sending the rains over the world of Noah. At all times God would be experiencing the crafting and worship of the golden calf. At all times God would experience nails being driven into His hands. At every moment God would experience the final moment when so many of His creatures give their final breath and cease to be.

If heaven is being invited to participate in that, annihilation soon seems like a rather good deal..

(Importing concepts of God from extrabiblical sources makes even less sense when all they do is smear Gods image and reputation.)

You really do think that keeping the sabbath is the epicentre of the controversy between God and sin?

Thomas, God has a perfect memory. He recalls things in perfect detail with all His senses in good working order. Time does nothing to lessen the impact. Jesus is the "lamb slain from the foundation of the world." The reality and efficacy of His life and death on earth is something that supersedes our space-time continuum. God is big enough to handle it.

And, yes, I am 100% in agreement with the interpretation of endtime events described in great detail in the GC. I take it you're not. Have you ever explained how you see things playing out?

This means God is eternal.



This doesn't make sense. The future hasn't happened yet.



That's not why He knows the end from the beginning. He knows the end from the beginning for the same reason that we do, except that His knowledge is perfect and His ability to visualize is perfect.

I'll give some examples. If you visualize closing a door, you know what will happen, even without closing the door. Or, to put it another way, before you close the door, you know what will happen. This is because of past experience, and knowledge of what happens when a door is closed. You can visualize the action of the door, the sound it makes, the sense of touch that would come from touching the knob, and so forth.

Here's another example. When you roll a die, you can visualize it's rolling around, and know it will come up with a number from 1 to 6. However, you don't know which, because you don't know all the variables involved involving the force of the roll, how the die is rolling around, how it bumps, and so forth. If you knew these things as well as God does, you could predict exactly which die would come up.

God knows everything. He has perfect knowledge. He understands how things works, and He knows people's characters. He also has perfect visualization, so the future is as the past, in terms of His seeing it.



In virtually every conversation you repeat this, yet it's been pointed out many times that this is not an issue. This is very curious. It makes me wonder, like Thomas asked you, if you're understanding what we're talking about.

No one has suggested that God's abilities alter the future. Why would you think this is something worth mentioning once, let alone dozens of times?



Not under your presuppositions it can't. It's rather astounding to me that you don't perceive this.



Again, it makes me think you're not understanding what's being said when you write this. This has never been an issue. Nobody thinks otherwise. There's no reason to make this point. Why *are* you making this point? Why do you make it so often?



Why would this prevent us from doing what we please? Why do you think this is a point worth making?



No it's not. His knowledge is based on His intelligence, His ability to reason, and to visualize.



What do you mean? It's not "our reality." It's just reality.

Please see previous post.



Bingo! The future does not exist. Therefore, God cannot know otherwise.



No.



That doesn't matter. What matters is the choices that people who already have a certain character make.

When the light of the final message is given to the world, the message which started in 1888, people will divide into two camps, those who reject the message and those who respond to it. Those who reject it will respond to Satan's bidding, and God knows Satan's character, and how those who are in his camp will respond.



This isn't looking at the problem in the right way, IMO. Think of it from the standpoint of Satan.

When Satan sees the final Gospel message, which prepares a people for the coming of Christ, he knows his time is short and he has to do something. So he counterfeits. He counterfeits Christ, the Gospel, the Holy Spirit, the Sabbath -- everything. God knows what the result of this is. It doesn't matter what the time period is, or who's alive, or any of this. There's no need to see all the myriad possibilities to know what will happen. Understanding the principles involved, and the character of those involved, is sufficient.

This is a good point, really important.

The important concept is that things happen in order. Event A occurs before event B. To speak in terms of time allows us to make this distinction in a meaningful way.

So the question becomes if events occur in an ordered fashion to God. That is, does God perceive that event A occurs before event B, as we do? Or do all events just happen to God?

Everything in inspiration, whether Scripture or the SOP, suggests that events happen in an ordered fashion to God. Scores upon scores of examples of this could be given.

You sure like those double negatives! Takes a little while to figure out what you're saying. Not sure one this and your other one. Can't remember truth tables for sure, but thought if you negated both negatives it would be the same. So that would be, "The atheist does understand why God has fully explained to us why He chose ". But I don't think that's what you mean. However, negating one would be the opposite what you mean.

Also I'm not sure what Florida Medical Associations (FMAs) have to do with it.

But anyway, I think I understand the last part. I gave an actual example of a conclusion of someone who believes the way you do about God knowing the future. Can you give an actual example of a conclusion of someone who believes the way we do about God not knowing the future? And I don't follow your logic about someone seeing God as favorable if He created people knowing which ones would die in the lake of fire but hoping they wouldn't.

I once believed as MM did...well at least the part about God is all knowing so of course He knows the future. I resisted strongly and gave some of his same arguments when I was presented with the concept that God may not know the future. How was that possible, I asked. But when it was pointed out that if God knew the future, then Jesus dying on the cross was not a risk but would be a sure thing, I was stuttering, uh, uh, but,.... and then silent for a lack of argument. It was one of those things that hit you up the side of the head that logic requires you to rethink your thoughts. It would make Jesus dying as a ritual and made Him as offering no sacrifice and experiencing nothing of what we experience.

Why do others not arrive at the same conclusion? Do they see the contradiction of logic, but say they "just have faith and believe"? Or is it they are not a student of logic and do not understand its principles?