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Transcript 340C — God's Foreknowledge Explained
CALLER: Does God know from before the foundation of the world about our lives, what's going to happen?
HC: Does God know everything that is going to happen in our lives from before the foundations of the earth?
I like to use this illustration because I'm on very solid Biblical ground when I use this. In Ephesians 1:4 we read that we are chosen in Christ from before the foundations of the earth. That means that the Lord knew my name before He ever created the universe. Now who am I? And you can ask the same question, Who am I?
Each one of us are what we are only because we had a certain set of parents. And our parents are only what they are because they in turn had a specific set of parents. And their grandparents in turn are only what they are because they had a certain set of parents. And you can go all the way back to Noah this way.
In other words, when God named me to be saved from before the foundations of the earth (and this would be true of anyone who is born again) He thereby knew exactly who I was. He would have had to have known my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, my great great-grandparents, all the way back down the line. Now when I think of all the detail that is part of my parents' life in coming together so they became married, and my grandparents so that they became acquainted with each other so eventually they became married, and my great-grandparents (marriages sometimes that were good marriages, marriages that were bad marriages, births out of wedlock, some within, marriages that were broken, all kinds of details that are part of the whole marriage relationship) all of this would have had to have been in view in order for God to name me or to name you, if you're born again.
This gives us one way of looking at the marvellous foreknowledge of God in seeing the end from the beginning. God saw the whole program. And out of all these He preordained those who were to be saved, as we read in Ephesians 2. Now if He could have known all this detail, then certainly He could have known all the details of our lives.
When we talk about God, then we're talking about His Infinite Majesty. Our minds are finite, and so for us to say that He would know all the details down through the ages, from before the foundations of the earth, that's just incomprehensible. That's beyond any possibility. Well, that's because we're finite. We can't appreciate this possibility. But God is God. He is the Great I AM, the ever present one. We must never suggest for a moment that God is limited in any way.