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Does God change his mind?

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11:43 pm
December 16, 2009


Brady

Member

posts 7

1

What is the point of evangelism?

To go get God's other sheep. John 10:16 – "I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd." The sheep are there, and they will listen. When you go to evangelize, then, you know that God has already prepared the hearts of some people (his sheep) for the gospel, and has hardened the hearts of everyone else against it. There's never any question, then, about whether your gospel presentation was smooth enough to change minds. The work is entirely God's.

"When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed." Acts 13:48

Paul and Barnabas just spoke the words the Holy Spirit gave them (Matt 10:19-20) and the ones God had appointed, or chosen, or predestined, were saved. The sheep heard his voice.

The point of evangelism is the joy of God, because his will is that we evangelize, and when we are conformed to that will, we will evangelize and we get joy.

Why pray?

To align our will with God's, or to put it another way, to be conformed to the likeness of Christ. Christ always did what the Father did (John 5:19-20, John 8:29), which was predetermined to the minute. He always knew exactly where he should be and what he should be doing at any second, whether in the temple as a boy, or at the well in Samaria or on the cross.

Prayer doesn't change reality, because the only reality is God's will, and God's will doesn't change. Instead, prayer is predetermined communication between the Father and his children designed to conform the children into the likeness of the Son.

We don't pray to change God's will – we can't even go to the Father directly with our petitions but have to always have the Holy Spirit to intercede for us, which is why we pray by his power and in the name of Jesus. Otherwise our prayers aren't heard.

When Jesus taught the disciples to pray, he made it all about conformity. To paraphrase the Lord's prayer: "You are holy, so you get the glory and make your kingdom on the earth. You give us everything we need, and you forgive us, so that we can forgive and not want to be tempted." That doesn't change anything about the will of God.

When we pray for more specific things, then, we have to be conscious that we may not be praying for God's will to be done, which should be prayed first and last, because we need to get our heads around the reality that it will  be done.

That doesn't rule out persistent prayer. We don't know the will of the Father perfectly, and it may be that he's answering your prayer: "Keep praying!" His will is that we always pray (1 Thess 5:17), and he may have predetermined years of your prayer before he acts.

When Christ was in the garden, just as a quick PS to Jessica's post, he was modeling prayer for us in dire circumstances. But he was also in a position that no one else will be or can be in. He was God about to be separated from God. Nobody should will that. It took perfect submission to go ahead with that. If his will was to be cut off from God, he would have been a sinner. Sinners want hell, because they hate God.

The "cup" was not mainly the cup of physical suffering, it was the cup of God's wrath. He didn't want to face hell, nor should any sane person.

1:02 pm
December 15, 2009


Brady

Member

posts 7

2

That's the end of my shpiel, now I'm gonna address your questions a lot more succintly. Coming tomorrow.

12:57 pm
December 15, 2009


Brady

Member

posts 7

3

I think there are more than a hundred passages in the Old Testament where God is said to change his mind, or relent, or repent, or turn from his anger. Major scenes where God appears to change his mind include Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, Moses' intercession on Mt. Sinai, Saul losing the kingship and the Ninevites' repentance.

I'll just focus on one, God vs. Moses on Mt. Sinai. Brief intro:

The same principal of interpretation applies in all of these passages. In 1 Samuel 15:11, God says that he is grieved he made Saul king. 28 verses later, in the same chapter, this is said: "He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind." If God did really change his mind in regard to Saul's kingship, this is a massive contradiction, which destroys inerrancy. What do you do with v. 29?

Interpret the more complex Scripture in light of the less complex Scripture. We assume, then that God didn't change his mind in regard to Saul: he had predetermined that Saul would be the first king of Israel, only to be rejected. How then was he grieved, since he caused the whole thing?

When Jesus heard that Lazarus was dying, he waited two days before going. Because he waited, Lazarus died (John 11:21). Jesus said that the death of Lazarus was intended to glorify himself (John 11:4). Both point to the obvious reality: God killed Lazarus. Yet Jesus still wept.
Although God causes, decrees, allows, ordains, predetermines events, he still has emotions. They aren't like ours, rather ours are shadows of his, bound by our sinful bodies and our limited knowledge. God can have perfect knowledge of and control over the death of Lazarus and still grieve in his heart, like he did over Saul. And at the same time he feels perfect pleasure in his executing his own good and perfect will.


So zooming the lens, as Shai says, on God and Moses on Mt. Sinai.

The first clue that this is God's test of Moses and not at all a contest between God's will and Moses' will in an effort to see which will prevail is v.7 of chapter 32: "Then the LORD said to Moses, 'Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt.'"

God has already promised never to disown his people (Genesis 17:8), so it's odd that a hundred pages later he's already threatening to do it. Assuming inerrancy, it's not a contradiction. This passage is more complex than the Abrahamic covenant, so something else must be going on here.

Open Theists run wild with the Abraham sacrificing Isaac passage, saying that God really wanted to know what Abraham was going to do, so he tested him. But they tend to ignore the oddness of God's request – that Abraham should do something that God expressly forbids in the law, human sacrifice. When God told Abraham to kill Isaac, therefore, it should stick out as exceptionally weird. Something must be going on here beneath the surface, and I think Abraham knew it as well, because he tells his servants that "we will return."

Did God ever intend for Abraham to kill Isaac? No. He intended for it to go down exactly as it did, which would then point to God killing his own Son.

So what's going on in Exodus 32 is God putting Moses to the test. The first part is, "Whose people are Israel, God's or Moses'?" Moses passes: "Why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?" The second is, does Moses love God's favor more than God's glory? God offers Moses the Abrahamic promise, the offer of which is completely hypothetical (because it would've voided the prophecy of Gen 49:10 among others). Moses passes again; he doesn't even bite, but pours out his heart in intercession for the people, on behalf of God's glory and his name. The Israelites were dragging the name of God through the mud for the Egyptians to see, and Moses was chiefly concerned with this. As a result, God was pleased with Moses' prayer and "relented" (v.14)

Did God change his mind? No. He had determined millennia before that this conversation would take place exactly as it did on Mt. Sinai. He had perfect foreknowledge of Moses (Eph 1) and knew what his exact response would be in the situation.

Did God make an empty threat? No. God was simply stating the natural result of his unrestrained anger as a reminder to Moses of his power. He then challenged Moses to stand aside, which Moses would not do. It was God's intention that Moses should intercede against the wrath of God, which points to Christ's intercession at the cross and his continuing intercession on behalf of the church.

Did God go with his "Plan B" based on Moses' intercession? No. It was his intention all along to continue the nation with all twelve tribes. Moses was a Levite (with half-Jewish children to boot), and if he had wiped out all but Moses' family, he would have wiped out the other 11 tribes, including Judah, who were promised the Messiah.

Why this test, then, and this prayer? Prayer exists to align our will with God's. God's will will always be done, since nobody can thwart it. Therefore prayer does not change God's will, though it can appear to.

This is what the language of Exodus 32:14 means – to us, the human recipients of the Bible, it looked like God relenting. That's the best way of describing the transaction, because what was at stake was the real threat of God's wrath vs. the real deserving recipient. When those two unstoppable forces meet – the holiness of God and the total decaying influence of sin, and nothing happens, you have to describe it as "God relented." Otherwise you say that the people didn't deserve death.

This should be a huge red flag. Whenever the Old Testament says God changed his mind, it's always referring to God having mercy on sinners. The language is expressed that way to highlight the fact that God has not lost his holiness, and sin has not lost its damnability. It's a mounting tension – God is storing up his wrath for a day of judgment.

So you see Moses coming down the mountain furious. He was on his knees before God, getting his will aligned with God's, and only then does he feel the divine anger. He sees what a travesty it is that they didn't get wiped out. The will of God never got changed, it never went anywhere or got diverted. When God relented, that anger got stored up for the cross and the day of judgment.

Ezekiel 22:30 to sum up: "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign LORD."

God isn't surprised to find no one here. He knows there is no possible mediator between God and man except his perfect Son. He's not "looking" in the sense that he's really trying to find someone so he doesn't have to kill his Son, he's "looking" to show us the impossibility of finding someone adequate.

Luther called this "baby talk" – since we can't understand the fullness of God's will, he breaks it down in easy language, like "God changed his mind." I don't know if "baby talk" is a helpful designation, and I wouldn't build my interpretation around it. I think God speaks to us in profound words that require the teaching of the Holy Spirit. But… I think there is some validity there. Saying "God changed his mind" is certainly simpler and more immediately meaningful than, "God predestined himself to say this, and then predestined Moses to disagree, and then predestined himself to say this and do this in response." It's the utter strangeness of the phrase "God changed his mind" that arrests our attention and shows us Christ. The atonement is as if God relented, or repented, or changed his mind – the effects are the same, though the reality is that it was intended all along.

The Old Testament passages that talk about God relenting or repenting or diverting his course of action, changing his mind, should not undermine the omniscience or the sovereign will of God. They are signposts to Christ. Based on myriad simple texts that say God does not change, and his purposes are eternal, we can interpret the more complex texts as showing God's predetermined will appearing to change to ignorant humans. But these changes are designed to point us to Christ, since they all concern God's wrath being diverted from humans to his Son.

At each point, God never really intended to pour out his wrath. Instead, he has appointed two days for wrath: the cross and the Great White Throne. If your sins aren't on Jesus, they're on you.

Open Theism undermines that reality by saying that God doesn't completely know who will be judged for what, and when. The reality is that God knows and wills exactly what will happen.

6:39 pm
December 11, 2009


etrulsson

New Member

posts 2

4

So if everything is predetermined

a) what is the point of evangelism?

b) why pray? to aline our will with God's? but is not our will predetermined?


If everything is predetermined then God had decided from the begining of time that Adam and Eve would sin. God made a perfect world with no sin, but decided He liked the idea of Lucifer rebelling and man falling away. Adam's actions did not change God's plan, God had planned all along for Adam to fall into sin.


——


I see that God uses all things for good (Rom 8:28). This also explains why good came of times when Israel chose to sin; God is big and loving to do so. Or would you still say God preordained that they sin?


——-


Tell me why Jesus said, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;"?

Obviously Jesus knew the Fathers will, and I would add that Jesus' will was always aligned with the Fathers. But regardless of that, knowing God willed Jesus to die on the cross, why would Jesus even ask "if it is possible, let this cup pass"?

Why would the Son ask that if He knew the Father's will/mind is unchanging?

12:50 pm
December 11, 2009


Brady

Member

posts 7

5

I haven't yet dealt with what the "God changed his mind" passages do mean. Stay tuned for part 2.

11:10 am
December 11, 2009


Brady

Member

posts 7

6

The starting point is Isaiah 40:13 – "Who has understood the mind of the LORD, or instructed him as his counselor?" Rhetorical, obviously. Language is inadequate here, so when we describe the mind of God, we have to decide which language is the most helpful to describe the self-evident truth that God is omniscient. 

A few chapters later, Isaiah 46 – "I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please" supports this, as does the divine monologue at the end of Job – he knows all, past, present, future, insignificant, significant.

Any flavor of Open Theism that attempts to limit God's knowledge is heresy. I confidently draw the line there because it's simply against the Bible. He knew the day his Son would be presented as king in Jerusalem (Daniel 9) as well as he knows when mountain goats are born (Job 39:1) and when sparrows die (Matthew 10).

The question assumes a false premise, as well, but I'll assume it for the sake of argument. God cannot actually change his mind in any way that can be meaningfully expressed in our language. We make decisions as points in a timeline. God exists outside time. It helps our understanding to say, for example, that God is "working," and we see that as chronological. But the reality is that God is constantly in a state of work and constantly at a state of rest. Consider this 'contradiction':

John 5:17 – "Jesus said to them, 'My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.'"

Hebrews 4:3-4 – "And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: 'And on the seventh day God rested from all his work.'"

Both are true, but not contradictory. The work of God is subservient to the rest of God, because the former exists in time, whereas the latter is eternal. God 'works' in days, but he has been resting since the beginning.

The implication is that when faced with an apparent contradiction in the Word, like "The Lord changed his mind" (Amos 7:6) and "I the Lord do not change" (Malachi 3:6), interpret the more complex Scripture in light of the less complex Scripture.

Amos 7:6 adds an extra element, the mind of God. If we can assume that Malachi 3:6 is true, and that it applies to the Lord's whole being, since it simply says "I the Lord" – his nature, his attributes, his emotions, his will, his thoughts, everything – then we know that nothing of the Lord really changes, in the objective sense.

Subjectively, however, we see the actions of God in relation to ours, and since we see our actions in time, we assume that God's must be in time as well.

Revelation 13:8, depending on how you translate it, says either that Jesus was slain from the foundation of the world, or that the names of the elect were written in the book of life from the foundation of the world. Either way, you have redemption as existing outside time, and the death of Jesus and the writing of the elect are one and the same redemptive act.

And so the Son was slain and risen and the elect were chosen and purchased before any existence existed, and these were in the changeless mind of God.

Summing up quickly: Since God does not change, no part of him changes. Since no part of him changes, his mind does not change.

An argument here would be, maybe God only predetermines the significant events, and not the insignificant ones. Maybe he allows creativity, human action and chance into the equation, and then reacts to them, or guides them, or sculpts them – whatever language you like. God works "with" creation.

This assumes that there are significant events and insignificant events – a dangerous assumption, first of all. Certainly tripping on the sidewalk doesn't have the implications that the crucifixion of Christ has. But significance is relative, and Revelation 13:8, unless we are egomaniacs, juxtaposes the infinitely significant with the infinitely insignificant. Our lives are nothing to be compared with the death of God the Son. Even our accumulated lives are worthless – in Isaiah 40 God considers all the nations as "dust on the scales." We're not in the equation. The only reason we have weight is because God is sitting on both sides of the balance.

So the insignificant immediately becomes significant with the atonement, in the way that an ant on top of a skyscraper is "tall." We must assume, then, that any part of the universe considered by God to be significant is significant. Matthew 10 uses the sparrow to show that God does view everything, from quarks to quasars, as significant.

Because every event in the universe is significant to God, there are no "significant" and "insignificant" events. Only significant events and more significant events. And if the event of Christ's death was the most significant event in a gradation of significance, you can argue from greater to lesser – that God doesn't only step in on the big ones. He's intimately involved in every event.

And therefore, if Christ's death exists outside of time in the mind of God, every event does as well.

God has predetermined every event in the universe, since every event has significance and will be judged. The crack in the sidewalk that you tripped on will be judged. The lion that ate the gazelle will be judged. Creation has been subjected to frustration, and it will be destroyed.

The night that I spent on Facebook when the Holy Spirit wanted me on my knees will be one less coin I can give back to Jesus in love and gratitude when I see him. It's all significant.

What, then, of passages like Amos 7:6?

Open theism has no shortage of biblical 'proof.' God is constantly said to change his mind in the Old Testament. Even the Mosaic covenant is conditional – if you do this, this will happen. If not, this will happen.

It seems as if there are alternate futures, or that God reacts to human events. But this is our viewpoint, like saying that we stand still while the sun moves across the sky. The reality is the opposite.

When God gave the Law, he gave two conditions, blessing and curse. These aren't to reveal separate possible realities, but to explain the consequences of Israel's actions. God's predetermined course for Israel was exactly what history revealed – the rejection of God as king, the establishment of the monarchy, the division of the kingdom, the exile, the return, the domination of the Gentiles, Messiah, the destruction of Jerusalem.

In time, this looks like God changing his course, changing his mind with regard to Israel. As if his first intention were to prosper Israel in the land, but then the golden calf happened, and God got outraged and wanted to wipe out Israel, and would have were it not for the intervention of Moses.

From eternity, we see all these things as having already been completed, as having yet to be completed, as being completed currently, all these simultaneously… words fail to describe the view. But God's certainly not changing his mind based on the machinations of created beings in created time.

Instead, God planned the day that the Israelites would build the calf. He put it on the very day they were to receive the law, to illustrate the law's power to reveal sin and impotence to conquer it. He put restless emotions in the camp. He put cowardice in Aaron. He held the molecules of Aaron's fingers together as Aaron melted down their earrings. He held the molecules of the Levites' swords together as they ran them through all the people. He directed microbes in destroying the internal organs of the Israelites. Where was God not in Exodus 33? Where is he not, ever?

How can we say that we influence God, when his mind plans every one of our days to the atom? How can we say that he reacts to us, when every action of ours requires neurons, amino acids, oxygen, blood, gravity, atmospheric pressure, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces among millions of other life-sustaining gifts?

He sustains all things (Hebrews 1:3). In him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28)

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