God Changing His Mind: the
Openness Delusion
Published on Facebook, December 4, 2009
By Bud Powell
Hab.
3:6. "He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the
nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did
bow: His ways are everlasting." They change; He does not.
Some people falsely believe that God can change His mind.
This is an old error that the church has rejected through all the years, but it
keeps coming back in different forms. It is necessary to believe that God
changes His mind because they think that this keeps man from being a puppet
without the ability to change things by prayers, good deeds, etc. This false
view they try to support by appeal to places in the Bible where God appears to
change His mind, or to those places where it says that God “repents” or some
such thing. A favorite passage is from Isaiah 38:
In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of
Amoz came unto him, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in
order: for thou shalt die, and not live.
2 Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto the LORD,
3 And said, Remember now, O LORD, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee
in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy
sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.
4 Then came the word of the LORD to Isaiah, saying,
5 Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I
have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days
fifteen years.
6 And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria:
and I will defend this city.
7 And this shall be a sign unto thee from the LORD, that the LORD will do this
thing that he hath spoken;
8 Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in
the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by
which degrees it was gone down.
To some it appears to say that God sent Isaiah to tell Hezekiah that he was
going to die of the sickness.from which he suffered. Hezekiah turned to the
wall, wept, and cried out to God in prayer. God sent Isaiah back with the
message that God had heard his prayer and that he would give Hezekiah 15 more
years of life. Obvious, Hezekiah’s prayer changed the mind of God and
illustrates the freedom of man’s will, which God respects. This is in error,
for we should consider the following:
1. We
will assume that God knows the future; otherwise, He would just be guessing
that Hezekiah was going to die of the sickness.
2.
Assuming that God knows the future, we must then say that He knew that Hezekiah
was going to pray, and that He [God] was going to add fifteen years to his
life.
3. Then
God must have participated in something He knew was a lie when He told Isaiah
to deliver the first message to Hezekiah. Why would He do that?
4. One
way to get out of blasphemy of calling God a liar is the consistent one taken
by the Openness of God movement; God doesn’t know the future. He is just making
an educated guess from His superior knowledge. This is consistent if you place
God in time. But it is small comfort to avoid one blasphemy by uttering
another.
5.
Another way out of the dilemma is that God did not tell Hezekiah all He plans.
He is not obligated to tell us all His plans, for He wants us to trust Him and
walk by faith and not by sight. He was not obligated to tell Isaiah or Hezekiah
all that He had planned for Hezekiah, to show that He would do good things to
His people and to deliver Jerusalem. If God had said all He planned, the
message would have been something like this, “Thus saith the LORD, Set thine
house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live, EXCEPT THAT I WILL SEND THE
HOLY SPIRIT TO MOVE YOU TO REAL PRAYER [FOR THERE IS NO TRUE PRAYER WITH OUT
THE HOLY SPIRIT AND FAITH], AND I WILL ADD FIFTEEN YEARS TO YOUR LIFE AND I
WILL ALSO DELIVER JERUSALEM FROM THE ASSYRIANS. THIS WILL ALSO BE AN EXAMPLE TO
ALL MY PEOPLE TO TRUST ME AND BELIEVE ME.
6. It
might be too much to ask, but it seems that everyone will admit that this was a
very unusual message that Isaiah brought to Hezekiah. God certainly knows the
time of everyone’s death, but He doesn’t tell most of us. I don’t know anyone
who ever got such a message. Did He just drop by to share a friendly message
with Hezekiah. “Hey, there is nothing to it, but your time is up. Bye now.”
Seems He must have had more in mind. Indeed He did.
7. This
very unusual message was designed to stir up His people to trust Him and to
know that He is the master of time and all the events in time. As an additional
sign He rolled the shadow back on the sundial ten degrees. What an awesome
display of power and authority! If God can do this and have such authority and
rule over the movements of the sun and stars, then He could have put the lights
in the heavens on that fourth day so they could be seen immediately from the
earth.
8. This
means that God does not dwell in time and is not subject to time. Both time and
space are His creation. He can do anything He likes to do with His creation,
but He cannot deny Himself. He rules time; it does not rule Him. Both
transcendence and immanence are true: He is above all time, outside of time;
and He is wholly present in every time and every place.
9. How
foolish to think that God changed His mind! To implicitly deny His
foreknowledge; bad enough that He would not know His universe and its space and
time; worse that He could not know Himself and His own supposed changes. That
He would lie about knowing something He couldn’t know. We do not need enemies
ourside Christianity with those friends within.
10. Seems
so unbelievable that God would change His mind over such a small thing as the
death of a king—Even David didn’t get that favor. How easily the tears melted
the heart of God becomes even more amazing when we consider how hardhearted and
stubborn God was when His only begotten Son wept, and sweat great drops of
blood, begging that the cup of the Cross, be taken from Him if it were
possible. How easy for God to have said, ‘I repent that I told that to Adam. I
was a bit harsh. The soul that sins does not have to die. I change my mind. I
can just forgive their sins without all this fuss. That first plan wasn't so
perfect anyway.” How could He hear the prayer of Hezekiah over a trivial thing;
and be so stubborn over such a major thing? If this crap is being preached, no
wonder people are turning to atheism.
11. The
truth is that “God knows all His works from the beginning of the world..” He
even knows what people would do if they had a chance to do it, even if they
don’t get the chance to do it. [1Samuel 23:11-14]
12. God
is thoroughly knowledgeable about all my path, my journey. Ps. 139:3. If He
does not know my past, my present, and my future He would not have this
thorough knowledge. He therefore, does not need to change His mind about
anything about me, for He already has perfect knowledge.
13. A
passion for man's free will ["limited" of course, for they know man
cannot choose to make the sun green], will eventually overthrow all the faith
of the Scripture.
Best source on this subject, I think: Stephen Charnock's "Existence and
Attributes of God"
Later on, an article on How God knows the future. No speculation, no imagination.
Just scripture.
My best guess, for now.
