By looking at Creation from a bird's eye view, perhaps we can have a hint and understand better the work which God has created. In the beginning God said, Let us make man according to our image.
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
This passage says, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. That means that man was given his own existence, an existence which was separate and apart from the person of God. That is why every living soul in the planet is an individual by himself.
Rev 10:5-6 And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, (6) And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:
But with all of that, right here from where we are; we don't have foreknowledge; (but we can have a glimpse if God gives it to us); in contrast from where God is, where He can see past present and future; we on the other hand is confronted only with the present time. As concerning God, He knows already how you related yourself with His word the Bible, or that you would accept it as God's word but would fall away from faith at some future time.
By His foreknowledge God knows already who are His, and them also who have turned away from Him. But for us, we don't know that. We don't even know if whether we would fall at some future time. And so for us, we are confronted on day by day basis with a decision to make. But God knows already what it was that we eventually made.
(Gen 1:27) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And throughout the Bible, looking from a macro level, we can see that the purpose of God for man was not changed. God has it in His heart to make us like Him. And the things that has happened in the past and those that are happening now and will still happen in the future all add up to that end.
But we cannot really say that God has authored everything that takes place because even right now, we know we are free to do whatever we want, and we know that we do it by ourselves only and not by some controlling force from the outside. We can be persuaded and moved by some external forces, but still the decision to act is solely attributed to the individual.
God has foreknowledge. That means he can see a thing even before it actually takes place. And so we cannot think also that at first, God created man and then after that the unfortunate turn of events so that God has been trying to fix things from there. That's very unlikely because God saw it all already before He even made His very first move. And this is an instance also where the excellencies of God is made manifest.
You see, in a man made program, every single element of that program has been determined by the programmer. If anything functions differently from what the programmer has designed, the system will just not work, it would breakdown.
God's design of creation is just like a big program. The planets are programmed, the earth's gravitational pull is programmed, in fact all of nature follows a definite law or principle that we have discovered through science. And so all of creation are pretty much programmed; that at the end of time, all of creation will eventually yield the result that God desired. In very much the same way that a man made program has to produce also the result for which it was designed.
But the difference between the man made program and God's design for creation is that in God's creation not all the elements function as determined by Him. In a man-made program, all the elements function exactly as the programmer has determined them. But God has given man free will and we are able to do as we please. I believe free will is an attribute of God himself and He gives us that also because God has designed man to be like Him.
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
This passage says, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. That means that man was given his own existence, an existence which was separate and apart from the person of God. That is why every living soul in the planet is an individual by himself.
I see it like this, God has created a dynamic creation, a creation that had a life of its own. And the whole of creation went and did as it pleased. And along with that, God also did what was necessary according to His own purposes. Eventually everything worked out just fine according as God wanted it. He saw it all, he saw everything that has to take place, all that creation would do and all that He has to do also, before they let them all be and things started to take place.
That gives us also a preview of what eternity is like. Eternity is not confined in time. But the physical creation is confined in time. And eternity may give us an idea how God is able to see all through out from the beginning of time, to the present time, up to the end of time. The Bible does tells us that time will come to end.
Rev 10:5-6 And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, (6) And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:
But with all of that, right here from where we are; we don't have foreknowledge; (but we can have a glimpse if God gives it to us); in contrast from where God is, where He can see past present and future; we on the other hand is confronted only with the present time. As concerning God, He knows already how you related yourself with His word the Bible, or that you would accept it as God's word but would fall away from faith at some future time.
By His foreknowledge God knows already who are His, and them also who have turned away from Him. But for us, we don't know that. We don't even know if whether we would fall at some future time. And so for us, we are confronted on day by day basis with a decision to make. But God knows already what it was that we eventually made.
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