Now this was not the first time that God told Abraham that He would bless him if he would obey what God commanded to do. God first told Abraham that He would bless him if he would leave his family and homeland. Then God told Abraham that He would provide him with a son to be his heir. Then God appeared to Abraham again and promised him that He would bless him by making him a father of many nations if Abraham would walk before Him and be perfect in his ways. Then God again promised Abraham increased prosperity if Abraham would keep a covenant with God, signified by circumcising every man child in his family from then on.
Finally after all the promises that God had made to Abraham and commandments that He required Abraham to keep, then God felt the need to test Abraham in the most terrific way that Abraham would have to face, taking the life of his promised son. It makes one ask themselves, why after all that God had required Abraham to do and Abraham obeyed in every way, did God test him once again in this manner?
It appears to be very clear to me that God didn’t know how far Abraham would go to prove his faith and trust in Him. Although, shouldn’t God have know that before? We have been taught over the years that God knows everything, but this incident makes you wonder if that is true.
Let’s look at another case in point. In the beginning after God created man on the Earth and a number of generations had passed, God must have discovered that things didn’t turn out as He had hoped. It turned out that men became so wicked and evil that God was repentant for creating them and decided to destroy all that He had made. Does this sound like our God was all knowing, or did He not know in advance that man would turn out like he did?
Doesn’t our bible teachers quote a scripture that says that God knows the end from the beginning and interpret that to mean that God is all knowing? (Isaiah 46:10) In the two cases that I pointed out it should be obvious that either God didn’t know, or had the capability to know and chose not to see the end result in the beginning before these kinds of incidents occur.
There is a word that is used to describe one of the attributes associated with God which is the word “omniscient”. This word does not appear in scripture, but was developed by man and included in the dictionary to attribute to the all knowing attribute of God. Could this word omniscient and the attribute of all knowing be the result of an incorrect interpretation of Isaiah 46:10”?
We are also taught that God has the attribute of foreknowledge, but it obviously wasn’t in play in the cases that I described. As a matter of fact, the only foreknowledge that God exhibited was when He determined in the beginning to predestinate certain individuals to perform His future will. Cases in point are the predestination of Jesus (Romans 8:29-32) and the Apostles. (Ephesians 1:4-5) Nothing in scripture indicates that God had any foreknowledge as to who would or would not be saved in the end. These would be true and accurate facts of scripture unless you choose to accept some man’s private interpretation of them.
If God had the attribute of foreknowledge, knowing in advance that certain individuals would believe the gospel and be saved and/or if God actually predestinated certain ones to be saved, it would fly into the face that God has given each one of us the ability to be free moral agents, to do good or bad. Nothing in the bible, except for certain predestinated individuals chosen to accomplish certain tasks for God, indicates that God micromanages the individual lives of the people.
Now if we look back at Abraham being tested by God by the commandment to sacrifice his only son, there may have been another objective of God’s. Could it have been that in God’s plan for the future that He was contemplating the sacrifice of His only Son for the sake of mankind and wanted to see how such a perfect and righteous man like Abraham would react? Since probably the most righteous man as Abraham was could perform such a task, God thought that if righteous Abraham could do such a thing by sacrificing his only son, how could He do any less for the sake of mankind to prove His love for them.
Yes, this no doubt was an example of God’s foreknowledge and predestination by giving His only Son for the atonement for mankind’s sin. The only thing that could have come close to this feat would be for God himself to shed His own blood for the atonement. Since this was not possible because God is a Spirit not having necessary blood, that the only thing left He could do was to send His Son in the flesh to be born of a woman which would have made His Son a qualified sacrifice.
Now comes the future when God gave His only begotten Son Jesus, who became the Christ, being anointed by God’s Spirit to preach the gospel required for every person to believe and be saved from the second death and to obtain eternal life.
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