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Does God Know My Future? - Page 2

There's a common misconception toward the idea of omniscience. Let's assume for the sake of argument that in 10 years, I'm going to be the governor of Minnesota. But I don't know this yet. However, Heavenly Father does know this. But the point is this: How does He know it? Does He know it before it happened, or does He know it because it happened?

We have this erroneous assumption that there is a linear progression of time. However, the scriptures tell us that God is not bound by any such linear progression. For the resurrected being, there is no time, but instead one eternal round. So in this sense, God can see what we're going to do, but only because in his scope we've already done it. In our scope, we haven't gotten to that point in time yet.

Our Father in Heaven isn't going to know something about us that we will not have done. His knowledge is therefore dependent on our action. Without the specific action, there is no knowledge of it. He can only know that I'm going to be the governor of Minnesota if that's what I'm really going to do. If it isn't real, He wouldn't know it. Don't confuse the timeline.

That's precisely the point, Jen. Heavenly Father only knows the future because to Him it has already happened. We just haven't caught up with Him yet, since we're stuck in time. It doesn't mean He knew it before it happened. It means He saw it happen before we did.

God allows evil to happen because humans brought evil into the world, and free agency is more important than temporary evil in our lives. He could rid the world of evil, but then He would in the process be taking away our agency to choose between good and evil. If there's no evil, then the choice is already made for us, ergo Satan's plan.

Yes. But remove the word "potentially", because there's nothing potential about it.

No, because that would be predestination, which does not involve agency.

The future doesn't change. There's only one future. There are many hypotheticals on how the future could theoretically play out, but it can only play out one way. Someone mentioned that if Joseph Smith had lived to age 70, the Second Coming would have happened in his lifetime. But that's only a hypothetical.

A person can't both sin and not sin in a situation. Let's say I am confronted with the choice to commit adultery this weekend. I will either choose it or I won't. I don't have dual outcomes. It can only be one way or the other. Whatever I choose is the real future, and whatever I don't choose is merely a hypothetical future. We can't tell the difference, because we haven't gotten there yet, but Heavenly Father can tell, because He's already there.

Apply this to the last days, when Satan and his armies will fight against the Lord and His armies. We already know the outcome. We've been told that Satan does not prevail in that scenario. Heavenly Father has already seen it happen, and He has been able to assure us of the outcome.