|
"Omniscience" literally means "all
knowledge," or "all science." The omniscience of
God may be defined as that attribute of God whereby He knows
Himself and all things possible and actual in one eternal act.
The All Knowing One knows all things immediately, simultaneously,
and exhaustively. By definition God is the ultimate Scientist
since He is the ultimate Knower and has the ultimate knowledge of
all things.
The omniscience of God is expressed by two names found in the
Hebrew Scriptures. The first is found in 1 Samuel 2:3: The Lord
is a "God of Knowledge" (El De'ot). The Mighty One is
all knowing and is the source of all knowledge. The second name
is found in Genesis 22:14. There God is called "the Lord Who
Sees" (Adonai Yireh). The Lord sees everything. He is
completely aware of the needs of His people and will see to it
that they are provided for. God's omniscience is taught
throughout the Holy Scriptures. With Him are wisdom and might;
to Him belong counsel and understanding (Job 12:13:) Psalm
94:9 declares: He that made the ear, shall He not hear? He
that formed the eye, shall He not see?
Like most of God's other attributes, the finite mind cannot
grasp the complete truth of the omniscience of God, any more than
it can grasp God's eternality or His infinitude. We don't fully
comprehend ourselves, let alone the infinite God. In fact God
knows us far better than we know ourselves. Sheol and Abadon
lie open before the Lord, how much more the hearts of men
(Prov. 15:11). God knows what no creature can ever fully know -
Himself. Only the Infinite can know the Infinite. The things of
God no man knows - only the Spirit of God knows the things of
God. Whatever omniscience is, only the all knowing God can
know it. The wisest man, the greatest scientist, is a moronic
protozoa compared to El De'ot - the God Of Knowledge.
To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses
perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn anything.
It means that God has never learned anything, and cannot learn. Who
has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has
informed Him? With whom did He consult and who gave Him
understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and
taught Him knowledge, and informed Him of the way of
understanding (Isaiah 40:13-14)? Who has known the mind of
the Lord, or who became His counselor (Romans 11:34)? These
rhetorical questions raised by Isaiah and Paul declare that God
has never learned anything from anyone. If God were able at
any time to receive knowledge that He did not possess and had not
possessed from eternity, He would be imperfect and less than God.
I am the Lord, I change not tells us much about the
omniscience of God. To think of a God who must sit at the feet of
any teacher, be he archangel or seraph, is to think of someone
other than the Most High God, maker of heaven and earth.
God perfectly knows Himself, and being the source of all
things, it follows that He knows all that can be known. All this
He knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that
includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything
that exists, or that could have existed, anywhere in the
universe, at any time; in the past, in the present, or anything
that may exist in the ages to come. Because God knows all things
perfectly, He knows all things equally well. He knows no thing
better than any other thing. He never discovers anything. He is
never surprised by anything. He is never amazed by anything. The
knowledge of one thing is not in God's mind before another thing.
For the mind of man, one thing comes before another; one year
comes before another year, one generation of men comes before
another generation. One is the cause and the other is the effect.
There is no such order in the mind of God. He knows all series
of events at one glance. God knows instantly and effortlessly
all matter and all matters, every mind, every spirit, every
living being, every creature, all thoughts, all mysteries, all
enigmas, all feelings, all desires, all secrets, every
relationship, all thrones and dominions, and all personalities.
He knows all laws. He knows motion, space, time, life, death,
good, evil, heaven, hell, all things visible and invisible, all
things in heaven and all things on earth. He knows every cause
and why everything is the way it is.
To give us a better understanding of the vastness of the
knowledge of God, consider that the most recent scientific
estimates indicate that there are 100 billion to 200 billion
stars just in our Milky Way galaxy. The largest galaxies can have
more than a trillion stars each. Scientists now think that there
are a hundred billion galaxies like our Milky Way in the
universe. These billions of galaxies contain untold trillions
upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions of stars. God's
knowledge is so great that He is able to count the
number of the stars; He gives names to all of them (Ps.
147:4). Think of the knowledge it would take first to count, and
then give a name to every star! No wonder why the psalmist goes
on to say: great is our Lord, and abundant in strength; His
understanding is infinite (Ps. 147:5).
The knowledge of the God of Israel is so great that He also
knows every electron circling every proton in every atom
throughout the entire universe at any given moment! He knows
every hair on the heads of each of the 5.7 billion human beings
alive on earth. He knows every one of the millions of sparrows
that fall to the ground. Oh the depth of the riches both of
the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His
judgements and unfathomable His ways (Romans 11:33)! Truly
the vastness of God's knowledge is incomprehensible.
God has a perfect understanding of the future. God perfectly
knows the end from the beginning. For I am God, and there is
no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the
end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have
not been done (Isaiah 46:9-10). God knew the evil rebellious
course that the Jewish people would take. He knew about our age
long exile outside of the Land of Israel. He knew about our
return to the Land that was only accomplished in this century. He
foreknew the coming of the Messiah; the place of His birth and
His royal lineage from King David's family. He knew about
Yeshua's miracles, even the manner of his death; how He was
crucified at the hands of evil men. He knew ahead of time about
Messiah's burial and resurrection. He knows the exact day of king
Messiah's return; all about the coming of His Kingdom and the
glory of His eternal rule. He knows the number of the days of our
lives before any one of us are born. He knows the future destiny
of the wicked and the future blessedness of the righteous. He
knows everything that has ever happened at one instantaneous
glance.
Not only does God perfectly know the future, but He also
knows all the things that ever could have happened. He knows
all the possibilities and potentials, all the alternative
dimensions and universes that can be imagined. We sometimes
wonder what would have happened if such and such would have
happened instead of so and so. What would have happened if the
attempt to assassinate Hitler would have been successful? What if
Napoleon had not lost at Waterloo? What if America had not won
the War of Independence? This world would have been very
different.
The fact that God knows all possible futures is revealed in
the Word of God. Every prophetic warning is a declaration of evil
and danger which the Lord knows will follow from a wrong choice
that we might make. The Lord knew that the city of Keilah would
betray David to King Saul if David remained in that vicinity (1
Samuel 23:4-12). The Son of God knew that the cities of Tyre and
Sidon would have repented and been spared if they had seen the
miracles that He did elsewhere. Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to
you Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon
which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in
sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless I say to you, it shall be more
tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgement than for
you. And you Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you?
You shall descend to Sheol; for if the miracles had occurred in
Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day (Matthew
11:21-23).
Knowledge of the omniscience of God should be a terror to
every sinner who is not reconciled to Him. You are a God of
seeing (Genesis 16:13) should frighten the socks off
of any sinner. The man who has something to hide, some unforsaken
sin, some secret crime that he has committed against God or man,
should be fearful of the all knowing, all seeing omniscient God. You
have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light
of Your countenance wrote Moses in Psalm 90. Every person who
has done wrong should tremble with fear when he realizes that God
knows the flimsiness of every rationalization that we come up
with. The Master of the universe never accepts the poor excuses
that we give for our sinful conduct, since He knows perfectly
well the real reasons for it. There is no creature hidden from
His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of
Him with whom we have to do wrote the apostle (Hebrews 4:13).
The omniscience of God guarantees that all of God's future
judgements will be according to perfect truth. Nothing will be
overlooked or falsely valued in His coming judgement.
And yet multiplied millions of people continually ignore the
omniscience of God. They think that God does not know. They
assume that the Most High is either too high and exalted, too far
away, too stupid, too busy, too limited or too uninterested to
take into account all the people on earth and each one of their
individual actions. But they are foolishly wrong. Woe to those
who deeply hide their plans from the Lord, and whose deeds are
done in a dark place, and they say, Who sees us? or Who knows us?
(Isaiah 29:15). Can a man hide himself in hiding places so I
do not see him declared the Lord to Jeremiah, and through him
to all mankind (Jeremiah 23:24) . It is as stupid for the sons of
Adam today to deny the All Knowing One as it was for Adam to hide
in the trees from the all seeing eyes of God.
Instead, all of us should heed the advice of the ancient Roman
Seneca who wrote these wise words: We ought always to conduct
ourselves as if we lived in public; we ought to think as if some
one could see what is passing in our inmost breast; and there is
One who does thus see us. Of what use is it then, that any deed
is concealed from man? Nothing can be hidden from God. He is
present with our very souls, and penetrates our inmost thoughts.
Even a wise Roman like Seneca realized that the omniscience of
God should cause all thinking men to tremble, and to sin not.
William Cooke wrote: "If the transgressor's eyes could be
opened to the reality of his position, what horror would seize
him! A sight more dreadful than Sinai in a blaze - more terrible
than the handwriting on the wall of Belshazzar's palace - a sight
more awful than the drama of the world's total destruction would
burst on his vision - he would see an offended God on every side,
he would see himself surrounded with the presence and attributes
of the eternal God, his Maker and his Judge."
Though they dig into Sheol, from there shall My hand take
them; and though they ascend to heaven, from there will I bring
them down. And though they hide on the summit of Carmel, I will
search them out and take them from there; and though they conceal
themselves from My sight on the floor of the sea, from there I
will command the serpent and it will bite them. And though they
go into captivity before their enemies, from there I will command
the sword that it will slay them, and I will set My eyes against
them for evil and not for good (Amos 9:2-4) warns the prophet
Amos to those who ignore the Lord Who Sees. There is no
place to hide from God or His judgement, and we would be far
better off if we lived in light of that judgement now.
And yet for those of us who have made the Lord our refuge,
how wonderful is the omniscience of God. Our heavenly Father
knows us completely. No tattletale can inform on us. No enemy can
make an accusation against us that He does not already know. No
forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some forgotten closet
to expose our past that God is unaware of. No unsuspected
weaknesses in our characters can come to light which will turn
God away from us, since He knew us completely before He called us
to Himself, with the full knowledge of everything that we are.
How wonderful to know that the eyes of the Lord move to and
fro throughout the whole earth that He may strongly support those
whose heart is completely His (2 Chronicles 16:9). How
blessed is the person who knows that there is Someone who knows
us completely, who perfectly understands us, and who knows us
better than we know ourselves. Our Father in heaven knows our
frame and remembers that we are but dust. He knew all about
our inborn rebelliousness and treachery, and yet out of His
infinite love He decided to redeem us anyway.
The Tenach (Old Testament) closes with these wonderful words
of encouragement: Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one
another, and the Lord gave attention and heard it, and a book of
remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord
and who esteem His name. And they will be Mine says the Lord of
Hosts, on the day that I prepare My own possession, and I will
spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him
(Malachi 3:16-17). He knows every sincere effort that we have
made, even though it turned out to be fruitless, and He will
bless us for it. He knows every suffering that we have undergone,
and He will reward us for it. He knows every trial that we will
go through, and will help us through it.
Do you want to know and serve this great omniscient God? Do
you want to know Him one day as you have been known by Him? Then
you must come to Messiah. He is indispensable to coming to know
God as He is. No man has seen God at any time; the only
begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed
Him (John 1:18). And this is eternal life, that
they may know You, the only true God, and Yeshua the Messiah whom
You have sent (John 17:3). You need to come to Messiah
Yeshua, who is the wisdom and knowledge of God. Yeshua alone
gives the true saving knowledge of God. Yeshua said: No one
knows the Son, except the Father; nor does anyone know the
Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to
reveal Him (Matthew 11:27). The light of the knowledge of the
glory of God is already shining in the face of Messiah (2 Cor.
4:6). In Messiah are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge (Col. 2:3).
One day, when Messiah Yeshua returns, the earth will be
full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah
11:9). But no one has to wait until Messiah returns to have the
knowledge of God. You can know this wonderful Lord even now. That
I might know Him who is supremely worthy of all our efforts
to know, is a very good prayer. Is that your prayer?
I am indebted to The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W.
Tozer for this article.
|
