In like manner the distinctions of time disappear before Him. The entire past is unrolled before His sight; His book records all that men do or suffer, even their tears;(235) and there is no forgetfulness with Him. The remotest future also is open before Him, for it is planned by Him, and in it He has allotted to each being its days and its steps.(236) Yea, as He beholds events ere they transpire, so He reveals the secrets of the future to His chosen ones, in order to warn men of the judgments that threaten them.(237)
6. The idea of divine omniscience could ripen only gradually in the minds of the people. The older and more child-like conception still remains in the stories of the Deluge and the Tower of Babel, where God descended from heaven to watch the doings of men, and repented of what He had done.(238) Obviously the idea of divine omniscience took hold of the people as a result of the admonitions of the prophets.
7. Philosophical inquiry into the ideas of the divine omnipotence and omniscience, however, discloses many difficulties. The Biblical assertion that nothing is impossible to God will not stand the test as soon as we ask seriously whether God can make the untrue true,--as making two times two to equal five--or whether He can declare the wrong to be right. Obviously He cannot overturn the laws of mathematical truth or of moral truth, without at the same time losing His nature as the Source and Essence of all truth. Nor can He abrogate the laws of nature, which are really His own rules for His creation, without detracting from both His omniscience and the immutability of His will. This question will be discussed more fully in connection with miracles, in chapter XXVII.
Together with the problem of the divine omniscience arises the difficulty of reconciling this with our freedom of will and our moral responsibility. Would not His foreknowledge of our actions in effect determine them? This difficulty can only be solved by a proper conception of the freedom of the will, and will be discussed in that connection in chapter XXXVII.
Altogether, we must guard against applying our human type of knowledge to God. Man, limited by space and time, obtains his knowledge of things and events by his senses, becoming aware of them separately as they exist either beside each other or in succession. With God all knowledge is complete; there is no growth of knowledge from yesterday to to-day, no knowledge of only a part instead of the whole of the world. His omniscience and omnipotence are bound up with His omnipresence and eternity. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts."(239)