{"id":7214,"date":"2020-12-02T22:54:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T04:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=5359"},"modified":"2020-12-02T22:54:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T04:54:00","slug":"devotional-on-isaiah-117","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-isaiah-117\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Isaiah"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lost Maples State Park, TX – 2006<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nOnly God can speak of the future with certainty
\nIsaiah 14: Exactly as I planned, it will happen.
\nThe topic is still the downfall of mighty Babylon. The very subject likely sounds like so much wishful thinking to many. After all, Isaiah is talking about an unstoppable world power that dominates the entire region. Any suggestion that Babylon will come crashing down must be an excursion into fiction. Still, that\u2019s Isaiah’s message. Even though no power on earth can challenge this mighty army, a Power above earth has it in His sights. Now, some have used this passage as a proof that God has either fully mapped out the future or somehow travels through time or even exists in all of time at once. I accept the possibility of the first, but can’t see the “time travel” versions. For one thing, everything we know about God is what he\u2019s told us or shown us about himself. We might read something in the Bible and conclude that God did it, or knew it, because he “looked ahead in time.” However, to do that is to come to our own conclusions, and not because we\u2019ve been given a Biblical insight about God. Well, so much for the “time travel.” The first suggestion is that God mapped it all out. As I said, I believe that\u2019s possible. That is, I believe the Almighty has the power and authority to do just that. The problem for me isn\u2019t in that arena at all. Instead, it\u2019s that such a view destroys the possibility of free will. In other words, God could map everything out, but he can’t plan it all and still grant free will to human beings. That leaves me with a view of God that concludes he “could” have designed a universe in which he could travel through time, but we have no evidence that he did and that he could have written the entirety of Creation out on day one, but he couldn’t have done that and given human beings anything greater than the illusion of free will. So what do I do with a passage in which God says things will happen as he planned? I\u2019ll simply accept it. Babylon has displeased the Almighty who says, “Because you have acted as you have, I\u2019ve decided just how I\u2019m going to do away with you.” Things will happen to Babylon as God has said because God is going to bring it to pass. It\u2019s not because he\u2019s already seen it, looking into the future or because he intended, from the beginning, for Babylon to fail as it will. Rather, it\u2019s God, in Sovereign authority, declaring what he is going to bring to pass.
\nTake Away: It\u2019s fun to think about the nature of time and the foreknowledge of God, but we\u2019d better not get too theologically invested in our musing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only God can speak of the future with certainty Isaiah 14: Exactly as I planned, it will happen. The topic is still the downfall of mighty Babylon. The very subject likely sounds like so much wishful thinking to many. After all, Isaiah is talking about an unstoppable world power that dominates the entire region. Any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1502,7],"tags":[75,131,373,381,442,1089],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7214"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7214"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14937,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7214\/revisions\/14937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}